Well, it has been a couple of weeks so I thought I would show a little bit of progress.
The big news is that a hanger has opened up out at the local airport, so Sawdust will be moving to a new home about the first of June. It would be really nice to get a bunch of the little things finished up before the move. To that end the elevator and horizontal stabilizer have been connected via the hinges and things lined up very nicely.
I wanted to be sure that everything will clear properly, so I took the stabilizer/elevator assembly out to the garage and set it on the fuselage. Then I put the vertical fin in place to see how it looks.
Not too bad! However, I will need to do some work to provide a secure mounting both front and back. I need to move the horizontal assembly just a bit farther forward than what I had expected. This will require a bit of engineering. I think I will follow the idea of what Randy has done with his stabilizer mount shown on his web page: http://www.mywoodenairplane.com/Fuselage/20110424.aspx
Everything fit other than the final mounting points and it looks like the clearances are good, too.
Marsha came out to the garage to let me know that supper was ready and was reasonably impressed with things and insisted that I take a few more pictures of how it all looks. So, here are a few additional pictures.
As you can see things are getting pretty tight in the garage and I can’t leave anything assembled overnight. After each work session I have to take everything apart again so the car can come back inside. I am REALLY looking forward to moving things to the airport!
Well, I have continued to make progress on Sawdust. Tuesday evening I took the elevator out to the garage and proceeded to shape the trailing edge and sand things. Now I need to order more plywood and glue and I should be able to really complete the elevator. In the mean time I need to focus on making and installing the trim tab, the hinges and the metal parts like the elevator and trim tab horns.
Yesterday I took a bit of a diversion and worked on the link between the stick and the elevator bell-crank. Chris calls for a couple of “bearings” to be installed at each end of this link. The bearings have a threaded end, i.e. they are a swivel on the end of a bolt, sort of. There is a length of 4130 steel tube between the ends. The bolt ends of the bearings are 1/4 x 28 threaded rod. Therefore, the steel tube needs to have a threaded hole that will accept these bearing ends.
What the plans call for is an tube with plugs at each end. The plugs have been drilled and threaded and are secured to the tube by rivets. Well, I sort of followed this idea, but I used four inch long chunks of steel rod for the plugs and drilled and threaded my own holes. The plugs will be welded into the tube, but will have to wait with this until I get the stick end and the bell-crank finished to accept the bearings.
Here you can see the tube and the two plugs. The plug on the right shows the threaded hole and the one on the left has one of the bearings installed.
The plugs are four inch lengths of 5/8″ steel rod. This rod just fits inside of the tube, so it should be fairly easy to weld things up.
I will leave about an inch of plug sticking out of the end of the tube. The bearing has about an inch of threads on it, so the threads will remain outside of the tube. I will probably cut fish-mouths into the end of the tube and drill holes to accommodate securely welding things together. This is probably overkill, but I don’t want it to fall apart on me in the air.
Well, the pile of elevator parts that were in the picture in my last post are now looking more like an elevator. It is not done, but it is well on its way.
Here is a look at it as is being assembled. I used my bench sander to sand the lower end of each of the ribs to a 30 degree angle. It was an average angle based on the measurements on the plans. Then I hand fitted each rib into position and dry stapled it in place. This held things while I fitted the next rib. Once all the ribs were fitted I mixed up a batch of T-88 and proceeded to glue things in place.
The lower ends of the ribs fit together quite nicely.
And so did the upper ends. However, the upper ends did not fit quite as nicely as the lower ends.
With the two end ribs glued into position I placed the trailing edge plywood into the slots at each end and drew a line along it to show where the tips of the ribs should come to. As I fitted the ribs I would cut them to length as needed.
The elevator horn will attach through these holes. Actually, I will make two pieces of aluminum angle that will fit these holes and the elevator horn will bolt between the pieces of angle. Notice that the elevator horn is a bit off center. This is per the plans. The top leg of the horn will be bent so that it will be in line with the center. The cable that goes to the top horn leg will go over the pulley mounted near the leading edge of the horizontal stabilizer. The cable going to the lower horn leg has to cross the other cable, so having one leg offset a bit will keep them from rubbing.
The finished elevator will have to allow the rudder to move back and forth. Therefore, the elevator has two sides and an open area between them. However, while I am assembling the elevator I have run the trailing edge web all the way across to provide a bit of extra stability and ensure proper alignment of the two sides. This web will be removed once the skins are in place.
Since there needs to be a trailing edge on both sides of the web, I couldn’t simply glue and staple like I do with most of the parts. This time I needed to use my clamps. Two of my clamps have been used to the point that they have fallen apart, but the rest are still doing OK. I suppose I will need to invest in a few more clamps before this project is done.
The “intercostal” was fun to make. Essentially it is a cover over the elevator horn mount. Once everything is sanded and the skins are glued in place these will help to provide torsional stiffness to the elevator spar.
This is what things look like when viewed directly from the back of the elevator. The trailing edge will be shaped and sanded, then the web will be partially removed to help lighten things up. When that is done I will need to install the hinges and attach it to the horizontal stabilizer. Then I can fit the end caps to the elevator and shape the trailing edges of the horizontal stabilizer end caps to make a good fit.
Speaking of installing the hinges, here is one of the hinges. Notice how close the hinge is to the bolt. I had to use the Dremel Tool to grind away a bit of the plastic to allow things to move freely. It didn’t take much and I am sure that I left more plastic than was required when I originally cut the plastic block.
Now to order more plywood and glue and bolts and steel tube …
We have encountered quite a few interruptions to the Sawdust project since the last post. However, I have made some progress by taking advantage of bits and pieces of time and am pleased to report that the horizontal stabilizer is now complete and the elevator is making progress.
I have the horizontal stabilizer hanging in the basement workshop waiting for the elevator and elevator hinges to be completed and attached.
The stabilizer end caps were made from a nice piece of basswood that I got from Patrick Schutt at Schutt Log Homes. Patrick has his own sawmill and produces lumber from trees near his home in Missouri. He is also building a Maranda, and is using wood that he has cut locally. Anyway, the wood that I got from him was very nice to work with, was nearly as light as balsa and is a bit firmer than balsa.
Here are the pieces that will become the elevator. At the time of this post things have progressed farther than what it appears. All of the elevator ribs have been completed, sanded and the gusset slot cut in the trailing edge. The two end ribs have been glued in place and are awaiting the removal of the staples that have held them in place while the T-88 cured.
I am taking a bit of a departure from the plans in that my gussets and trailing edge will be done a bit differently. I am using a piece of 1.5mm plywood 80mm wide that runs the full length of the elevator in place of the gussets. This plywood will have a wedge of wood glued to it to form the trailing edge of the elevator. I used this same idea on the trailing edge of the wings and it worked really well. I will be taking more pictures of the build process and expect to post them in a couple of weeks.
EAA Chapter 1091 will be helping with the first fly-in of the season in Cambridge, NE. Breakfast will be served and our chapter will be helping with Young Eagles flights and we will have the Plane-Train giving rides. Later this summer we will be doing the breakfast for the Holdrege, NE fly-in and airshow which will be part of Holdrege’s annual Swedish Days celebration.
One of the interruptions that delayed this post was to drive to Dallas to see our grandson. He took us to the Frontiers of Flight museum at Love Field.
This is well worth the time to stop and see if you are ever in the area. This is the only place where I have seen the Flying Pancake.
Last night Marsha and I had a Valentine’s Day dinner at The Alley Rose here in Kearney. We had the buffet which included prime rib, several shrimp dishes, chicken and wild rice with asparagus and a salad bar. We walked in and waddled out. There was also a lady playing piano which was a very nice touch.
Now back to Sawdust!
I ended my last post thinking that I was ready to cut out the plywood for the stabilizer skins. I even thought that I had two full sheets of 1.5mm plywood reserved for this purpose. These sheets of plywood were stored in the box that they came in, so I pulled one out and noticed that it was damaged in a couple of places. Not a big deal. I can cut around the damage and things should work out just fine. Then I noticed that the label on the plywood said 1.0mm, not 1.5mm. So, it was time to transition into scrounge mode.
There is another box of plywood in the garage where I keep the full and partial sheets of plywood for the portions of this project that need to be worked on in the garage. Those portions would include the fuselage and wings. I found three partial sheets of 1.5mm plywood there and a couple of other partial sheets in the basement. The skins for the stabilizer need to form an elongated “H” pattern, so by carefully cutting the plywood that I had available I was able to scarf together what I needed to make the skins. Here is a picture of the stabilizer with the bottom skin tacked in place.
The reason that this skin is just tacked in place is that the area ahead of the forward spar will form a space that needs to be sealed before final assembly because I won’t be able to apply the sealer once things are glued. Therefore, I needed to tack the skin in place and mark where I can apply the sealer and where I need to leave bare wood for the glue to adhere to.
There are several brackets or fittings that need to be bolted into place before the bottom skin can be permanently glued into place. These are the the brackets where the guy wires will attach. The brackets are done, but I still need to order the bolts.
A couple of years ago I tossed my original staple gun and bought a new one because the old one had become so loaded up with epoxy that it no longer worked. Well, my current staple gun reached a similar state this week. It would no longer drive 1/4″ staples, but it would work reasonably well with 3/8″ staples. It would drive the longer staples into position and I would finish driving them with a hammer. When I was at AirVenture the last time I stopped by the area where people were learning to make wooden ribs. Their staple guns were being dragged through the epoxy more than mine ever are, but they didn’t seem to be having any issues with them. So I asked one of the people how they dealt with epoxy build up? They told me that they soak the staple guns in acetone each night to remove the epoxy build up from the day. So, I dumped a bottle of acetone into a coffee can and stuck my staple gun head down and let it soak over night. The next day I wiped it off and it is now working as good as new!
Tuesday evening was our monthly EAA Chapter 1091 meeting. After the meeting Fred took me aside and said that he came across a compass and an altimeter in his spare parts area. He said that they had been given to him and I could just have them, but he wasn’t sure of their condition. Well, if they work it would be great, and if they don’t I will have gotten my money’s worth out of them anyway. So he said to stop by his hanger about 1:30 on Wednesday. I was there and here is what I got:
The compass works, but is low on fluid. I know that Aircraft Spruce sells the fluid, so that is not a problem. However, when I was checking things on the AS web site I noticed that they also sell rebuild kits for these compasses. I also noticed that they sell this same compass and it costs about $135 new! I did a bit of Googling and found an article in the EAA Chapter 448 newsletter from May 2009 that details how to rebuild this compass.
The altimeter is an older unit, but it looks like it is in good shape. When I picked it up I set it to the field elevation, then watched it as I drove home.
I was a bit concerned because it seemed to be sluggish or sticky. I had to go up or down a significant hill to get it to move. So I got on the web and looked around for information about how to repair a sticky altimeter. What I found out is that this is a common issue with altimeters and I will need to add a vibrator. Fortunately I already have the vibrator which is also know as the Continental C-85. Yup, the vibration from the engine is all that should be needed to allow the altimeter to work nice and smoothly. It seems that when they started experimenting with jet engines there was not as much vibration and they ended up actually having to add devices that would tap on the altimeter housings to keep things moving smoothly.
For right now I will plan to use this altimeter in Sawdust. I have driven to work and back a few times with the altimeter in my cup holder and the road vibrations seem to keep it working properly. Worst case is that I will need to replace it later.
FINALLY!!! Back to work on Sawdust and making some progress.
This fall and winter have had me focusing my time and efforts on other projects and activities, so very little was accomplished on Sawdust since September. The main focus was making Christmas and birthday gifts for family and friends. I also made a quick trip to Minnesota to check up on my parents. Immediately after Christmas (December 26th to be exact) I hopped in the truck and drove to Dallas to spend a few days with my son and his family.
My father has become very hard of hearing and has not been able to use the telephone for the past six years or so. I found that there are special phones available where the person who has hearing difficulties can talk and hear the voice of the person they are talking to, but the words of the person on the other end are transcribed and displayed on a small screen. The transcription is done “real time”. The transcription service is paid for by a line item on everyone’s phone bills. Therefore, Mom & Dad have been paying for this service for a long time without using it and all of their children, friends and strangers have been chipping in as well. Dad is now able to call me and visit any time he wants. It is a pretty neat gadget and I am looking forward to seeing it when I am there next time.
My second son was born the day after Christmas and now lives in Dallas with his wife and son. I had some vacation that I needed to use up, so early the day after Christmas I headed south. The trip went well even though there were some interesting parking configurations along the freeway between Oklahoma City and Dallas. Anyway, I was able to have dinner with Ben and his family to celebrate his birthday. The next day I helped my grandson build a snowman. There is something a bit wrong about having to drive ten hours south in order to have enough snow to build a snowman.
When I got back home I was able to get back into the building mode and have made some progress on Sawdust. The focus over the winter is on the horizontal control surfaces. The first object to work on is the horizontal stabilizer. Things are moving along quite nicely. The attached pictures show where things stood as of this morning. I need to sand it to get the nose ribs and leading edge to blend nicely to the main ribs. I also need to sand the spar at the trailing edge to blend it to the shape of the ribs. Then I will need to lay out and glue up the top and bottom skins.
I need to make a list of bolts and get them ordered. I can’t put both skins on this until the fittings have been bolted into place. Of course, the interior needs to be sealed before the bolts can be installed. There are lots of little gotchas that one needs to be aware of.
This week I have made a fair amount of progress, but on little things. All the wing fitting parts are now done except for the bolts. The good news is that I have a bunch of new pictures.
These are the mounting brackets for the left rear wing spar. The plans call for aluminum angle that is two inches wide on one side and one and a half inches wide on the other side. When I ordered the material all I could find was aluminum angle that was two inches wide on both sides. So my mounting brackets are a bit different from the plans. Also notice that at this point the brackets have just been cut to length.
Yesterday I trimmed the corners to finish the brackets. I started by finding a fender washer to use as a template. I used that to ensure the same amount of material on all sides of the hole. Then I just used a straight edge to lay out lines from the corners to the edge. Once that was done I cut the corners off the piece and deburred edges.
The fittings that go in the upper end of the rear strut were a bit interesting to make. The plans were unclear as to exact measurements and there is an angle on the end so the whole part is cut from 3/4″ x 2″ aluminum bar stock. What are the chances that I would be able to accurately cut a 3/4″ x 3/4″ section from the bar stock with my trusty hacksaw? NILL! Therefore I decided to drill a series of holes along the edge that needed to be cut to act as guides for the saw. By drilling these on the drill press I think I have a fair chance of having that edge be vertical.
So this is what it looks like after the excess material has been removed from the bar stock. This is still attached to the two foot long bar stock that I had ordered. I only need about seven or eight inches on each end, but that gives me enough material to make another set of these if needed. Having this on the end of the bar stock also provides a nice handle to use while I finish fitting the piece. This end has to slide into the strut. With a bit of filing it does slide in and out very nicely and maintains a snug fit.
Once the end was fitted to the strut the angle needed to be determined. I cut the end of the strut at the required angle last week when we fitted the wings to the fuselage. So what I did was mark the part of the fitting that fits into the brackets on the rear spar so that is was perpendicular to the end of the strut. This worked very nicely. The other issue was determining the length of the part that fit the spar brackets. I just took a wild guess and laid my small square against the end of the strut and marked the fitting on the other side of the square.
Cutting the fitting off of the bar stock was probably the most difficult part of this operation. I clamped the bar stock to my workbench and used my hacksaw, but cutting through the 3/4″ bar stock for two inches was a bit of a chore. Of course I wanted the end to be as close to square as possible, so I was being very careful with my cut as well.
When the roughed out and marked end had been separated from the bar stock I still needed to cut the top part to fit the spar brackets. Once that was done I put the fitting in the strut and held it in place in the bracket so I could mark where the hole needed to be drilled.
With everything in place and the fit is nice and snug. In fact, I may need to file a bit more from the sides of the fitting to make it slide into the spar bracket smoothly.
The wing is hanging from the ceiling after last week, but I thought I would just fit the struts to it to be sure the angles and lengths seemed to be about right. Things are looking pretty good from what I can see at this point. At a later date I will need to put the wings back on the fuselage and verify all the angles and fittings. However, that is still a ways away.
This is what I though I had a picture of when I did my last post, but found out that it was missing. This is what the rear spar mounting brackets are connected to on the inside of the fuselage. There is a flat plate on each side of the bulkhead. The plates are bolted together through the bulkhead. Against the bulkhead and the side of the fuselage is a 1″ x 1″ angle. The rear spar mounting brackets are bolted through the fuselage side to the angle. Getting all those holes to line up was a real challenge.
Like Randy, I found that I needed to add a piece of filler behind the angle to give the bolts holding the rear spar brackets something to clamp down on.
Now I need to measure all the holes and order the appropriate bolts.
Progress has been happening almost in spite of myself. The fuel tank is pretty much in the same place that it was on the last post, but I have been doing more thinking about how to go about installing it. So, in the mean time I decided to work on getting the wings installed.
I ordered struts from Carlson Aircraft, Inc. in Ohio. They are not related to me in any way that I know of. The struts arrived in about a week in a cardboard tube. Each strut comes in a long plastic sleeve. I left the sleeves on to protect the struts until the plane is done.
What needed to be done was to make the attachment brackets for the rear wing spars. The front spars attach to the windshield frame that Don welded up for me before I could put the sides together to make the fuselage. The rear attachment brackets require an aluminum plate to be installed on the front and back of the rear bulkhead and some aluminum angle to be drilled and installed. That all meant that I had to drill a bunch of holes straight through the bulkhead to allow the bolts to hold the plates and angles in their proper locations. I guess it is time for some pictures.
Well, since I don’t have any pictures of the individual parts, I will post some pictures of the plane as it stood yesterday evening about 6:00. The picture above shows the front view. Doug, a friend from EAA, came over to lend a hand and since he is a brick layer he offered to bring a couple of sets of scaffolding. This was great since each leg had a base that was adjustable up and down about two feet total. We put a 2 x 6 on the top of each scaffolding section and rested the ends of the spars on them. Then we adjusted the legs up and down to get the proper dihedral and washout.
Moving to the south just a bit gives a slightly different angle on things. The main struts are in place at this point and are actually holding up the front spar on each wing. The scaffolding is only supporting the rear spars and is maintaining the washout.
I stacked up my shop stools, some plywood and the box that my heat gun came in, to raise the tail wheel so the fuselage is basically level.
With the washout in place I measured and cut the left rear strut. It fit just fine, but I need to finish the top attachment piece that goes into the strut. Since it is now the correct length I can finish the top piece and put it into place in the strut.
I pulled the fuselage out into the driveway about 7:30 in the morning. At this point it is about 6:00 pm and we still need to remove the wings and hang them back on the ceiling in the garage, then break down the scaffolding for Doug, so he can head home for supper.
The plane is back in the garage and the garage has been vacuumed. There is even room for Marsha’s car. Now to figure out what I am going to attack next.
Well, it is time to add another update on the progress that has been made on Sawdust. However, the progress that has been made really doesn’t show very much.
The summer has been very hot and VERY busy. Two weeks ago we were planning on going to Minnesota on Friday to attend the 125th anniversary of the church that we grew up in. Then our son and his family let us know that they would be visiting from Dallas on Wednesday and Thursday. To top things off my brother in law’s brother in law passed away and we drove to Minnesota for the Tuesday funeral. Therefore, the week ended up with two trips to Minnesota. Last week I had two days where I had to start work at 1:00 AM, then on Saturday we had promised to take our youngest son to Omaha to catch a 6:20 AM flight to California to visit his oldest brother. That meant another 1:00 AM start.
Yesterday I spent the whole afternoon inside the plane! I was working on drilling the pilot holes for the mounting plates for the rear spar attachments. It was hot and when I was done I just tossed my shirt in the washer because it was soaked with sweat.
So. What have I gotten done? The fuel tank is done!
I got the materials through Gary a friend of mine who has a machine shop here in town. He ordered the aluminum and then sheared it to the major dimensions. I proceeded to lay out the other required cuts and bends. I did the bending then turned it over to my friend Fred who offered to TIG weld it for me. Fred did a great job of welding and pressure testing it. He dropped the finished tank off at my place last Monday.
To pressure test the tank I had to come up with some way of plugging all the holes/openings in the tank and a method of pumping air into it. There were three holes that I had to deal with, the filler hole, the hole where the fuel gauge sender unit fits and the hole where the gas will come out to go to the carburetor. The two larger holes were plugged with plugs that are designed for plugging plumbing lines for pressure testing. I got those at Menards. The fuel exit hole was plugged with some plumbing fittings and a air valve similar to the valves used on bicycle tires.
Fred had removed one plug and welded a thick ring of aluminum to the tank where the sender unit would be mounted. He then positioned the sender unit and drilled and tapped holes for the mounting screws to go in. I think this will provide a very nice and secure method of mounting the sending unit.
I removed the other plug which was in the threaded filler neck adapter. This was a weldable aluminum piece with threads on the inside where the filler neck can be screwed into. I bought the adapter, neck and cap as a set from Aircraft Spruce. The only “problem” is that the filler neck is quite short. It must have been designed for installations where the tank sits just under the skin of the airplane. Maybe for wing installations.
I grabbed a couple of ropes and tied it into place in the plane to start figuring out how to do the final mounting.
It fits!
However, the top of the filler cap is below the level of the plywood deck.
The fuel tank will clear the rudder pedals. You can see the air valve still in the bottom of the tank. I will need to take that out and install a fuel valve. The fuel line will then go from the valve through the firewall to the gascolator.
The filler location is toward the top and the fuel gauge sender is toward the bottom. The fit within the windshield frame pretty nicely.
The top of the filler cap is definitely below the plywood deck. Hmmm …
I guess I will have to think about how to proceed with this for a while. In the mean time I will need to come up with a way to mount the tank. The weight of the full tank should be somewhere around 120 pounds. This is an 18 gallon tank according to the plans. I tried to follow the plans very closely. I am thinking that I may run a piece of 4130 tubing across the inside of the nose at the rear of the tank and secure a couple of straps to it. Maybe the next time I post I will have it figured out.
This is the first post made from the new Apple Macbook Pro that work has provided for me to use. Let’s see if it works as good as my Linux box.
Things have been pretty busy, so progress has been slow, but progress has been made. Tomorrow I am going out to Cal’s and will weld a couple of parts for the control stick and heat up the joints on the engine mount to release the excess stress.
The engine mount turned out pretty good, but when metal is heated it has a tendency to move around. Therefore, I purchased a piece of steel plate and drilled holes matching the engine end of things, then bolted the engine mount to it. Then I scrounged up some angle iron from an earlier project and drilled holes in that for the fittings on the firewall side of the engine mount. All I “should” have to do now is to heat the joints nice and cherry read and then let them cool while being held in place. When that is done I can check to see how smoothly it fits the firewall.
I also ordered material for the fuel tank last Monday. At the Holdrege fly-in last weekend I showed the plans for the fuel tank to Gary from Marlat Machine Shop here in Kearney. Gary said he was getting ready to order some metal and would add some aluminum sheet for my fuel tank to the order. With a bit of luck (and a few bucks) I can probably get him to make the major cuts on his shear for me. But that will be another day.
So, what I have been doing is building the control stick assembly.
This is what the assembly looks like. There will be another piece added toward the rear of the assembly to transfer movement to the ailerons. I need to get this much done and then figure out how to do the aileron connections.
Everything starts a a bunch of parts. The whole assembly consists of a 1″ diameter tube for the stick, a 1/2″ diameter piece of tube that goes through the stick to act as a spacer and pivot for the stick. The stick will pivot forward and backward on that tube. Then there is a 1 1/2″ tube that runs front to back and has a slot for the stick to fit into. The final piece is a sheet metal yoke that goes around the torque tube and has the pivot hole for the stick. With this arrangement the stick can move forward and backward, and it can cause the torque tube to twist right and left.
The yoke fits around the torque tube and will be welded to the torque tube. The yoke has 1/4″ wide flanges that are bent perpendicular to the yoke surface. These flanges add a huge amount of rigidity to the assembly.
Because I learned that metal moves when it is welded and I have also learned that it is difficult to keep things in place while welding, I drilled a couple of holes through the yoke and the torque tube and inserted screws in them to hold things in place. This also allowed me to disassemble and re-assemble things while I was making adjustments. The main adjustment was the size of the hole in the torque tube where the stick goes into it. This hole is the mechanism that limits the travel of the stick forward and back. The airplane must have some form of mechanical stop to ensure that control surfaces won’t move beyond safe limits. This mechanism limits how far the elevator will be able to travel up and down.
The control assembly needs to ride in some type of bearing, so the plans call for bearing blocks made of Delrin which is a very dense plastic. There is one of these blocks at the front of the assembly and another at the rear of the assembly. The bearing blocks are bolted to the back sides of the front and back bulkheads. The picture above is the rear bearing block.
The front bearing block had and issue. The 4130 rods that transfer the load of the wings and landing gear through the fuselage just happened to interfere with the location of the torque tube. The plans call for a thin piece of Delrin, but I had 3/4″ thick material and decided to use that. This was good because …
… it allowed me to groove the bearing block around the rod. I still have about half an inch of support for the torque tube which is more than what is called for in the plans.
The other thing that is a bit different than I expected is that there is a gap at the top of the rear bearing block. When I built the rear bulkhead the plans said to glue a piece of plywood (I think it was aobut 1.5mm) to the bulkhead below a cross piece. The cross piece has an opening to fit the bearing block, but the plywood doesn’t extend into that opening. This will not be a problem because I will take advantage of it to help secure a bracket. That bracket has yet to be built, so I won’t go into what it is for at this point. You will just have to reference back to here later.
The stick won’t do much good unless the pilot can get a good hold on it. So …
I cut a hole in the floor to allow it to extend into the cabin. The torque tube rides about half an inch below the floor, so the yoke comes up through the floor as well. The stick cannot be installed until the torque tube has been installed. So the process is to bolt the front bearing block into place, then slip the rear of the torque tube through the hole in the rear bulkhead, slip the yoke through the hole in the floor and insert the front of the torque tube into the front bearing block.
Next the rear bearing block needs to be bolted into place to hold things together. Then the stick can be positioned in the yoke and the pivot bolt can be installed.
And it fits pretty good. Full back on the stick doesn’t hit the seat and there is plenty of room to move it full forward as well.
This will probably be the only picture that will ever be taken from this angle. This is a front view that I took by reaching over the firewall. Once the fuel tank is in place I will be putting the top on the nose of the cockpit and I won’t be able to reach down into the plane this way.
Tomorrow is supposed to be 96 degrees, but I am going to weld anyway!
