I ended up replacing the rudder cables completely. I used these really cool clevis ends rather than the crimped ends. You can have these cables custom-fabricated by Aircraft Spruce, but I borrowed a friend's tools and made my own. It was surprisingly easy, but having the right tools is an absolute necessity.

These ends are hammered into place with a pneumatic tool. Basically, you insert the cable in to a specified depth and then beat the barrels of the clevis into a smaller diameter. You then use a micrometer to make sure you've achieved the proper diameter and, hence, the proper grip on the cables. I'm lucky to have friends with some really cool tools!

This is the rear spar of the vertical stabilizer. You can see where I used orange torque seal (inspection lacquer) on each of the bolts. For the unfamiliar, this glob of paint will crack and fall away if the bolt head starts backing out. These brackets will hold the rudder so it's important that they don't fall off. That'd pretty much be the definition of a bad day!

I wasn't exactly sure where to put these pictures since they sort of involve the empennage and sort of involve wiring. Who knows, when I get around to constructing the wiring pages, I might put them there, too.

In any case, here's a picture of the foam pads and moving blankets I piled in the baggage compartment to give me access to the tailcone area. Keep in mind that I was about 230# when I was doing this. It could have been a great picture, but I couldn't be two places at one time so the picture never happened.

I needed access to the tailcone for several reasons. I mentioned a few pictures ago that I wanted the ability to install a tailcam at the top of the vertical stabilizer. The gold-colored coax cable is installed for this purpose. You can also see a group of wires running through a hole in the rear spar. I decided to install electric trim. That's what these wires are for.

I used some really nifty black nylon wire braid for all the wires. It wasn't exactly cheap, but I think it looks nice and tidy. I bought a 100' roll of it from Aircraft Spruce.

I used a length of white heat shrink tubing to finish off the Y-joint where the trim wire and the video wires came together. It's tough to tell in this picture, but the smaller wire that loops up and then back down actually ends up going out the back end of the tailcone for the electric trim.

You can see the electrical wires running where they're supposed to run. Also, in the foreground you'll notice that I've installed the beginnings of a static system.

The original builder didn't install a static system at all. He just had the static instruments ported to open air behind the instrument panel. As you might guess, this caused some pretty significant errors in airspeed and altitude. I installed a couple of static ports based on suggestions of other Midget Mustang builders. I then installed this NyloFlo tubing. I arched it up towards the top of the fuselage to prevent water infiltration. The single output on the left side of this picture will run forward to the instrument panel.

The idea of having a port on both sides of the fuselage is that it will naturally average out the readings and hopefully give an accurate static reading.