Getting my elevator at 0 and my leadouts even has always been a crap shoot to some degree for me.  I came up with a method to get this right for sure.  When I make my leadouts I always make them the same length.  I clamped a piece of 1/2 x 3/8 x 4" maple to top and bottom of the elevator/stabilizer assembly to hold the elevator at 0.  I bent a piece of about .05 music wire as shown in the picture below.  I threaded it through the end wire loops of my leadouts.  I hung the music wire fixture from a water pipe in my basement.  I then added a weight to the landing gear to get the main spar plumb.  I was able to mark and cut off the pushrod and solder the clevis into the exact location while having my elevator at 0 and my leadouts even on the ends.  Since I always start with equal length leadouts I know that my Bellcrank is also at 0.

Roger, TLAR has been around for a long time. I had my first argument about it in 1970. I had studied plastics technology at university and designed a plastic component for the Leyland Mini that we were building in Australia but my boss' TLAR was twice as thick as my strength calculations indicated.

We compromised by settling on a mid-point thickness and the couple of examples that I saw last year were still going fine. 

Cheers, Geoff

Is that as good as the "KISS" principle?

Sort of like another engineering term: SWAG.

It is so good to be able to have a bit of a laugh without acrimony.

Over the last 24 hours, I have been on on a Sydney-based political blog where three regulars have been playing a bit of a game with words that sound the same, are spelled differently and have very different meanings. It was all a game but there were still a couple of people who chose to make things unpleasant.

As I said, it is so good to be able to have a bit of a laugh without acrimony.

Thank you