Tuesday, May 1, 2012

More control system

Following my last post I have been making slow progress at completing the control system.

I received my machined firewall bearing housing back from my machinist contact. I had two made. One for me and one for Marc Oppelt.

Don't mind the bearing in this photo. It was the wrong bearing. I replaced this with a sealed precision bearing.

I also ordered materials, hardware and rod end bearings for all the push rods. It was fun to fit the inserts and rivet them together.


Here are my control stick yokes. The plans call for a simple steel tube. The CG Products sells control yokes similar to these for Long-EZ and Cozy aircraft. I thought this was a good idea, I Marc and I welded up a couple of sets. I had them powder coated and they turned out great. In hindsight, I think I should have just gone with the plans tube. I can't figure out what problem was solved by making a more complex part. Still I am happy with the result.
 
Here is the yoke installed on the torque tube. You can also see the custom ball bearing and retainer as discussed in the previous post.

Here is a nice shot of "the office" showing the control stick and throttle quadrant.




I posted this earlier, but here again is the B-8 grip that I reconditioned.


Here is the throttle quadrant after I polished the control arms. My plan was to anodize them, but before I could get the process down, I found great success with polishing the aluminum.