I was very nervous about fitting the fiberglass intersection fairing.  I had heard horror stories of guys having to cut and completely rebuild their fairing to get it to fit properly.  Luckily I didn’t have those kinds of problems.  Here is what I did to make my fairing fit.

Fitting

Initially my fairing wouldn’t fit over the elevator horns—Vans ships it with a lot of extra material.  So I cut off the minimum amount of material I could get away with until it fit over the stab and elevator (final trim comes later).  Now that it was close to fitting correctly, I marked and cut the horizontal lines and the front curve.

I had a good fit across the front, and on most of the sides.  But there were a couple of spots where the fairing didn’t lay flat against the stab, so I used a heatgun to help form the fiberglass.  Read more on this technique here.

Drill and Attach

After I was happy with the fit, I drilled the holes to attach the fairing to the stabs and turtle deck.  I had to drill out a few of the rivets, and used those holes for platenuts and screws.  It would have been a lot easier to attach the platenuts if the stabs hadn’t been permanently attached.  I had to use a few pop-rivets because I couldn’t get to the back side to buck or squeeze real rivets.  If I could have removed the stabs, there would have been no problem reaching everything.

Aft End

I finished the fairing by marking and trimming the back end.  With the intersection fairing either clecoed or screwed in place, mark the aft end so it is flush with the trailing edge of the vertical stab.  Then mark the location for the cut around the aileron horns.  I made mine run flush with the aft end of the horizontal stab end vertically at the back of the F-8601 empennage gap cover.  Then I drew an arc to connect the two. 

I made the initial cuts with the fairing off the airplane.  Then I installed it and did the final sanding to get the fairing to fit perfectly.  I wanted to make sure the fairing was perfectly flush with the metal.

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