October 10, 2004

Today I carried on where I left off last time I was here and finished up the rudder installation. This included making the right side rudder stop. After making the left side look so nice, of course, I had to follow suit with the right. Hmmm. Took a while. Anyways, I did that, and had to take off the VS in order to rivet these suckers on. Well, turned out to be a royal pain in the arse. Unfortunately, it was damn near impossible to get in there with a bucking bar, so I ended up using pop rivets in the forward rivet holes. Bugger. Well, I got them set up and got the clearances to the elevators sorted out, and we’re good to go.

Next task was to fabricate the rudder control cable links that attach the cables to the pedals. These are made from steel. Luckily I caught it in the plans, and dug out a rusty old piece of 0.050" steel from the box of Van’s kit bits. They ended up being quite long as I have the pedals as far forward as you can put them. It all works nice! Yippee! Another control surface that’s operable! The links are only in temporarily, as I need to paint them. The bulb hanging down is the footwell courtesy light. It won’t really be there, it’s just not attached to the airframe yet.