Today I ran the rudder cables up through the aft fuselage, attached the cable guides, and installed the two static ports. I’m going with the Cleveland Tools static port kit, as I’ve heard these are worth the $50 investment.
Before running the rudder cables I countersunk the nylon cable guides, and installed a bunch of bushings for the various systems that run them rough the aft fuse.
Running the rudder cables was trivial, and I thought it would also be trivial to install the cable guides. Instead I ended up drilling out a pop rivet, after I stupidly pulled the entire rivet stem out of one rivet. I also ran into trouble with my pneumatic pop rivet puller; it wasn’t always breaking off the stem after setting the rivets. I ended up with everything installed, but some uglier than desired looking rivet heads.
Next up were the static ports. The standard Vans static system uses a pop rivet with the stem removed. Some builders from my EAA chapter reported having issues getting the static line to stay on the rivet and recommended the Cleveland static kit. The Cleveland kit has a pair of nice looking ports, uses red static hose, and has some really nice connectors that grip the tube firmly, and provide a quick removal.
First I stepped drilled the standard holes out to 1/2 inch.
Then I carefully cleaned and preped the hole, and used some silicone adhesive on the surface of the port. This was then pressed into the hole from the inside.
The finished port looks good! 24 hours and this will be ready for the rest of the system install.
