DATE: 12-27-2024 TIME: 11:17 – 12:17 ~ 1:00
My main assistant, EJ Smith, has been ill since before Christmas at this point so I called another friend, Randy Williams, to come and help me hoist the tailcone up out of the way, underneath the trusses, EJ, his grandson Ty and I and I think Randy too, had already attached the hoist to the centre truss. I bought the hoist / winch off eBay https://www.ebay.com/itm/315825911885
Total cost on the winch was somewhere around $115 and I am very pleased with it’s operation although I had to make a new mounting bracket to replace one because of the orientation of the trusses.
We took our time, making sure to balance the tailcone as evenly as possible and avoid bending any skins. The vertical stabilizer and rudder were placed back up on the storage shelf I had build with Matt earlier and all of the remaining components, fiberglass pieces, rivets, hardware etc. were placed in a tub pending resumption once the Zenith 750 SD is flying, hopefully 12 months from today.
After getting the empennage up out of the way I spent a significant amount of time cleaning and reorganizing / reorienting the workshop so that I could get on with the assembly of the Zenith 750 SD tail kit.