I made some progress and ran into a couple of problems. Progress first.
I built and installed the servo tray with linkage stoppers.
Now for the problems.
After installing the servos, I attached the cable for the elevator without issue. I'll have to tweak the position later but it fit nicely. Then I fed the .060" pushrod for the rudder and it seemed a really tight fit in the pushrod guide. During construction, I opted to install a full length guide that had an ID of about .065" in order to allow me to install the actual pushrod after covering. I realized that this would add excess weight in the tail but I am confident that this will be offset by the motor and battery (I still think this is the case). However, having that much friction for about 20" with a gentle curve provides more resistance than I expected. I added a small amount of oil into the pushrod guide and it seems to have helped a little but not enough. The servo is an HS85MG so it can probably handle it but I don't want make it. I plan to buy a thinner piano wire this evening and test it out to see if I get better results.
Second problem and this is the big one.
Apparently, Neucover doesn't really stick to nylon. I finished covering the nose yesterday and it looks terrible. The covering will shrink when heat is applied and it looks great. But as soon as it all cools down (the nylon nose is a pretty good heat sink so it holds the heat), the covering will wrinkle up. I've punched a bunch of holes in the covering and applied the heat and that didn't help at all.
Again, I have several options.
1. Leave it alone. Besides the terrible looks up close (it looks fine at 500'), I don't think it's going anywhere. The risk of it coming off in flight is pretty low and even if it did, it's fastened really well where it meets the balsa and at worst, it would just cause a bit of drag but would not cause a catastrophic failure. However, the modeler in me hates it.
2. Pull it off, cover the nylon in a thin layer of bondo to even the surface, and cover it again. There is no guarantee that this would help since the bondo would be super thin.
3. Pull it off, bondo the nose to get an even surface, and paint it. It wouldn't be a perfect match to the covering.
4. Some other option I haven't thought of.