Carlson Skunk Works

Progress has been made! More parts are in place and things are looking good.

The tail is coming together and we should be ready to run control cables before long. The tail needs to be in place before the trim control cable can be run and the trim mechanism tested. The only concern that I have with this is figuring out how to run the Bowden cable through the horizontal stabilizer and elevator, and still be able to remove the stabilizer and elevator and put them back on again. I guess I need to study the plans again.

I decided to use the same approach as Randy Holland for stabilizing the tail surfaces. I am installing jury strut material instead of the cables called for in the plans. This is actually less expensive than using cables. The shackles for connecting the cables to the tail pieces are extremely expensive! Each one is $10.85, so the cost for the 16 that would be needed for the tail comes to $173.60! All the jury strut material for the whole plane came to less than that. Using the jury strut material looks nicer, too.

The connection points on the fin were changed so that I now have separate connectors for the front and rear jury struts. This was not nearly as difficult as I had envisioned, but I ended up doing it a bit different than the change bulletin that Chris sent out. I made some fir mounting blocks that sit on top of the upper fin rib and cut a couple of pieces of aluminum to go through the fin for the jury struts to fasten to. Then I drilled a hole in the middle of each block and aluminum strip and bolted it all together. I stopped in to see Gary Forbess at Marlatt Machine Shop to see if he had some aluminum that I could use for the jury strut connection points on the bottom of the fuselage. Gary has been a great resource for metals for my project and he is our EAA Chapter Secretary.

I managed to finish the plates that clamp the internal bracing straps where they cross and they are positioned in the wings. So far I have been able to get two sets of them fully secured in place. It is a bit tricky getting the screws and nuts to tighten fully. It would be a lot easier to use AN3 bolts, but I am not going back to order them at this point.

The aileron cables were ordered and have arrived. These are custom made industrial cables that I got from Baum Hydraulics in Omaha. The cables are 132 inches long and have bulkhead mounts on each end. They come with 1/4 x 28 threaded ends, so I ordered AN665 threaded clevis ends from Aircraft Spruce to go on them.

The cables go through 5/8″ holes and have a threaded area with two nuts and two 1 1/4″ washers to tighten on each side of the hole that the cable goes through. This mounting area just happens to end up above the front edge of the rear spar. Therefore mounting an aluminum plate on the rear spar is the ideal way to mount these cables.

Things are moving again!