Misdrilled elevator horns

When I was in the army they told me, "Private, you don't get paid enough to THINK!" I'm beginning to see the wisdom in that - everytime I start thinking, instead of following the directions, I get in trouble! I devised a clever method of match drilling the elevator horns. My jig required a #9 drill (Oh no! you didn't drill a #9 hole!! Yes, I did). Then after looking at the plans I realized the rod end attaches with a AN3 bolt, not a AN4 as I assumed. What do I do now? I see three options. A) Install the AN3 bolt and tighten it down - it probably won't make any difference. B) Weld up the #9 holes and drill them again with a 3/16th drill (there goes the nice powder coat finish). C) Open the holes up to 1/4th and buy a new rod end with a 1/4th in. hole. I like option C, but I am concerned with the edge distance from the larger holes. I appreciate any suggestions or words of sympathy.

Thanks,
Don Owens

Weld the holes up and drill again.

Don,

I messed up in a similar way, but not on hole size, but on placement due to an incorrect setting of the rod-end bearings on the aft edge of the horizontal stabilizer. A friendly local A&P welded up the holes in the elevator control horns for me and I drilled them a second time and spray painted the arms with new paint. Don't reinvent the design, just do the simple fix and it will be fine. You can see my problem near the bottom of this web page:

http://www.n2prise.org/rv9a002a.htm

One of the things I heard from the tech support guys at Van's was something like this: "It is just an airplane."

The bottom line: it will fly with some imperfections. Anything that compromises safety is a big deal. Things like wing incidence (and lack of twist in the wings), free movement of the control surfaces, keeping oil in the engine, properly torqued propeller bolts, and fuel only where it is supposed to go, are much more important.

Jerry K. Thorne
RV-9A N2PZ