Empennage parts attached

We attached the empennage parts together (at least temporarily), starting with the stabilizers:

Horizontal and veritical stabilizers mounted in place

Fuselage, tailcone and stabilizers all together!

Full-airplane view with the stabilizers on

We attached the elevators, measured and adjusted their travel:

Elevators attached to the horizontal stabilizer

Lower travel limit at ~24˚

Upper travel limit at ~28˚

To get it to the target range (25° down, 30° up), I had to file down the elevator stops a bit:

Slots filed down to increase upper elevator range

Slot filed down to increase lower elevator range

Bottom view of elevator range slot

Final lower elevator travel at ~25˚

Final upper elevator travel at ~30˚

This, unfortunately, created the need to comply with SB18-03-30. It was only then that I realized - and Van's support confirmed, that I didn't need to do any of this :/ instead, the section on flight testing specifies a range of angles, and my original values were within that range, so I'll likely just replace that angle with one that's untrimmed.

With all the parts attached and adjusted, it looked pretty impressive, and gave a real sense of progress:

All empennage parts attached to the fuselage

I'll take advantage of having all these parts on to work on the empennage fairings, before I pull them out again, address the SB, and store them away until final assembly time.

Time lapse:

Total empennage attach rivets: 40

Total empennage attach time: 26h