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Wednesday night I woke up with one of those Eureka moments, realizing an easy way to deal with those spacers that had given me such grief on Monday. I was having great trouble getting the spacers in between the elevator horns and the centre hinge, and managed to drop the hinge bolt and two washers down inside the rear fuselage. Thursday morning I woke up at 4:30 AM, and felt well rested, so I decided to go into work very early. I left work early, and went to the hangar. I used a magnet on a flexible arm, and managed to recover the bolt that I had dropped, and one washer. The other washer is still AWOL, but I expect that it will eventually escape out the bottom where the tail wheel spring comes out the bottom of the rear fuselage.

I approached the spacer problem completely differently than I had on Monday. On Monday, I installed both elevators, then tried to get the spacers in between the elevator horns and the centre bearing. On Thursday, I removed both elevators. I then slipped the bolt through the elevator horn on one elevator, then put the spacers for that side on the bolt. Then I put the free end of the bolt through the bearing in the centre hinge, then slipped the other two hinges in place. Next, I slipped the spacers for the other side over the end of the bolt, then slipped the elevator horn of the second elevator onto the bolt, then slipped the last two hinges in place. This worked very easily, but it assumed that you have a record of exactly what spacers are needed on each side.