A little snowy work

Finally I beat a stomach bug ... four inches of snow meant staying inside and getting a little work done on Goat.

These are the aft control line guides from G4T14. I have yet to put in the 1/4" spacers, instead simply using a washer to give just enough space for the temporary control line. I think they look pretty slick :-)

I also worked a tad on the rudder, evening up the control throw stops so now the rudder pedals feel more balanced. I'm a bit taken back at the short stroke of the pedal for full ~30deg of rudder deflection. An easy fix will be to lengthen the control arm on the rudder to suit. What should a "normal" stroke for the pedal be (let's say measured at my toes)?

So what's next?
* 8' of 1/4" x 0.035" tubing for the vertical tail internal struts
* peel ply for horizontal stabilizer rib LE and TE wraps for securing the ribs
* redo the bolt hole in the upper vertical tail tube (one hole is out of line with the other, hmmm)
* elevator linkage for inside the vertical tail
* finally do the two cabane replacement tubes
* measure the nose keel bend, make a jig, and bend a new keel without kinks
* 1-1/8" x 0.058" x 20" and 1" x 0.035" x 20" to redo the main structural member from G4N1
(ouch) ... the holes for the cabane pins are not orthogonal as one expects from View D G4N2.

Marine hardware: check

I placed an order with Berkley Point for some hardware ... in fact for pretty much all the marine hardware. A good price break on 25 quick-links made that an easy choice and saved hundreds compared to West Marine. The steel rings are pretty cool and the snap hooks are quite pretty. I dropped in six quick links in the nose section alone. Next for some more cleanup of the nose section, including a new keel and a new structural carry-through since the last one actually wasn't drilled orthogonal as the G4N1 drawing suggests.

Rudder pedals with some control lines

I found some time and worked on the rudder pedals a bit this weekend. First, a suggestion from a friend was to get some 6063 bar stock from a local place for easier bending for the rudder pedals. This worked and was a lot less cutting than the 2" wide piece of bar stock I have been making all my parts from. About an hour after cutting the two pieces to length, I had them both bent (using a spare drill bit to make the bend radius) and then spent some time getting the pieces mounted to the pedals and symmetric left and right. Then I made the little support pieces from 1/4" x 0.035" tube to triangulate the structure.

Here is an overview picture of the control rigging. The piece of white going from the pedals to the nose bolt is just string and will get replaced by some 3/16" shock cord, per plans. For now, it's just providing some resistance so the pedals don't fall over!

The elevator rigging is about how it'll be. I still need to get some larger washers to hold in the turn-around pulleys mounted in the center of the photo. I only had some small AN washers on hand.

Anyhow, yeah the control rigging is coming along nicely. Here is a closeup of the line guides on the control rod tube and the front seat tube. In earlier photos, I had the elevator line guides on the bottom of the tube, before I realized they went on top. I just flipped around that tube :-)

I also put in a little plastic end cap in the aileron torque tube, you can see on the right middle of the picture. I liked how the plastic caps dressed up the front and other tubes, so I sampled one that would fit in this location. Much prettier!

One more thing. My homebuilder buddy has made custom seats for other folks using foam bases. I'm hoping we can get together to fit the space better and be a bit more secure than the parachute cord version.

One other thing. I put in an order for 25 quick-links, several 2" marine snap hooks, and a few stainless steel rings. They should get here middle of next week. Cool, hardware!

Two rudder pedals installed

I had a pair of pair of pieces (4 total) to attach the first rudder pedal. Tonight I whipped up 4 more to attach the second rudder pedal. Now both of my pedals are riveted to their hinge pieces and are mounted on the eye bolts. Cool. Now I need to make the long 9" u-shaped piece that makes a place to capture my shoes and attach the control lines too. All in good time...

Here is an image of putting the hinge supports on. The holes are match drilled by using a cleako and a clamp after the first one and then replacing the clamp with another cleako. This way I'm assured that the holes are all aligned when I install rivets.