psyco, no i did away with the braces.... on my first one the braces didnt last long and i had a horizontal stab failure (ripped off in flight).
So on this one as well as my first I took it upon myself to rebuild the horizontal stab with hardwood trailing edge and put the carbon support rods into the structure of the stab to give it strength. This worked very well on my first funtana and should be just as strong if not stronger.

PlagueWielder;
I used the heavy duty ball links from du-bru - the 4-40 size ones..