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Here's my attempt at taking some better pictures of my SB...

Here you can see that I removed enough material on the 1/4" plate that the plate fits right inside the rivet row. It was a slow trial and error method until I removed enough material:


Here's a closer look:


Finally, one change I made to ensure there was no rudder interference was that I only put washers on the top 4 bolts (where the 5 degree bend keeps them away from the rudder) I'm glad I did this after I re-hinged the rudder...there's not much extra room between the rudder and the plate at full deflection. I simply put 2 or 3 washers under the lock nut and it worked great:



All in all, a straight forward job, just a pain to reach the inside of the tail when you reinstall the hardware.

That plate is really 1/4" thick?? Holy smokes, they are not kidding around with reinforcing that tail, are they?

Thanks for the pictures. I haven't attached my tail structure yet, but ill be doing this SB very soon.

142YX wrote:Thanks for the pictures. I haven't attached my tail structure yet, but ill be doing this SB very soon.

When I first built and installed my aft "Y" spar I did so outside as a sub-assembly, then riveted it in place. If you do the same it should be a simple, easy item to add to the build. If you can I highly recommend you add the doubler in the initial build of the tail, and you won't have any issues.

Andy Walker wrote:That plate is really 1/4" thick?? Holy smokes, they are not kidding around with reinforcing that tail, are they?

yeah Andy I thought the tail was already pretty strong, but now that both spars are reinforced it's pretty darn beefy! I don't think it's going anywhere...(I guess that's the idea!)

I should say.. i already have the aft "Y" spar on.. so it wont be as easy as it could be :/

I just noticed that two more holes/bolts are added to the aft strap.

Do the later serial numbers already have these bolts...?

Hey Kip,

I can't be certain but I think the two additional NAS bolts are part of the service bulletin and were not part of any original plans. The plans instruct you to use the new doubler as a template for those holes. I ended up putting the rest of the bolts through the doubler then drilled the new holes, then deburred before the rest of the hardware was installed.

Thanks, Mike. I have not yet read the plans fully.

I might knock this thing out this week. At least the front part...:)

N111YX wrote:Thanks, Mike. I have not yet read the plans fully.

I might knock this thing out this week. At least the front part...:)

Just my opinion, but if you get access to the bottom of the AN-4 bolts that go through the longerons the front blocks are pretty quick and easy. I'm sure you'll get that part done in no time.

The aft plate is the PITA on this job. :shock: