Rudder Stops Installed, New Upper wing Fittings & Upper Wing Hand Holds

I discovered a small problem when I installed the tail surfaces so I could locate the Nicopress stop on the cable.  My Nicopress tool won't squeeze the round stops, I thought it could.  I had to redo the cables with regular oval Nicopress sleeves.  They're designed to squeeze around 2 pieces of cable so you need a short piece of cable, about 2" to properly squeeze them as a stop.  I carefully cut 2 pieces of cable with the Dremel tool cut off wheel.  They worked fine.

 You need to position the short piece of cable so it doesn't stick out past the end of the sleeve where it hits the wooding block.  You want the sleeve hitting the block not the end of the cable.  This all would have been easier before installing the gas tank and center section so you can undo the cable from the rudder and rudder pedal to squeeze the sleeve.  The Nicopress tool handles open too wide to use inside the fuselage.  Fortunately I had an old manual tool from my hang gliding days.  It was awkward but it worked.

The plans call for a 1" gap at the trailing edge of the Elevator when the pedal is pushed to the stop.

The other problem I ran into was the lack of a hand hold on the upper wing center section.  Once I had the wings on I decide to sit in the cockpit for a picture.  My foot snagged on the edge of the cockpit getting in.  I lost my balance and landed on the ground on my injured hip, major pain, and cracked a rib, more pain.  I had removed the old machine gun mounting system without realizing I had used it as a hand hold to stabilize myself getting in and out of the cockpit.  I hold onto the cabane strut with my right hand but I'm tall enough I can't reach the other strut under the wing with my left hand.  The hand grabbed wildly for something on top of the wing which was no longer there.  Even if the gun was installed with the new mount there would have been nothing to hold.

 Before installing the hand holds I removed the wings and moved them to the airport.  With the wings off I could see the Upper Wing Attach Fittings were bent at the center hole.  I decided to remake them from 0.125" steel instead of the 0.095" on the plans.  The bending had to do with a slight compression of the wood on the center section due to tightening the bolts.  This made the fittings closer together on the center section.  When the wing panels were installed the outboard ends of the fittings bent up slightly.  It didn't seem like much with the wings on but looked much worse with them off.  I've put some washers under the fittings to shim them up to prevent the bending and feel safer with the thicker steel.  Only the top fittings seem to have bent.

The 2 small fittings on the left are for attaching the hand hold to the inboard bolt on the wing fittings.  I carefully marked the wing fittings and duplicated the hole locations so the wing bolts should all line up properly when reinstalled.

 The hand holds are made from painted door handles, big enough to fit my hand.  One end is bolted to the fitting which attaches to the wing with the fitting bolt and the other end is screwed to the trailing edge wood.  I used 2 #8 stainless steel wood screws 1 1/2" long.  There are some washers under the handle to screw holes to carry the loads to the wood and the fitting rather than the edges of the handle ends.

 There is room under the fitting for the bolt heads because the fitting sets on top of the wing attach fitting.  They shouldn't press into the fabric since you pull up on the handle in use.

OK the are a little odd looking but they work.  I don't need them pulling myself up out of the cockpit.  The cabane struts work fine for that.  They're just for stability getting your feet in and out of the cockpit.

Rudder Stops

 To keep the rudder from moving so far that it hits the elevator, you need stops on the rudder cable.  Pete designed a simple stop using a split piece of dowel with a Nicopress sleeve crimped on the rudder cable.

The block just bumps up against the bulkhead and keeps the Nicopress sleeve from wearing through the plywood on the bulkhead.

 That worked fine but the cable sawed a slot in the plywood over time.  To stop more wear I created some Nylon cable guides which stick out through the bulkhead.

 I wanted the stop to hit solid wood, not the end of the cable guide.  If the cable guide moved the stop position would change and the rudder hit the elevator.

I made these blocks from 3/4" plywood to cover the ends of the cable guides.  That way the stops again hit solid wood.  The blocks are screwed to the bulkhead to keep them in position.

 The screw holes are located so they only go through the plywood gusset not the structural members.  I clamped them in place to drill one hole, install the screw and stop nut, then drill the second hole.

 I lost the original stops so I made some new ones from a piece of 1" oak dowel.  The hole center was located, then used to align the table on the Shop-Smith.  I started the hole with a 1/8" center drill, then drilled to depth with a regular twist drill.

 A stop was clamped on the bandsaw to get a nice groove for the safety wire by spinning the dowel.  To make this easier I didn't cut the blocks from the ends of the dowel until the grooves were cut.  I added one more grove at the end where the Nicopress sleeve hits the block.

 A centerline was drawn around the block to use as a guide sawing the block in half.

I started sawing at each corner than worked to connect the corners.  The cuts on the long side were slow but it worked fine.

 With them cut in half I clamped each set back together then re-drilled the holes so they would fit nicely on the cable.

 You can see the saw blade wandered slightly but the pairs fit together and fit nicely on the cable.

I only varnished the outside, so the pairs would fit together better.  I need to put the tail surfaces back on before I can install these and crimp the sleeve in the correct position.

I am running out of little things to do.

Control Stick Boot

 We had an old rubber Gear Shift boot sealing the hole in the floor where the stick comes up through.  It was cracked and dead so I needed a new one.  As with the Cabane strut boots I wanted the older look of leather.  I still have plenty of goat skin scraps so that was my material of choice.

The idea was an eight sided Tee Pee with a Bellows at the bottom so it would move without restricting the stick.

 I made a card stock pattern for the bellows rings, traced it on the back of the leather and cut them out.

 To hold them properly aligned while sewing I used a narrow bead of Contact Cement to glue the 2 pieces together.

It made sewing them so much easier since they couldn't shift.

I decided that with one piece of the Bellows attached to the floor there wouldn't be enough movement.  To add more flex to it all I made a second set of rings, and glued and sewed them to the first set.  Much better.

 For the Tee Pee cone, again a card stock pattern, created with a little trigonometry.  Yes, we like math and drafting.

The pieces were glued and sewn together in pairs and then the pairs sewn together, leaving a flap so it can open to get it over the stick grip.

 To close the Tee Pee there is a piece of Velcro on the side and a shoe lace for the top. The shoe lace allows you to tighten the top snugly to the stick so it can't sag and bind the stick.

The Bellows has lots of movement.

 An aluminum ring was made from some 0.040" 2024-T3.

Holes were punched in the leather to match the screw hole pattern and the ring was glued to the top of the bottom piece in the Bellows.

Number 4 screws 1/4" long attach it nicely to the floor board.

 It looks good and with full deflection of the stick you can't feel it's there.  I need to go fly this thing.

Engine Controls Hooked Up

 Some great weather for Independence Day has allowed me to get some more work done on the plane.  The Carb. Heat cable is finally hooked up.  The gable is clamped to the diagonal tube on the engine mount with 2 cable clamps at a right angle to each other.

 The throttle cable is hooked up with the cable clamped to the tube in the same way, but I had several issues.  I forgot to put a hole in the new baffle I made, so that had to come back off.  I knew it was needed, just forgot to make the hole.

 The next thing I discovered was that the cable didn't actually reach the lever on the carburetor.   All my neatening up of the holes in the firewall was done with the engine removed. First I moved it down where the carb. heat cable came through and made a new hole next to it for the carb. heat cable.  That was a good plan, but while the cable reached the lever, there was no way to clamp it to the engine mount so it would work properly.

 The final solution was to move the hole closer to the center of the firewall, more of a straight line from the throttle quadrant to the carburetor.  That worked, so I move the carb. heat cable back where it was and covered the 2 wrong holes.  So much for my fresh new firewall.

I moved the clamp in the cockpit from under the fuel shut off valve to the inboard mounting bolt of the valve.  I also tied the cable lightly to the fuel line to keep it clear of my foot when entering the cockpit.  It all works in the end.

Wing To Fuselage Pitot Static Lines

 The last thing needed to hook up the Pitot and Static lines is to connect the aluminum tubing in the wing to the Nylon tubing in the fuselage.  It turns out there don't seem to be any ready made connectors for joining these different materials.

 I decided the solution was to do this like the connections at the Pitot Static Head using a piece of soft rubber hose.  Before making each piece of tubing a bead was crimped to each piece of tubing.  Then the appropriate nut and ferrule were installed on each end.

The hose was safety wired as before.

The aluminum tube for the static line was made a little longer so the hose would be clear of the nose rib hiding between the bulkhead fittings and the root rib.  The lines end about an inch inside the fuselage.  They're attached to elbows in the fuselage and will be joined to the wing when the wings are installed.