I decided to see how true the elevators turned out, with a view to deciding how to play the elevator horn drilling. Another Stanley tool, a Fatmax SCL Laser Level, proved very good at telling the story. I aligned the mass counterbalances with clamps, then levelled the structure and put the laser level beam along the elevator trailing edges.

Left Outer TE

Good!

Left Inner TE

Good!

So left elevator very true!

Right Outer TE

Good!

Right Inner TE

Foohey Fudge Cake!!!!

Right elevator has a slight twist along it’s length, about 0.75º.

Not sure why, because I built both elevators exactly the same way? But according to other blogs/forums this is not unusual.

Rigging Decision

So decision time. Well, Vans recommend aligning the counterbalances with the tailplane as normal in this apparently common situation. The small twist will have negligible aerodynamic effect, and will be invisible to the naked eye unless you look down both elevator TE’s at the same time. And you can’t do that … because the rudder is in the way!