Right elevator work, skin is NOT defective

I heard back from Joe at Van's, and he said the offset hole is intentional. I tried once again to fit the ribs to the counterbalance skin and voila, it fit. It took a little bit of work to get the holes to line up, but they did. Doh! Next time I'll have to try harder before I assume a defective part.

I drilled the counterweight. It was much easier this time since I lubricated the drill and I stopped every few seconds to clean the lead shavings out of the drill bit.

I clecoed together the understructure, trimmed a few of the stiffeners a bit more (some need to be trimmed slightly shorter on this elevator), clecoed on the stiffeners, and clecoed the understructure to the elevator skin. Like the right elevator, I did not put the bend in the trailing edge yet, so I just clecoed the skin to the understructure one side at a time for drilling.

Final drilled the skins, the control horn, and any outstanding understructure holes.

At this point I decided to look at the trim servo assembly. The instructions are pretty vague on this topic - the only instructions in the manual are to "install the system according to your configuration" and "now would be a good time while there is sufficient access". Thare are some notes on the diagram, but not much. I read ahead in the empennage manual for any more instruction and did not find any. I'm going to assume that now is the time to install the reinforcement plate, the inspection plate, and the servo.

Here's where the servo goes on the underside of the right elevator:

Here is how it attaches to the inspection plate:

And here is how the unit will look once installed:

Time spent: 3.5 hours (63 total)