Control Freak

One last day to play with the controls before getting back to riveting the skins.  We decided to install the control sticks and elevator controls to see how everything lays out for future reference.

Here is the front stick.

And a close up of the bottom.  The front bracket bolts in so it can be removed if you need to take the long torque tube out.

The rear control stick which is connected to the front stick and the aft bellcrank.

The long black tube under the interconnecting aluminum (shiny) tube is the aileron torque tube.

The connecting tubes looking forward through the landing gear bulkhead.  The oval bit with the two holes at the top is where the aileron control cables will attach.

The aft bellcrank.  This is just behind the baggage compartment.

Those are the rudder cables near the bottom of the fuselage.  This is the area where a servo would be mounted if an autopilot were installed.  The rudder cables make this a little tight but I believe I can come up with a shelf to mount one if I so choose.

Finally the rear bellcrank (looking forward) with the cables attached.  This will translate the fore and aft motion of the sticks to up and down motion to control the elevator.  I have not made that tube yet.

We have taken all of this back out now and will resume attaching skins.

Happy Fourth of July!!

Mr. Cranky

Simple job tonight.  Drill out and fit together two halves of the forward elevator bellcrank.  Two undrilled plates of anodized aluminum and a pre-drilled bearing housing.  The plans say the pre-drilled holes are #40 but they were actually #30 which is the final size too.  Drilled one half the backdrilled the other half and primed with zinc chromate and assembled with painted CherryMax rivets.  Voila!

This is the last of the controls for now.  Time to get back on the skins.

Like Tubular, Man

Finished a few control tubes this weekend.  Had a few other things to do also, like taking some friends flying and moving Henry's Cub to his son's strip.

First, the tubes.  These are the brake pedal interconnect tubes (the two small ones), the control stick elevator interconnect tube(the medium sized one), and the elevator push pull tube to the bell crank just aft of the baggage compartment.

A close up of one off the ends.  The black end piece is machined to fit the ID of the tube and is threaded for the rod end bearing and has six pull rivets in a staggered pattern to hold it in place.  I coated everything with zinc chromate prior to assembly.

I also assembled the elevator rear bell crank and installed it.  It connects to the forward bell crank with two cables.

The bushing on the right will attach to a control rod that goes up inside the vertical fin.

As I said one of the things we did was to move Henry's J-3 Cub to his son Joe's strip about seven miles west of here.  The Cub has been here seven or eight years though the last time it was in the air was when Monte and Eddie Griffin found me in the woods the day after I crashed my Breezy five years ago.  Henry has been maintaining it but we still changed all of the gas for fresh.  It fired up and ran fine.  I climbed to 2000 feet and everything was normal and then headed to Joe's.  Here we are at his place.

This leaves an empty spot in the outside hangar that looks lonely without the Cub.

I put about 100 hours on that plane over the years and saw many bears from the drop down door.  It is the end of an era at Hood Field.

I also want to mention the passing of my good friend Bobby Byrd.  Bobby came to flying late in life but had a real love for it.  He flew a lot with Mr. Tilghman, the mid eighties gentlemen who had a Champ here for a few years.  Mr. Tilghman gave it up at 87 deciding he was getting a little loose with his flying skills.  Bobby was a good friend and helped a lot around fly-in time.  The next time I go up I will be flying over  the cemetery in Pink Hill.

A Sticky Subject

Got the sticks assembled tonight.  This consists of a thin wall aluminum tube with an inner doubler inserted into a cadmium (Mmmmm cadmium) weldment and then bolted to the black powder coated horn.

One of them was a very tight fit and we had to persuade it with a large rubber mallet to accept the tube.  In the end everything lined up well.  Here are both of them back to back.

I still have to decide what I want in the way of a grip on the sticks.  The kit comes with some plain foam rubber pieces.  Since I want at least a push to talk for the radio something fancier is in order.  I don't need to much though as the left hand arm rest is pre drilled for the flaps and trim.  I'll look around at Oshkosh and decide.  here is reasonable access to add something later.

Pedal To The Metal

Had to do some other things this weekend so I took a break from sheetmetal stuff.  Although Friday night we did work on getting the Number 1 frame in.  The plans show the dreaded Rivnuts used for the nose cowling installation and once again I have chosen to go with anchor nuts.  This requires a little thinking ahead.  Here is the left side drilled for two of them.

Then I decided to do a little assembly work starting with the four pedals.

And here is one close up.

These are well machined and welded pieces as with everything else in the kit.

Next I assembled the four brake pedal actuators.  These are riveted assemblies.

I will probably paint the tubing black although it is anodized.  I also did the pilot to passenger brake connecting rod but I don't have a good picture of them.  Doing this assembly helps dwindle the inventory of small parts down so I don't have to look in so many bags for a nut or cotter pin.  I will probably work on the control sticks and their connecting tubes next.  Tune in later to see.

More Bulkheads

Another big bulkhead put in place tonight.  This has the dreaded shear clips too but we got them in OK.

First we had to river the bulkhead brackets on.  To do this we had to remove the previously attach nutplate for access.  This was according to the plans but in hindsight it should be done after the bulkhead is together.

You can't actually see the nutplate in this poorly lit photo but trust me.

The we clecoed the frame in a put in the shear clips with my close quarters hand riveter.  This is the front side.

 This is the back side and it is riveted to the longeron.

 The bracket in the middle is the pilot position seat belt attachment.  It will get riveted in place tomorrow.

Here are a couple of shots of the whole thing.  Its hard to get a sense of just how long it is.

All for now.  Happy Bloomsday tomorrow!

The Big Frame

The next step is to assemble the main landing gear frame.  This is the heart of the plane.  The wing lift struts attach to it as well as the landing gear legs.  First I had to flip the back of the fuselage upright and add the front longerons and forward bottom skin.

This really begins to fill up the shop as it is nearly the full length of the airplane.  Bleriot helped a lot too.

I also had to clean up the floor from riveting the bottom skin.  There were a lot of stems laying around.  I had five magnets full of them.

Here is the bulkhead.  The black machined fittings are riveted with CherryMax rivets which are quite stout.

Next you put the aileron brackets with pulleys on.

Here it is in place on the fuselage.  This is temporary as I still have a bunch of Avex rivets to add to the doublers/frames but I just wanted to see it in place.

I should get that done tomorrow night.

BOTTOMS UP!

Here is te bulkhead area finished.  The CherryMaxes are the 20 rivets (each side and the middle) from left to right.  Basically there are two thick skins, a frame and a longeron coming together along these seams.

And here we have run out the bottom skin forward.  These were all Avex rivets which are not as fussy.

And here is what I have left to do tomorrow night.

I'll be doing that alone so it will take a little longer but that's OK.

Moving On

Made steady progress this weekend though I spent a lot of time looking for stuff.

Got the misplaced gusset out without destroying anything.  Here it is on the correct side of the #13 bulkhead.

And here it is installed.

Next I installed it's sister bulkhead and the cargo bay.  The 6 vertical stiffeners are now installed to each other.  The skins are still just clecoed at this time.

I trial fitted the interior cargo skins before I riveted those stiffeners together.

But these are back out now.

I moved the alodine trough outside so the solution could evaporate.  With the hot dry weather it is no problem, though quite unsightly.

I started assembly on the landing gear bulkhead this afternoon.  Still looking for some of the bolts I removed before I painted it.  Oh well, they are in the shop somewhere.

Funny Story

See this fitting the odd shaped piece?  Funny story about it.  It's supposed to be on the back side of this bulkhead.  Yuk yuk.