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Main Wings & Control Column

I've been getting into the gritty of the first wing. Finalising the controls and split pinning all the bolts etc. So not much visual progress. The flap had to be drilled open again, and replaced the outer track bolt mounts, as the outer spar was twisted and misaligned the mounting, so the tracks fought each other. Corrected and working beautifully now. The trailing edge on the aileron had to be cut, and design matched to the same as stab and flap design, with a V channel insert riveted from both sides, as the bench alignment, did not match the wing alignment! The fuselage also now has these nice bushings for the stabilator pushrod.



The Trim arm is semi installed, and the control column is fabbed, painted, unpainted re fabbed, the intermediate bell-crank on the aft spar, designed, made and installed. The Oilite bushings, are machined, bonded in place, and reamed with one of my hand reamers, the fit and play is magnificent I was worried it would end up floppy. I shortened the pivot length of the control column as the amount of throw was insufficient, now got a good 25cm of movement. Disaster at the end of Friday though, as I needed to shorten the column to bell-crank pushrod, and had the tail in one direction, and the column carelessly in the other, and cut it 2 inches too short, so have to make another. Sigh, I've decided on an electric trim, and ordered a micro linear actuator to fill the role.



Put the wing on to check it still fits, and it looks the buisness, need to put more effort into the finishing details the flaps and ailerons are looking a bit scruffy and slapdash.

Was very pleased with my fuel tank I build, turns out I can weld ally quite well! plotter still not running so had to manually plot out the curves as the tank is curved top and bottom and tapered.

Simon came by a couple times to help with the top skin riveting, and hilarity ensues. Also put the tail on to show him how its looking.

Machined up the second wheel, but I've lost the second bearing set, happens when things get dropped for a long time.


 
 

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Commonswood Farm, Hastings Road, Northiam, East Sussex, TN31 6HY

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