Kind of on again/off again the last couple of weeks. We people coming by to do some work on the house that required crawl space access, so I'd get something started, then have to take everything down because it was in the way, then put it back.
A lot like building a plane in fact - put it together, take it apart...
Anyway, got the control yoke done, put together the forward elevator pushrod, and today got the horizontal stab drilled to the aft deck. After that I went flying since it was such a nice afternoon. Lovely day to fly - the haze is more or less gone so you can actually see again instead of our usual summer MVFR we get on a "clear" day.
There is no way to mount the yoke assembly into the fuse without taking it apart. When the center section is done, Vans has you cut a section out of the two center seat ribs and fabricate some doublers with nutplates so they are removable. This helps to facilitate installing the yoke later. It has to be taken apart, threaded through the forward lightening holes in the seat ribs, then the bracket on each side is bolted to the angle support which is in turn bolted to the spar carrythrough.
Tight fit.
This is where the bracket bolts to the attach angles. The angles have bearing inserts so the movement is very smooth. Washers are used to remove the slack so there is no side play.
After googling around and thinking about it, it seemed much better to me to attach all the rod end bearings to the various parts ahead of time so I don't have to try to do that in this very tight spot - trying to hold the rod end bearing and a couple of washers and then trying to thread a bolt through all that, all while having it inside this tight space.
Each stick has a bushing that goes inside the weldment, then the whole thing is a snug fit (they come a bit over size and you grind them to fit) into the bracket. Then an AN3 bolt with washer and lock nut to secure it. This is the left stick. You can see the hex rod that connects the two sticks together below. The aileron pushrods attach to the outboard side of each stick.
After several hours of contortions, double checking, torquing and torque sealing the nuts, this is the final result. The right stick is a press fit and is removable. The left is not. I'm hoping I don't have to take them out again. We'll see.
Next step is to start working on the horizontal stab and elevators. The fuse is levelled, then the stab is laid across the aft deck.
Measurements are taken from a common point on the firewall to a common rivet (I used the center indentation on the aftmost outboard rivet on each side). Even though everything is clamped down and as square as possible, there is just enough play to work until everything is identical.
I must have remeasured, reclamped and measured again 10 or 15 times at least.
Funny, after doing all that, I decided to drill the elevator horns first, so I took it all off and worked on that for a while. There is a bolt through a caged bearing at the top of the horns that creates a common bearing for the left and right elevators.
Here's a closeup of the two horns. You can't quite make out the center bearing.
Once that was done it was back to the horizontal stab and measuring a zillion times again. Once I had it as good as I could get it (each side is shimmed 1/8" since there will be shims underneath to set the angle of incidence), I drilled the attach angles to the longerons and support angles (there is about 1/4" of aluminum bar and angle under the aft deck that spans the fuselage side to side.
Van has you use an 11/32" drill bit to shim the aft stabilizer spar up to the correct height to set the correct angle of incidence (0 degrees in this case).
The two vertical bars will be drilled shortly for the aft attach bolts.
