Today I spent a little bit more time convincing myself that the tail alignment issues aren’t going to be important. I did find a minor difference between the kit and the plans when I measured the length of the tubes that hold on the horizontal stab pieces.
The only potential complication from this tube being long might be with the possibility for interference with the welds inside of the stab tubes. The longer tubes would provide more support, and as Mark pointed out, the welds shouldn’t be a factor since the tail was installed correctly at the factory before the kit shipped.
As you can read in the previous post about tail stuff, I’m not really worried about this stuff anymore. I can make everything line up except for the elevator trim horns, but they aren’t going to be moving very much or very often. Their misalignment will introduce a little bit of friction to the system, which it needs anyway. I moved on to the battery box, which was ready for assembly and installation, now that the kindergarden paint is dry. Why paint something black and black when you can paint it blue and yellow? Especially with the odyssey batteries being orange.
I also made some progress on the flap handle change. I didn’t see any point in remaking the whole handle, since the arms and the hole reinforcements were the only parts to change.
Mark asked me to keep up with how much time I spent working on the flap handle, so I took lots of detailed pictures. Since those pictures are gone, I won’t be able to know an accurate elapsed time, but the time would probably vary considerably depending on tool availability. Having access to a metal-cutting bandsaw would have expedited these steps by at least an hour.