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The ailerons start by cutting and trimming the stiffeners and then match drilling to the skins. Once deburred, dimpled, primed, etc., they get riveted to the skins. The next step is to bend the trailing edge. The spars get doublers drilled to the spar at the ends. These were a little difficult to find, and it turns out they came in a parts bag as 4 individual pieces of aluminum blanks cut to the correct size.
The instructions get a bit confusing once you get to this point, so I decided to cleco it all together and match drill it as a whole. Make sure you drill the blind rivet holes to a #30 for all CS4-4 rivets. It is easy to miss drilling the holes on the bottom where the skins overlap. After drilling, it is on to the typical edge finish, debur, dimple, prime, etc.
On the left is the nutplate for attaching one of the aileron brackets. The fit with the rib requires a hole in the rib so everything can sit flush in the final assembly. I just used a series of files to get a shape that fit together well. The skeleton then gets riveted together, followed up by the upper row of rivets in the aileron. All the rivets along the bottom and sides are the last to be completed.
The pushrods are fairly easy to make as can be seen. The only gotcha is in riveting the ends on the small tubes. What I found that worked the second time around, was to use -11 rivets vs. the -12s called out, and to clamp the tube in the vise for squeezing the rivets. Once I followed these two steps, everything turned out perfect. The bellcranks do require the sizing of the brass bushing to be just a little longer than the bellcrank itself. This allows it to rotate around the bushing after it is installed in the wings. I used my drill press and a block with sandpaper to accurately shorten the bushings to the correct size. The unique bracket attached to the right bellcrank is for the addition of a TruTrak aileron servo in the future. I just purchased the install kit for now. |
