I have almost finished the empennage now, all that is missing is a few nutplates in the fuselage and horizontal stab for the upper empennage fairing, and some other minor items.

The elevator tips had to be trimmed a little to fit over the counterweights.

Before installing the tips, I installed nutplates to the tooling holes of the elevator horns. That way I can install trim weights here when balancing the elevators after paint.

After matchdrilling the tips, I installed them with epoxy over the counterweights.

After curing, I sanded it smooth and reinstalled the elevators.

I wasn’t quite happy with the rudder and vertical stab tip upper cord shapes…

…so I removed the rudder and tip and added epoxy filler to fix it.

Much better… 🙂

All tips done!

The upper empennage fairing was almost done, just needed to drill holes for the lower aft screws.

I removed the vertical stab to install nutplates for the fairing.

I had to loosen the forward rib to rivet on the forward nutplates.

All done. Thats it for the vertical stab. 🙂

With the empennage almost done, I decided to move the wings to the airport.

Before installing the wings, I put the fuselage on some pallets to keep it fixed and leveled.

I had some help from some colleagues at Air Service to put on the wings.

It’s not a full RV-smile, but pretty close.. 😉

I checked the wing sweep by plumb bobs and straight lines according to plans, and luckily they are well within tolerances, so I dont need to remove them to trim the aft spars further. I still have to check and adjust the wing incidence before drilling the aft spar bolt holes.

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