The proseal that joins the foam ribs to the skin in the trim tab has been curing for a little over a week, so I decided to finish up the trim tab today. It's a little fiddly because there isn't a great way to clamp the remaining portion of the hinge to the elevator while the trim tab is actually attached. I had to do a lot of back and forth until I got the hinge in a place that allowed the trailing edges to line up, as well as left the required space between the elevator and trim tab in the middle where they meet.
I match drilled all of the holes, double checked the alignment of everything, then pulled it all apart and cut the hinge to length.
Everything went together pretty well and the trim tab moves freely. I still need to bend the hinge pin and safety wire it in place, but I need to order safety wire. I have a running checklist of items that still need to be done so I don't forget. Likewise, the counterweights still need to be added to the elevators. Considering that the elevators can't truly be balanced until they are on the fuselage (and again after paint), I just decided to leave the counterweights off for now and will bolt them in when I join everything together.
With the elevator done and a little more energy from dinner, I decided to keep chipping away at the spar nuplates. I had all of the tank attach points done on both spars already, but there are also a number of nutplates needed for 3 access plates on the underside of each wing. These nutplates are slightly smaller for a #6 screw vs the #8 of the tanks. Each access plate has 4 screws that go trough the spar. The method for countersinking the screw hole was the same as before, except this time a #40 countersink pilot is what fits in the threaded nutplate hole to keep things centered.
I upsized the prepunched holes in an access plate and dimpled them as a check to make sure my spar countersinking was okay. The reference I found on VAF said that a #6 countersink should be less than .3125" wide, and mine were just under .3100". The fit with the access plate was great. Tomorrow I'll drill, deburr and countersink all of the access plates. We'll see if I remember that the 4 holes I did tonight are for #6 screws, but all of the other holes on the perimeter of the access plate get #8 screws. No idea why the difference.
