Empennage attachment progress

I'm going back to finish section 11 in order to be done with all the tailcone drilling before attaching it to the fuselage, since it'd be quite a bit harder to do afterwards.

I installed the rod end bearings into the elevators:

Rod end bearing attached to elevator

I then attached the elevators to the horizontal stabilizer to match-drill the bearing into the elevator horns:

Elevator attached to horizontal stabilizer

Both required some adjustment (loosening up a half turn of the rod end bearings) for the bent-edge blind rivets not to catch on the rear spar rivets, but it was fine after that.

I attached both at the same time to drill the pushrod attachment bolt hole at the bottom:

Elevator horns attached to horizontal stabilizer bearing

Both elevators attached to horizontal stabilizer

Drilling the pushrod attachment hole on the elevator horns

I then removed the elevators and match-drilled the horizontal stabilizer to the tailcone:

Horizontal stabilizer aft holes attached to tailcone

Horizontal stabilizer forward holes attached to tailcone

Horizontal stabilizer attached to tailcone

Since I'm also working to rebuilding part of the vertical stabilizer, I also match-drilled the rear spar into the tailcone:

Vertical stabilizer rear spar attached to tailcone

I removed and put away the HS and VS, and will prime the shims on the next primer batch. After that, the next time I come back to this session will likely be for the final attachment.

Time lapse:

Total empennage attach rivets: 40
Total empennage attach time: 20.8h