It must be an age thing where I miss important details in a simple instruction. I drilled the hole in the base of both sticks. Fine. I drilled the hole in the control head and spacer and stick grip. Fine. I put the foam over the stick (which didn't want to go on). But... fine. I riveted the spacer to the stick. Not fine. I strung the wires down through the stick to exit at the hole at the base. Fine. Except. Not fine. I was supposed to rivet the control head to the spacer to the stick after running the wires. So I drilled out both rivets and restrung the wires, then riveted all three in place (I actually did this part about 11 a.m. after stopping at the hangar after a rained-out Twins game where I'm an usher). Horror ensued as I started to rivet the pilot side when I realized I'd put the foam grip on upside down and surely I did that to the co-pilot side too. But it was... you know... fine. Then completed the process and cut the wires to length down below. And I put the labels on.

However I couldn't put bushings in the lower hole (which I have to do before putting the DSub connector on because the part number listed on the plans does not appear anywhere on the avionics inventory list , so I sent a note to Van's.