First mistake made where I needed to order replacement parts.

Well, it happened finally. I made my first mistake, and one that I am not able to fix without getting some new parts. Luckily, its only going to take about $30-$40 in parts to fix!

So, a few weeks back I was assembling and drilling the right elevator. Here's the blog post for it: http://theskunkwerx.com/rv7/assembling-the-right-elevator-skeleton/

What I didn't realize was that I had the E-713 counterbalance skin turned the wrong way during assembly, and then when I went to drill the E-714 counterweight, it was drilled with the skin on the wrong orientation.

This caused the stupid counterweight to be drilled wrong, and when the skin is oriented CORRECTLY, the weight points inboard instead of outboard. I didn't discover this until last night, when I started assembling the elevator for riveting. This photo shows where I messed up:

http://theskunkwerx.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/IMG_1167.jpg

And this one shows that I can't just re-drill the counterweight because the holes would be way to close:

http://theskunkwerx.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/IMG_1166.jpg

The sharpie marks are where the holes SHOULD have been if I had the skin oriented correctly during my initial assembly/drilling. I made the decision to just order a new E-713 skin and E-714 counterweight and not worry about any hole distances. Thank goodness these parts are pretty cheap, only about $30 before shipping. I ordered them this morning, and tossed in a spare trim tab just in case I mess up on that sucker.

Good thing is, the tail kit ships with 2 each of the E-713 and E-714, so I just used the other one to keep on working on the right elevator. Hopefully the new parts will be here before I start on the right one.

Lead

How about melting some wheel weights into the holes? Just a idea.

Yeah, Larry I had thought about that. My brother in law is a big fisherman and he has all the "equipment" to make his own lead weights and I thought about taking it over to his house and letting him smelt some new lead into the holes.

But I got paranoid since its a part that could jam up the controls if it gets loose and figured I would just spend the ~$20 to get a new one. I needed to order some odds and ends from Vans anyways so I made a decent little order. I figured I would also mess up bending the trim tab, so I got a spare one on this order just in case. heh.