Deja Stab

About a year after Osp was delivered PA determined that the fin and rudder needed reinforcing, and sent me a kit with oversleeves to be riveted over the existing tubing.

Further testing determined the oversleeves were not necessary, but by this time I had already installed them. The SeaRey LSA/X is a little porker, a kit that used to come in under 900# often now weighs in the 1,000# range, leaving a small payload envelope to stay below the 1,435# max weight for an amphib. In addition, the SeaRey has a long tail moment and a short nose, meaning any excess weight in the tail requires more to compensate in the nose. Removing them would have left the structure weakened as a result of the holes I had drilled, so I was caught in a Catch-22.

After debating it, I decided to go ahead and acquire new stab frames, and while I was at it I acquired the new Friese ailerons. I'll fly Osp with the "Classic" ailerons, then switch to the newer ones at a date in the future if I want. By building them now I'd be able to paint everything at once and match the paint.

We've been there and done this before, but boiled linseed oil is still a sticky mess to apply and clean up.

Prep the hangar...

 and review old photos about previous assembly/covering days.

I really had to take a breath and ask myself if I wanted to do this again, if it was worth saving the weight. A quick slice of a knife ended the debate. 

That's a lot of junk off a single stab. 

A beat up hangar scale showed just under 2# removed, I stopped at the post office on the way home and got a more accurate reading of 2.1#/side, leading to a 4.2# weight removal from the tail, and saving an undetermined amount of weight I would have needed to add to the nose to counter the oversleeves. Worth it.

A long time ago...

It's not the years, it's the (s)miles.

Covering is FUN!!

Oiling it Old School

Other builders told me to put a coat of Boiled Linseed Oil on the inside of the tubing as an anti-corrosion measure. Turns out this is an old technique that goes back to the early days of aviation and while there are new materials, Boiled Linseed Oil is a tried and true method.


First, tape over all the openings except one end with blue painter's tape.

Yes, every piece of tubing gets taped and treated.

Boiled Linseed Oil gives off heat as it dries and is highly flammable. Everyone filled me up with horror stories about it and I didn't take any chances when I was doing the treatment. (Note the metal trashcans for used material.) I was so concerned I was laying in bed around midnight and went back out to check on things. The next day I took all the used material by the county hazardous waste dump, thinking I'd be laughed at but they told me I did good.

Maybe I was being overly cautious, but better too much than too little.

 I found watering cans with a narrow spouts worked well for getting the oil in the tubing but it's still a messy process.

Disposable foil pans catch the drips while things dry.

After a few days horizontal I pulled the tape off and stood things up. It took about two weeks for everything to dry.

Once dry it's a few more days of cleanup using mineral spirits.

Before I cleaned a piece up I took a photo of the label and the part, then wrote the part number and description down on an inventory tag I picked up from Office Depot because the mineral spirits stripped the label off the part. After the part dried they got tagged.