Well, with the stiffeners completed, I could either go back to the spar, or bend the elevator and start working on the trim tab.

I decided to work on the trim tab.

The other day, I laid out the brackets for the elevator trim tab servo. By “laid out” I mean I measured once, then drilled deburred and dimpled.

The problem is that once I did that, then held up the motor in it’s correct spot (like the picture below), none of the holes lined up.

Apparently everyone except me knows that the dimension on the plans are not correct. It’s better to eyeball it.

If you look closely, the dimples on the brackets are a simple-width left of where my drilled (and dimpled) holes in the cover plate are.

No biggie. It’s only a $10 new cover plate. I’ll put it on the list.

Anyway, time to be more productive on something.

With the stiffeners riveted, the manual clears you to bed the elevator trailing edge and the trim tab.

Here’s the left elevator after being bent.

And the tab. Since there are no stiffeners, you have to be careful not to overbend. Here I am checking the bend against the trim tab spar.

Then, after a long bout of “will he, won’t he” I remembered a lot of my thoughts about bending the tab ears on the elevator and the trim tab.

I re-read all my thoughts from this post on my RV-7 build from June of 2010: “https://rv7aerosports.com/2010/06/20/started-working-on-the-elevator-tab”

And I quickly decided to go the same route.

First, I measured and marked the tab for trimming.

Then, I started mocking up the left elevator skin, marking a cut line that would again leave some for the sanding block.

After snipping the elevator skin, too, I was able to start positioning the tab.

Next, one by one I drilled and clecoed the hinge stock, verifying after each hole that things were still aligned.

Of course I stopped taking pictures when it got hard. But the end result makes me VERY happy. The hinge gap is perfectly square, the inboard edge of the tab is aligned with the inboard edge of the elevator, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, the aft edge of the tab is aligned with the aft edge of the elevator.

Of course, I included an action shot for you.

No binding, and a perfectly aligned elevator trim tab.

1.5 hours, very happy with the result.