No time for a real session tonight but I figured I’d go try to get that last bolt in just for fun. Seems like it often works this way, but this time I got it started in the hole from below on the first try. The only complication was that it was a snug fit – not sure if the spacer between the aft deck and the stab was slightly misaligned or what. This was good in that once I got the bolt started, it stayed there, but bad in that I couldn’t get it pushed all the way through with my awkward hand positioning.
So I grabbed myself a ~2’ piece of scrap wood, crawled back into the tail, and was able to reach way back and get the bolt tapped all the way through, without having to even go horribly far back. Then it was pretty easy to get the nut on from above and get things torqued. So as of now the stab is officially permanently mounted.
I wouldn’t mind moving right on to adding the vertical stab, but I want to get new bolts to attach it – I think I mentioned last night that I decided to use all-new hardware for final-mounting the tailfeathers. This is a requirement anyway for the lock nuts, but I decide to go one step further and use virgin bolts as well. It’s cheap insurance for flight-critical attach points.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll start removing the back boards in the tail and get the elevator control system back in place.