Elevator Controls

Tonight I installed the stick bases into the fuselage, then the sticks, and then adjusted the travel and spacing to finish the stick rigging steps. The access was a little tight for these components, but not as bad as I feared. The most time consuming part was carefully sanding and filing the stick stops so that both sticks contacted the stops simultaneously, both fore and aft. I used a small file, and some strips of Emory cloth, to carefully and gradually adjust the stops until both sticks were touching the stops at the same time. Both were right in the middle of the acceptable range of travel. It feels good to have gotten this far! One more chapter and then I’m done with the fuselage kit!

Tonight I drilled the control stick bases. This was quite easy once I found a level surface. I found the superglue didn’t bond well to the steel, so my initial match drilling of the bolt holes was not ideal. Still, everything came out well within an acceptable margin of error.

Tonight I installed the autopilot pitch servo. This was fairly easy, although it was a bit of a stretch at times to reach the back side of the servo to get bolts installed and torqued.

Thanks fully everything installed easily, and I was able to route the wiring easily, cinching down the zip ties too.

Tonight I installed the bellcrank into the fuselage, and connected the pushrods to the idler brackets. I was relieved to discover that the idler bracket still swung freely and no more sanding was needed.

Tonight I final torqued the pushrod jam nuts, and then installed the first pushrod into the fuselage.

Before I final torqued the jam nuts, I made a simple measuring device to ensure I had the right dimensions on the pushrods. I installed a temporary bolt into a length of wood, and using this to pin down one end of the pushrod, measured the center of the hole at the other end. This seemed to work well, and after a few minor adjustments I torqued down the jam nuts and marked with torque seal.

Installing the first pushrod into the fuselage turned out to be harder than I imagined. It gets fed through from the bulkhead at the back of the baggage compartment, which is easy, but getting final torque on the nut was really hard due to the limited access. It took an hour just to get the one nut torqued correctly.

Tonight I found the rest of the elevator control parts, drilled, cut, deburred and primed them all. One of the parts has an optional lightening hole, I drilled it out, but only to 1 inch diameter, as I don’t have a 1 1/4 inch step drill. I don’t think that matters, but will find out later!

I also located the elevator autopilot kit, and will install the motor at the same time as I install the rest of these parts.

Tonight I finished assembling the elevator pushrods. This was a case of lightly sanding down the primer and installing the caps in the end of the tubes and riveting them together. This ended up being time consuming, but not very difficult. Once these get primed on the outside, they will be finished and ready to had the rod end bearings installed.

Tonight I started making up the elevator pushrods. There are three aluminum tubes that have caps installed, with threads for rod end bearings. I final drilled the holes in all three pushrods and primed the inside of the tubes.

The plans ship with a template, which I used to trace onto some thin trace paper. I’m glad I traced it, vs just cutting it out of the page in the plans, because I discovered the printing wasn’t to scale. The first template I made didn’t quite fit around, and when I checked the scale on the plans page I realized it was printed at about 95% true size.

Once I had adjusted for the error and made a new template I marked out the holes and drilled them using my pipe clamp.

Then with the end caps in place, I final drilled all the holes and deburred them. Then i primed the insides of the tubes and left them to dry overnight.

Tonight I test fit the idler bars, and sanded down the flanges of the idler bracket to ensure clearance. These bars are responsible for the transition from one elevator pushrod to another, and must swing freely through the full range of motion. At first they were rubbing slightly on the bracket, but after some patient sanding with Emory cloth I was able to achieve the appropriate clearance. Hopefully it’s enough to still clear the bracket after I prime the parts.