Today while Kody was over, we worked on getting the elevators mounted to the horizontal stabilizer. Kody used the newly-fabricated rod end bearing installation tool to screw these in. I had never bothered to do this when the elevators were originally built.

We bent a couple nails to fit through the pivot points and temporarily installed the right elevator.

When checking the consistency of the gap between the counterbalance arm and the horizontal stabilizer, it was clear that the nails, being roughly 1/8 inch diameter, allowed too much slop to assess this gap. So I used some leftover 3/16 inch diameter steel rod, cut four pieces, rounded the nose, and bent them into an L shape.

They worked great for temporary installation of the elevators.

Two things worth noting here...first, after making a slight adjustment to how far the two bearings were screwed in, the gap is nice and even between the counterbalance arm and the HS. Second, I'm obviously going to need to trim the HS skin a bit to clear the counterbalance arm. I think I'll leave it this way for right now, though, since it makes it really easy to position the elevators "in trail" for drilling the elevator horns.

We also got the left elevator positioned before taking Kody back home.