Section 39 & 40 - Control & Flap Systems

So the brake and fuel lines are again on hold while I wait for more "stuff" to arrive, including the Loctite 567 thread sealer and a handful of fittings and miscellaneous hardware from Aircraft Spruce. While I was ordering stuff, I went ahead and ordered our ELT also (not to be confused with a BLT, which is a sandwich). We chose the ACK 406MHz model E-04. I'm still not sure if saying the brand name "ACK" out loud is supposed to be spelled out A-C-K or just saying the word "ack" in an angry, loud tone. Since an ELT's purpose is to transmit an attention-getting, loud signal in case of an emergency, I'm going to assume it's the latter. Either way, I am now a proud customer of one of their products. Anyway, it seems to be a popular model, and the price was right. We don't necessarily "need" the ELT yet, but I'm trying to spread out purchasing some of the bigger-ticket items month-to-month so that I don't end up having to buy a bunch of $500+ items at the same time. In my mind, it helps relieve a bit of the sticker shock that happens when you are... well... building an airplane. At $529, this item falls near the very bottom of that long list of bigger-ticket items on the "to-buy" list. Ugh.

Anyhow, today was a pretty straightforward day of making some good progress. I started out by finishing up my cleaning efforts organizing everything in the garage, in preparation for tomorrow's finish kit delivery (woo!). Then, while I still had a bit of time left I decided to prime, rivet and install the F-1063 idler arm that had previously been final-drilled and deburred in Section 39 page 6. It went together pretty easily and was a straightforward deal. Basically, Section 39 is now done as far as prep work is concerned; we just have to wait until the appropriate time to actually install and rig all of the controls.

Since there was still a bit of time left, I decided to flip the page over to Section 40 - Flap System. This section is pretty straightforward too, where you lay out the 5 torque tube and control arm pieces and drill them together. The first step was to attach the R and L torque tubes to the WD-1013A Flap Crank:

The WD-1013A Flap Crank drilled and bolted to the WD-1013C torque tubes

After that step, the next thing to do was retrieve the W-730 Bellcrank Jig for use in this section. The jig was shipped with the wing kit, and was used for rigging the ailerons. In a surprise twist of events, this jig is also now needed to "clock" the flap horns on each end of the torque tubes. It took me a bit to remember where I had stashed it, but eventually I found it in one of my parts bins. The plans call out to drill a hole in a certain spot to use for this next step:

The W-730 Bellcrank Jig with hole drilled as called out

This step was a breeze, because as it turns out, this hole had already been made at the factory. Thanks Van! The next thing to do was to bolt the jig to the flap horn and rig it all up so the horn sits flat on the table in the proper orientations:

The W-730 jig being used to clock the WD-1013B Flap Horn

The horn clocked to the proper rotation and slid to the proper distance (24-7/16") from the center crank

After drilling and bolting everything together on the one side, it was just a matter of repeating everything (mirrored) on the other side. Before long, we had a completed WD-1013 flap torque tube assembly... yay!

The next step was to make the four plastic bushings used to attach the torque tube to the fuselage itself. They are provided as four rectangular blocks with holes punched in them and must be trimmed to spec. The cutout along the top is mandatory, while the two cuts along the bottom are optional for a ~2oz weight savings. Hey, why not?

F-1030 UHMW Bushings, trimmed

That's pretty much it for tonight. Hopefully by this time tomorrow we'll have an undamaged and delivered finish kit here in the shop, ready to be worked on!