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Chapters 11 and 12 finished!

Today I finished the canard. I’m saving the finishing work for a little later when the nose is completed, so I’ll do all the finishing on the fuselage and canard in one effort. I’ve heard from some other builders that this will produce a more unified, consistent finish in the end.

The only problems I have now are the finishing work around the joint between the elevators and canard. Currently the elevators are restricted from moving to full forward stick by the excess material around the tail of the canard. I’ll sort this out during the finishing step.

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Chapter 10 complete!

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In this chapter I built the bulk of the canard. By the end, I’ve got everything but the elevators and tips, which are added in Chapter 11. I’ll also add the fairings at the joint with the fuselage, which seems to be a popular plans deviation. That will happen in Chapter 12.

I built this exactly to plans, except that I bought the cores from featherlite instead of cutting them myself. I can’t stress enough how much that helped. The cores were perfect, and after doing the skin layups, no filler is necessary to bring the skin to contour with the plans template. I’ll need a bit around the spars and the trailing edge, but that’s it.

This is my first venture into a filler. I’ve chosen to use Alpha Poxy. After doing a lot of reading on the internet, it seems to be a reasonably popular choice, doesn’t lend itself to peeled paint, and is among the cheaper choices. I’ve ordered some and will do all the filling at once after I complete Chapters 11 and 12.