Mounting the Ailerons January 10th, 2010
With the wings in the cradle, I can now start mounting the ailerons on the wings. First I gathered all of the hardware required, as shown in the plans. There are two spacers that need to be fabricated from aluminum tubing. for the aileron-to-wing bolts. First I cut the aluminum tube slightly longer than needed, and chucked it into the drill press. I used a block of wood and some sandpaper (probably 100 grit – whatever I had around) and applied light pressure first to square the end of the tube, and then to get it to the final length. Using this method, I could take off less than 0.001″ at a time, so it makes for very precise spacer lengths!
Getting all those washers in the tight spaces of the aileron brackets was no fun. I probably dropped ten or fifteen washers on the floor before I decided to tape them together and put them in all at one time. I could now use needle-nose pliers to put the washers precisely where I needed them without having them slip and fall on the floor.
These are two views of the inboard aileron bracket — the bracket that holds the aileron to the wing and connects to the pushrod that controls aileron movement. As you can see, I am not tightening the nuts yet, as I will probably take the ailerons off a few times before this things flies..
While I am working on this part of the wing, I am going to install the bracket for the Dynon autopilot servo. You can buy the bracket now and wait until much later to buy the servo ($$) and autopilot/EFIS ($$$!) Basically, the servo mounts next to the aileron bellcrank, and it uses a small pushrod to move the bellcrank when the autopilot is engaged. In order to attach the pushrod to the bellcrank, a single hole is drilled in the bellcrank:
The bracket simply replaces the oiginal bottom bellcrank bracket, and it also includes another support arm that bolts from the upper bracket to the servo
I repeated the whole process on the left wing. Here are a couple of pictures of the aileron mounted on the wing and the bellcrank bracket (the autopilot servo is installed on one wing only).
