Right Wing XIV

8/18/2006

Getting all ailerons dry-fitted was pretty tough. Firstly, as per plan, I drilled and mounted the hinge bases to the wing spar [not forgetting to soak some clear-coat into the drilled holes using a pipe cleaner and syringe]. Luckily I did not drill and mount the aileron hinges to the aileron....if I had have done so, the whole setup would have been out of line. I mounted the loose hinges to the hinge bases, and offered up the aileron, inserting bolts thru the rod ends and dry fitting the hinges, sighting everything, then marking in the aileron hinge bays where the holes were to go.

During the final lining-up, the aileron was infact stepped in a little [when looking down the trailing edge of the wing]. So I shimmed out the aileron hinge bays with 1/16 ply, glued in with T-88, this of course pushed the aileron out a 1/16 to form a nice continues line when looking down the trailing edge.

I sprayed the aileron pushrod with 2-pack epoxy white. I initially mixed the paint in one of those disposable Walmart plastic cups, but the chemical reaction melted the bottom out of it!

When dry fitting the rod end into the pushrod, I had to work out a way of temporarily fixing the rod end in the tube so I could then drill through tube and rod at the same time. I achieved this by inserting the rod ends coated in silicon sealant, left to cure, this seems to have worked great. I could now drill the bolt fixing holes. It's best to drill one hole then thread through a bolt, then drill the other hole. The fitted bolt will keep the rod end perfectly lined up while you drill the second hole.

There was not much clearance [1/16] between the pushrod and the compression struts [see fig A]. So I used the Dremel tool to sand-out a shallow valley. I now feel more comfortable having ample clearance. Sanding material off of the compression strut obviously weakened it, maybe not by much, but all the same it must have been weakened, so I elected to glue on a couple of pieces of spruce to return the integrity back to what it was.

There was also some more Dremeling to be done! After connecting the pushrod to the idler arm and bell crank, the full travel of the pushrod clashed with the ribs as it passed through them, so as seen in Fig B, I cut out part of the ribs. I love that Dremel...

Now onto cloaking the aileron bay...