February 3, 2007 - Rudder Stops |
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| It was pretty cold outside this weekend so I spent it indoors building. The first thing I did this Saturday was drill out the rivets attaching the old canopy frame channels to the side weldments. | ||||||
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Then I did some edge smoothing on the aft canopy, using the dremel tool
and file.
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| You may recall my rudder stops were not satisfactory. The 1" by 1 1/4" angle stock I had ordered arrived so I worked on the new rudder stops. Here, I've made the rudder stop and drilled a single hole so I can cleco it to the fuse, and make sure the rudder stops at the proper distance from the elevator: 1 1/8". | ||||||
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| Then I drilled out the other three
holes.
Here you can see the evolution of my rudder stops. The left-most stops were directly per the drawings but didn't stop the rudder where they were supposed to. The middle stops were unsuccessful attempts. But I nailed the stops on the right. |
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| Because I had already drilled holes in the fuselage, I had to make up a little template to transfer the hole locations from the old stop to the new stop. I am in awe of the "using a template to match-drill" technique. It's so simple, but so effective. | ||||||
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The left stop is ready for riveting.
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| The stops are almost mirror images of each other. Third time was a charm. I'm going to hold off on riveting for the time being. | ||||||
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