I know that parts of my question have appeared in other threads, but they are old and I figure other people might have the same problem, so here goes.

I am building a SS7 with Speedster tail option. After reading through some old posts and very carefully laying out the ribs for the vertical stab, I hysol'ed (is that a word?) them in place. So far so good. I came back to do the ribs on the rudder. My rudder to vertical stab measurements are exactly as called out in the manual (closer at the top, wider at the bottom). When I started to lay out the rudder ribs, I noticed that the distances up the rudder don't quite match with those for the vertical stab ribs. I looked at the excellent build log that Darrel has and followed his advice to use sticks to line up the ribs between the stab and the rudder. I went one step further, I cut longer sticks that basically go from the from the front of the vert stab ribs to the aft portion of the rudder ribs. This is done to be sure that the ribs line up. I got through several of them and noted that I needed to angle the rudder ribs to keep them parallel to the vertical stab ribs. The instructions say to bond some of the ribs to the underlying tubing. The problem that I am having is that the tubing does not line up between the stab and the rudder. Here is a picture of what I wound up having to do to get some of the ribs to line up

The two black arrows show the ribs that don't line up with the tubing. They do, however, line up with the corresponding ribs in the vert stab (after angling them as shown). I even used an inclinometer to be sure that the ribs in the rudder and the stab had the same angle. Has anyone else had this problem? I have not yet glued the rudder ribs in place. I thought I would seek counsel before doing so.


Attachment 24700


Thanks - Fred
Building SS7
Maybe Rotax 914, Maybe Lycoming O-233