Aileron Actuation - Fuse Bottom Skins

Got another "to-do" checked off on the wing section today... yay! Finished the Aileron Actuation section today, which was a pretty cool section to work on. Previously, we had already created a few pushrods and bellcranks but not the torque tube assemblies, so it was time to get started on that:

Clocking/assembling the aileron torque tube assemblies - 5/16" offset and 17-3/4" total length (+1/32" acceptable)

One of the brackets needs to have a 5/16" clocking with respect to the other, as written in the plans. I decided to use a 5/16" drill bit (shown above) as my reference for clocking since it has a very precise "known" size. It went pretty smoothly and before I knew it I had two mirror-image torque tube assemblies. Now to prime and install on the wings. Installing them between the two torque tube bearings was actually was trickier than I thought it would be; there really isn't much room to work the pieces around, and the fact that the pieces have now been primed means they are even more reluctant to slip into one another. Eventually though, I prevailed and ended up with these torque tube assemblies installed:

R Aileron Torque Tube assembly

L Aileron Torque Tube assembly

With these installed, it was time to put the rest of the works together! This was exciting, because when complete you can push/pull on the levers here on the torque tube, and see the ailerons go up and down, way over on the other side of the wing... like magic! So, a few bolts/nuts/washers later, I had the following assembly together:

Torque tube -to- pushrod joint

Aileron bellcrank assembly with two pushrods

By golly it works! Awesome. Played with the ailerons, moving them back and forth for a longer period of time than someone my age ought to have. Oh well, no one was watching. We'll still need to final-rig these bearings at a later time for all the correct tolerances once everything is together, but they certainly appear close to the recommended clockings and everything moves smoothly and precisely! Very cool, couldn't be happier.

After Sarah got back from her afternoon plans (which included tearing up the skies over Marion in a C150, I might add), we got back to back-riveting the fuselage bottom skins. It's a fun process but gets pretty tedious after a few hundred rivets. We persevered through it all though, and I'm pleased to say that all back-rivetable rivets are now back-riveted! There's still a few dozen here and there that we skipped over to get later via the traditional flush-riveting method. Maybe tomorrow we'll get to that. No pics of the fuse in its current state yet, we're saving the "reveal" for when we get those last rivets done... hopefully tomorrow!