Miscellaneous Work

Long time since posting to our Blog!  We've done quite a few things and spent four days at the Triple Tree Aerodrome Fly-in.  If you've never been to Triple Tree (SC00) you should make a point of going.  It's a 7000 foot grass runway that is perfectly manicured.  Ed and I pulled a camper and spent the days watching everything from a Citation Jet to a DC-3 to quite a few Just Aircraft arriving and departing.  We also attended a fabric covering workshop.  Although the process used was the Polyfiber process and we plan to use SuperFlite, it was very similar and we got a lot of good tips. Will definitely plan to go back again next year!

Mike at the covering workshop

Ed at the covering workshop

One the building front, the template created for the left side of the cockpit are was transferred to the aluminum piece that had already been fitted.  The hole for the aileron cable was passed through the opening and it was found that it needed to be made larger.  The problem with the paper template is that is flexed enough that it appeared to have enough opening, but once it was installed on the aluminum piece it really did not.  So a slight modification to the hole and now it fits perfectly.

Side aluminum piece (F-2120) with cable hole

We've also been working on getting the Roll autopilot worked out.  The roll autopilot will us a servo with capstan to move the control cables going to the aileron.  In order to connect the autopilot into the existing control cables we needed a way to join the autopilot cable and the aileron cables.  What we needed was "bridle cable clamp".  Doing a search online, I didn't find any that were easily purchased.  I did find some "used" clamps on eBay, but they didn't quite match what we wanted.  What they did do was give us some ideas on how to construct our own clamps.  The first prototype was made by drilling through two aluminum halves.  This we extremely difficult and the results were less than perfect.  The next parts were made on Mike's mini mill and these parts came out perfect.  We purchased a 1/16" ball nose end mill for the autopilot cable and a 3/32" ball nose end mill for the aileron control cable.  The key to getting them all aligned was to mill the slots on a 6" piece of aluminum and then once completed cut the parts to size (about 1-1/4" each).  The key to a tight fit was to mill the depth of the slot a little less than half of of 1/16" and 3/32".  When they two halves are mated and clamped together they hold the cables nice and tight.

At the top if the completed clamp, and the bottom shows the opened clamp.  Correct hardware will be used in the final installation.

And finally, we've also been working on a vent line from the header tank to the right main wing tank.  In order to get the flexible tubing to the feed point on the wing and allow the wing to fold, we are going to have to cut some of the root rib webbing.  To replace some of the strength, we are going to sister an aluminum plate to the area where the web was cut.  A tracing was made of the root rib and transferred to aluminum.  After some cutting, filing, drilling and dressing a nice part was made. 0.040" aluminum plate was used to make the part.  Total hours for this update: 12

Part ready to be installed

Aluminum web fits perfectly