11/5/2006
Well, that was a long break of no work. My evenings were full all last week from Wednesday on, and we had the Aeroelectric Seminar with Bob Nuckolls this weekend at my EAA Chapter hanger. It was a great weekend, and I have a much better idea of what to think about for wiring the RV! We had a great turnout of 23 people!!
On to building!!
This afternoon after I got home I worked on installing the ailerons. This is a really neat step, but a rather frustrating one at the same time. I started off by fitting the brass bushings to the bellcrank. It doesn't fit, so don't even try it. It needs to be sanded down a bit to make a nice and smooth fit. I did this with emery cloth and a scotchbrite pad with the bushing in the drill press. It is spinning in the pic...
With those fitting nicely, I greased 'em up with Aeroshell #6, and installed the bellcrank. This is done by removing the top bracket in order to get the -14A bolt in there.
Then I worked on installing the ailerons. There's a lot of trial and error here, as you figure out just how many washers are needed to get the aileron brackets to fit correctly without warping them in to position. These really cool washer wrenches are just the ticket to take a lot of the stress out of getting the washers in to position.
With both ailerons installed, I set up the rigging jigs. I just used a meter rule (with a one foot extension) as the end alignment tool, and Van's sends a little pre-cut jig for the bellcrank.
This is rewarding to say the least, and it's easy to do. Just move the rod end bearing on the bellcrank end until the tooling holes line up with the trailing edge on the outboard end. When this is set, I twisted the rod with both rod ends in place to set equal distance, and snugged the jam nuts down. I haven't torqued anything on the ailerons yet. I've made a note to do this down the road in final preparations.
I finished up the day by removing my landing light wires. After the seminar this weekend, I decided that the 7 strand automotive wire 18AWG that I had in there was not a good idea. I'm switching it to 18AWG 19 strand ATC style aviation wire.
6.0 hours