I got both the horizontal and vertical stabilizers installed. It is great fun putting big parts on, inserting bolts, washer, nut, tighten, torque, torque seal, Done. No surprises since this stuff has all been fully assembled before. I did find that the lower bolts at the rear of the vertical stabilizer were too long as called out in the plans. I used one size shorter.
Another successful afternoon working at the hangar. Tanya showed up with lunch at about 1pm and after lunch I put her to work removing the P-mags again to send for another software update… I just got them back from emagair and reinstalled about twenty days ago. In talking to Brad from emagair at SWRFI, he said they had fixed something else in the software since I got mine back, and that he thought it would be a good idea to send them for the update again. grrrrr. I have v.24 and they are at v.25 this weekend.
Tanya also removed the protective plastic from the canopy. Ooooh, a clear canopy. Another first. I spent most of the day working on wiring all of the stuff in the wing tips. It took me as long to comb out the shield on one antenna wire as it did for Tanya to remove both p-mags from the engine. This is the first time she has ever turned a wrench on the engine. I think she felt much more comfortable with it after seeing the insides of the mags at SWRFI and getting more insight on how they work.
We confirmed that the temperature probes are within about one degree of other known sources. That is good. I also turned on the landing lights for the first time. Very exciting. Both full on, and wig-wag work great. Yippee. I also got the autopilot roll servo connector installed (still need to put a connector shell on it) and tinkered with the autopilot. Yep, the roll servo works. All kinds of cool toys.
I got the heated pitot tube installed. I had already, long ago, worked out the installation of the tubing so everything was ready to go. I fished the power and ground wires out of the conduit and soldered the connectors on. I then mounted the mast and secured the fitting. All set. I put a fuse in the circuit and flipped the heat switch on the panel. Wow, by the time I got back to the tube, it was very hot. Check, that works.
I moved on to the left wing tip wiring. I got the landing light wired up and some adel clamps installed. I think I have an idea how I’m going to route the wires for the nav and strobe lights as well as the Com2 antenna and MB antennas that are in that wing tip.
Toward the end of the evening, Jim stopped by and had a beer while we BSd.
I spent a long 9hr day at the hangar today working on finishing all of the fit and rigging of the flaps and ailerons. First, just to get warmed up, I installed a piece of 1/4″ ID silicone tubing to join the aluminum tubing coming from the heated pitot tube to the plastic nylaflow tubing going into the fuselage. The tie-wraps are double wrapped to provide pressure all the way around the tube. If you didn’t double wrap these particular ties (other products are made that take this into account), you would have a little spot right under the buckle that isn’t under pressure.
Then time to get down to business. I spent a lot of time fussing with the right flap near the fuselage. I had to jog the lower flap skin to allow the inboard end to come up a little (~1/8-3/16″) higher for a good in-trail position at the outboard end. I figure it is better for the outboard end to be lined up as it has a much greater rolling moment. With that taken care of, I finalized the flap linkage and installed it with final hardware. Up-Down-Up-Down…, yep, the flaps are ready to fly.
Next up, aileron rigging. I had previously just hung the ailerons with temporary hardware so I could get flap alignment worked out with the outboard aileron alignment jig. For the uninitiated, there are a whole lot of moving parts all linked together that make the ailerons work. To say that each one is very important is a bit of an understatement. I inserted the aileron pushrods that I made a long time ago from the wing tips and put some bolts in each end’s rod end bearing. From there, it is a big adjustment game with four rod end bearings on the ends of both pushrods. Both ailerons are interconnected via the control sticks. The idea is to get the sticks vertical with both ailerons in alignment with (in an ideal world) more than half of the threads engaged in each of the pushrod ends. So, you go back and forth making sure the rod end bearings are threaded in equally. This is done by counting threads. I only achieved the thread engagement target by about one thread. That is good enough, but if I were to remake the pushrods, I would make them about 1/8″ longer. There is little danger of them being too long until they are way too long. Before torquing all of the linkage, I made a quick check of the control surface throws. Note, on all these control rod assemblies, I’m torquing the jam nuts to standard shear nut specs and using loctite then finishing with a dab of torque seal.
Next up I’m going to install the heated pitot tube. I fished out the wires for that and called it a day.
I installed a diode to protect the starter switch that I intended to install long ago, but forgot (good catch by Seth). I also finished safety wiring the tank attach bracket bolts. Those get safetied because they aren’t torqued like normal and are left somewhat loose (just tight enough to not be able to rotate the washer).
