Radfly,

The reason that I had to re-inforce the elevator was because we have a grass field, and when I would do an elevator or harrier landing the compression of the tailwheel, along with the huge elevator throws would cause the counter balances to hit the grass and being less that robust, they would break.
Thats why on the next one I will sheet the tail feathers, not only for the grass, but to clean up a lot of the flexing inherent in this design.