Wood ribs on tailfeathers

[avidflyer]

Hi all, after taking a year off from building the unfinished Kitfox 4 Classic 1200 kit that I bought to finish some other things, I got started back to work on it about a month and a half ago. In about 80 hrs of work since then I've covered the wings, all I have left is to iron the edges of the finishing tapes and I can start spraying Poly products. I set the wings aside for now and will start on the tailfeathers or the fusaloge next. When I got my kit, it had wood ribs glued into the horizontal stabilizer but not on the rest of the tailfeathers. I see in the manual, that the speedster model has ribs in the vert. stab, rudder, and elevator also. How much good would it do me to add them to my plane? Thanks, Jim Chuk

[DesertFox4]

Jim, the airfoil tail feathers is a "Speedster" option but many non-Speedster model 4's opted for the wood ribs either because they thought it would make a difference in handling (not too sure it makes a big difference) or just because it looks really good with the option. I voted for the 2nd reason. Just looks good. They are not hard to install or make from scratch. If you have them on the horizontal I'd install them on everything to keep a uniform look. I've flown both versions and they both fly great.