Completed the Vertical Stabilizer last weekend. It’s exciting to be working aluminum again. I opted to skip (backwards) in the plans rather than dive back into proseal and fuel tanks right off the bat. Since I have the Empenage kit I opted to get started on the vertical stabilizer. Unfortunately, I neglected to take many pictures. I guess that’s a habit to get back into also.

Here is Ashley holding up the clecoed stabilizer skeleton after the first day of building in over 6 months.

and fast forward to the end product, the completed vertical stabilizer

Another note to get out of the way, I have opted not to prime the pieces going forward. This is an item that receives quite a bit of debate but the bottom line is that I live in mostly arid climate and there is little real evidence that I’ve seen that shows corrosion on 2024-T3 aluminum. There are thousands of Cessna aircraft out there built in the 50’s and 60’s with 2024 that were not primed and are flying today. I started the build not knowing for sure which way I would go so I opted for the “may as well prime because I can decide not to later” approach. As I went through the build, I found how much additional time priming took so now is the time that I decide not to.