boatrepair

These pictures will show some of the things I found wrong with the
boat and what I'm doing to correct them.
I found that the seat back was reclined only two inches. The plans
call for six to eight inch recline, so I got into the plane to see how it
would be like it was. I have range of motion problems and found it
was very difficult to enter and exit. I removed the shear web and
cross braces so that I could recline the seat back to the max. I also
has one cross brace that was damaged so I removed all but the last
cross brace.

I found it difficult to clamp the vertical part of the seat back in place to glue so I built some three
sided gussets. these made clamping and glueing in place very easy. Left: This is two of the gussets
prior to installing. Center: this is one of the lower gussets in place on the aft spar. Right: upper
gusset in place.

The stabalizer damage was one of the first things I noticed when the plane was delivered to me.
The leading edge of the stabalizer had been cut off. There was also some skin damage. I
removed the skin from the stabalizer by cutting through the fiberglass near the spars with a
dremel and then using a belt sander to sand the fiberglass off the spars.

For a long time I have been debating wheather I should remove the Horizontal stabalizer
and totally rebuild it, or just make repairs using the original spars in palce as they are. I
recently found something that causes me some concern so I sure now that I will remove the
tail fethers and build new ones. In the picture beolw you can see where the bulkhead that
holds the vertical stabalizer in place has been spliced together and scabed over. It may be
safe the way it is but that isn't good enough for peace of mind.