THE TAIL BOOM, COMPLETED – March 4, 2019
One of the things we hate to do, but find necessary occasionally, is fix mistakes. In this case, the boom cover, once installed, would have interfered with the push rod for the elevator (movable surface in the tail that pitches the nose up or down). It was a slight interference, but we had to modify a small portion of the tail boom bottom cover to provide the clearance for the pushrod. In the image above, Engineer David Nobles (left) and Chief Builder Ron Burch are shown working on the modification to ensure we have a good solution in place.
Once this was done, we were able to finish off the boom by bonding the bottom cover on, cleaning it up, and prepping it for paint. You can see the video of the boom being assembled by Ron below.
All of our carbon fiber needs to be protected against UV rays, which can degrade the part. To do this we coat the carbon parts with a sealer or primer paint. We sort of like the Lamborghini grey color that the rest of the vehicle is already painted, so that will be our choice for the tail boom as well. The image below shows the tail boom completed, awaiting paint.
