Finished up prepping the parts that make up the trim servo mount. Based on advice I read on other builder's logs, I dimpled the front two set of holes on the cover plate for the Z brackets and just barely countersunk the aft two holes. If you look at the picture in this post, you can see there is barely any room for the shop head side of the rivet to sit with the trim servo sitting on top of it. The easy fix seems to be to countersink the front side, use a 3-3 rivet instead of the 3.5 called out in the plans and set it a little lower than normal until you get clearance for the trim servo. I may even throw some RTV in between that area as well as everything on an airplane vibrates and I can see that rivet ripping up the housing of the servo. I'll have to check the specs of the RTV I have to make sure it's safe to use on plastic.

One more piece of advice I found from another builder's log was to fit everything in place and check the alignment of the servo lead screw to make sure it was centered in the hole that is already present in the elevator spar. His advice was to do this BEFORE you drilled the attachment holes. Of course I didn't read this ahead of time, only after the fact but when I checked this evening, whew, dead center so no issues here. His post said that the Van's dimensions were about 1/8" off for making sure that lead screw was centered. I used the Van's dimensions and it came out perfect so not sure if he was using an older set of plans or what. The post was from 2011 so not sure.

With that done, it was time to clean up all the parts as well as the remaining parts yet to be utilized. I only want to paint primer one more time so I went ahead and edge prepped and scuffed all the parts that are left so that I can prime them tomorrow. I even managed to use the drill press for the first time and used my 1" deburring wheel with it which worked pretty well.

So all done for the night. Just need to clean parts tomorrow with denatured alcohol and acetone and prime. Hopefully for the last time with the empennage parts.