July 22-24, 2020
Temporarily put the rudder in place and moved up to the pedals to make the linkages for the rudder cables. The first set was for the rear most pedal position. Once the interior is in, if we need to make up mounts to move the pedals all the way forward, I’ll go get some more steel and make up some more sets. A while ago I put all the plastic push clips into the bulkheads, turns out that was a bad idea. You can’t get the end of the rudder cable through those clips when they’re installed. Its a force fit to get them through even when they’re not installed. To remove the 2 clips on each side that go through the sides of the baggage area, I had to remove those panels. This meant drilling out the rivets that Van’s installed. I decided to make these panels removable from now on, so i drilled in the nutplate mounts and modified the panels so I didn’t have to worry about this again.
I had the extra material to make another set of rudder cable linkages, so I went ahead and made a 2nd set of linkages for the middle pedal positions. Finished installing the nutplates on the panels and put those on the shelf. Since the control stick was now in for rigging up the tail, I took the roll trim servo out of the box and started putting that in place. Got all the blocks drilled and the arms installed and used the right angle drill to make the holes in the seat ribs for mounting. Called it a day before getting it fully bolted in position.
Most of the 24th was spent online buying parts and other things I’ll need soon. Ordered some Lord motor mounts and the bolts, the rudder cable fairings and the internal rudder stop. When I went back out to the garage I noticed that the fuselage stand had a distinct lean to it on one side under the tail. A quick few cuts of some additional 2×4 and I had that reinforced so I didn’t have to worry about it anymore. Moved back up to the roll trim servo and got everything bolted in place. The last bit of this installation is to run some safety wire to the control sticks, but I’ll wait to do that until the wings are in position and the ailerons are centered so I can get everything in the neutral position.
-Paul
(Total Build Time: 464.1)