I'm just about at a stopping point on the fuselage kit until I get my engine and avionics- Avionics so that I can lay out the magic boxes and see what mods I need to do to the substructure, as well as running the wire bundles, and engine because I'm going with the IO390 and vans doesn't have any guidance on firewall penetrations for that setup, so I cant finish running fuel lines or anything else until I have the engine.

So, I've decided to jump into some big ticket tasks I've been putting off. I don't have help this week to mate the wings, so I'm going to work on the empennage.

I got the elevators and H/S out of storage and pulled the blue vinyl off of them. They had been in my furnace room for over a year, and after about 6 month I had the fleeting though that I should maybe go pull the plastic off of them in case they were starting to corrode underneath, but of course I got busy with other stuff and never did it.

They weren't corroded at all, but I had covered the rivet lines back up with tape, and the glue had turned to tacky mush, and I spent a good bit of time scrubbing them with acetone to get everything off of them.

The first thing that you do at this point is to re-hang the elevators, clamp them in trail, and drill the pushrod hole in the end of the control horns. There's nothing special about doing this now. I don't get why they don't just tell you to do this when you're working on the empennage kit.

Anyway, the plans indicate that usually the horns are not exactly symmetrical, and while mine were close, sure enough, one of them was slightly aft of the other when both elevators were clamped in trail. I laid out the dimension and drilled the hole on the most aft horn per the instructions. The hole is called out as 3/16" for a -3 bolt, But at this point I just pilot drilled it to #30.

The plans are very specific about the two faces of the horns being exactly parallel during match drilling, and tell you to make a drill block out of hardwood or aluminum that's the exact size of the gap and clamp it between the two horns to match drill the second horn from the hole you just made in the first.

I miked the gap and in my case, it's about .902" I don't have a reasonable way to make a block thats exactly .902" so I started rummaging through my specialty tools and clamps and whatnot looking for a solution.

Ultimately, I settled on a drill guide and a couple of washers and was able to drill the other one without issue. I reamed them up to full size and they appear to be symmetrical. I will be able to tell if they are exactly right if the elevators are still parallel when I tighten down that bolt on the elevator pushrod, but I measured them after reaming and I couldn't see any deviation. I know taht they are at least as good as I could have gotten with a wooden block.