4 hours.<\/p>\n
A few things here and there. I installed the MAP tubing and put a couple of heat shields on the pipes to protect the throttle and mixture cables. I also installed the canopy seal, which is going to need some assistance from some RTV or proseal. I do think firewall forward is just about done, though. The cabin heat SCAT tube rubs on the engine mount a little, but some UHMW tape should fix that. The two things I did that were of major importance were the autopilot test and getting that ridiculous piece of lead off the flange of the left elevator counterweight rib.<\/p>\n
A while back, I’d balanced out my elevators, or so I thought. You’re supposed to put the elevator tips on, then drill holes in the lead weight until the elevator balances. Well, guess what? You’re not supposed to have the elevators connected when you do this. I discovered this, freaked out, then riveted a flat piece of lead (cut from an extra counterweight) to the outboard rib. <\/p>\n
When I put that away, thinking I was just about the smartest cat in the whole barn, I started imagining the kind of beating a control surface takes in flight. So what happens to a little piece of lead riveted to this structure with a couple of Cherry countersunk blind rivets? The piece of lead comes off and somehow jams the elevator in the dive position and I go screaming downward like a holed Stuka, straight into a busload of orphans on the 405. This has bothered me for months, but I could never find a good opportunity to fix it until Saturday. I drilled out the rivets and put the lead back in a drawer. I also read about a neat trick you can do when balancing your elevators: Pour some lead shot into the tip through the tooling hole in the rib until th elevator balances out, then stick it in place with epoxy resin. Even if it’s not perfect, bias it a little heavy, because paint will change the balance.<\/p>\n
I also mounted the MGL GPS antenna on the top side of the glare shield. It works; I get an intermittent GPS position while still inside the guest house.<\/p>\n
Oh and one other thing: I dragged the wing cradle over to the shop and tested out the bank servo of the autopilot. Since I actually followed a wiring plan and wired the fuselage-side and the wing side according to it, I was able to test out both servos simultaneously. I do need to make a new ground connection though. The ground from the servo bracket sucks and I was only able to get a good ground by cleco-clamping the ground terminal to a wing rib.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
4 hours. A few things here and there. I installed the MAP tubing and put a couple of heat shields on the pipes to protect the throttle and mixture cables. I also installed the canopy seal, which is going to need some assistance from some RTV or proseal. I do think firewall forward is just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[3,5,8,10],"tags":[12,20,30,44,46],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=967"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":971,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967\/revisions\/971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}