Tag Archives: Rudder

Tuesday was another 2hr building session, which is about my typical. When you look at what I got done to the uninitiated you may think to yourself “It took you that long to do what?”. In order to install the rudder and elevator push rods correctly it takes time.

The first step is to figure out where the control horns need to be attached to the control surface (rudder & elevator). This is done by using a combination of the plans, to get a general idea where the horn needs to go as it’ll show where the support for it resides, and attaching the push rod to the servo to see where it lines up. The second allows you to determine the angle at which the control horn needs to be fastened to line up with the end of the push rod. As seen in the picture at the top I already have a hook in the push rod, which is attached to the servo arm.

Ensure that when you are installing the control horn and push rod the servo and control surface is in the neutral position.

Once this is determined you drill two holes through the control surface to act as the guides for the screws using a hand push drill, not electric, with a tiny bit. In my case it is two holes kitty corner to each other on the base of the control horn for fastening. When drilling you need to ensure you are going perpendicular to the surface and straight through, not at an angle, so take your time as it will pay off! I made this mistake and didn’t get it right so when placing the screws the opening on the back wasn’t lining up with the holes in the back plate causing issues. Thank-you John for the help correcting this and getting me on the straight and narrow for the elevator!

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Building 4 Star 60 Day 37: Covering, Fuel Tank and Rudder Hinged

February 27, 2017

Devin

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On Saturday I got to work on my plane again and made some more progress on covering and installation of the fuel tank. One of the discussion Peter & I had in a previous session was what I’d like to do with the cockpit, use covering or paint it. I decided to go with painting it as I felt under the heat of summer with no airflow under the canopy that covering would wrinkle and be a waste, so Peter stained the cockpit green, seen at the top.

I continued where I left off last session by completing the covering of the fin in white. I was able to utilize the knowledge I learned from John in my last session about covering. I was impressed with the result. I didn’t quite get it right the first time so had to switch around the covering and start again (as the glue along the one edge was no longer good after pulling up the heated covering). Throughout the process I had to make some incisions at the top and bottom to allow the covering to come around properly, which includes removing excess when I could.

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Building 4 Star 60 Day 35: Tail Covering Started

February 20, 2017

Devin

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Being Family Day in Ontario I got over for an afternoon building session with Peter. I started off where I left off, the rudder. I used the heat gun to shrink the covering over the ‘holes’ in the rudder and then using the markings on the fin figured out where the hinge marks were hiding under the covering that was over the leading edge. I then used the back tip of an x-acto knife to open up the hinge slots, hard to see below 🙂

After that was finished up brought the fuselage up onto the workbench as I’m now on to covering the fuselage! As you’ll notice from the pictures I am doing the fuselage and fin white. Because you want your seems to be such that the covering is overlapping from front to back, prevents the air from getting under and peeling back the covering, we start at the table and work our way towards the nose of the aircraft.

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Building 4 Star 60 Day 34: Covering Rudder + Hole Made

February 17, 2017

Devin

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It was great to get back working on my aircraft after a 16 day hiatus due to being away for birthday weekends amongst other things. Though I wasn’t able to make it Peter did tinker a bit as he got the engine mounted, fuel tank set up and the throttle connections hooked up. I forgot to take some pictures of that.

After checking things out and refreshing myself with the project I got to work with measuring out where a hole needed to be placed in the fuselage doubler that lines up with the high speed adjustment on the engine. Once I determined where the hole needed to be I drilled a small hole first to ensure I wasn’t to far off and then used a bigger drill bit to open up the hole more. Testing with the same type of wire that will eventually be attached in place the hole alignment sufficed for now. This will allow us to find the hole after covering the fuselage and not have to mark up the fresh covering we put on to measure it out. At some point once the wire is attached we’ll run the engine to make sure the hole is positioned well enough such that the wire can move freely within the hole with the engine vibrations.

John stopped by for a visit to watch me work, lol. He seems to quite enjoy this; however, I do to as tend to pick up some tidbits along the way 🙂 . We need to remember to create another hole for a wire to adjust the low speed.

The other task for the evening, which took the majority of the approximately 2 hrs I was there is covering the rudder, seen in the featured image above. This started with covering the top and bottom edges followed by the trailing edge. These pieces took quite a bit of time to get done, especially along the bottom where the tail wheel wire and mount (rubber piece) are. To cover the remainder I used one solid piece that I sealed to the leading edge and then folded over to cover both sides of the rudder and ironed down all of the surfaces and will need to go back and finish up with the blow drier to tighten up the covering over the exposed holes in the rudder.

I probably could have just summed that up to be that covering the rudder in general due to its intricacies was awkward and required a fair bit of concentration and patience 🙂