Switching gears from fuselage plumbing - time to start fitting the tail feathers to the fuselage. I pulled the horizontal stabilizer and elevators out of storage. The garage is getting awfully full!
The elevators are connected to the horizontal stabilizer with two rod end bearings that screw into nutplates attached to the elevator spar. Van's says the max measurement from the spar to the center of the bearing is 7/8", so I took it a little past that to start.
Getting the bolts into the rod end bearings while holding the elevator with the other hand was easier said than done. I screwed some boards to the bench to act as a clamp for the horizontal stab to keep it from moving around. I put both elevators on just to see how things line up before doing any drilling. The control horns don't line up well at all, but after some searching online I found that this is par for the course. Once everything is mounted to the fuselage the control pushrod will be drilled to the control horns, so having them match up doesn't really matter as long as they are drilled together in the end.
I took one elevator off so I could get at the control horn to drill it to the center bearing (on the rear spar of the horizontal stab). The elevator has to be in trail before any drilling is done, which is accomplished by clamping the counterbalance arm to the horizontal stab.
In order to drill the bolt hole in the control arm that connects through the center bearing, I needed a 1/4" metal bushing of some sort to help get a center hole started. I looked through every bin at Home Depot and couldn't find anything that would work, so I ended up going the 3D printer route. It seemed to work okay, although not as accurate as if it were metal I'm sure.
Once the pilot hole was drilled into each control horn, I final sized it to 1/4". The next step is to put both elevators back on the stabilizer to match drill the hole that the control pushrod will connect to. I was done for the day though, so just for fun I put the horizontal stab on the fuselage just to see if it was going to fit in the space I had. It's going to be tight!
