[RC_MAN]

Nice work!

[Colin]

Thanks. I finished the air and fuel tray today. Now that everything is pretty well in it's home the rest should go quickly. I just have to tidy up the mess where the fuse joins.

I've got a few more nav lights to install and wire to run next.

Colin

[Colin]

The factory rudder setup on this leaves a lot to be desired. The torque tube that runs through fuselage is not in line with the hinge line, and my torque tube/rod was not bent at the right angle. No matter what I did, I couldn't get the rudder to move freely without twisting the entire stab. I'm sure it would work for a while.. but it's not ideal.

I'm going with a 50 in-oz micro servo mounted in the stab with a push rod.

[Colin]

The aftmost bulkhead was missing and the jet pipe mount within the fibreglass exhaust nozzle was too big. A few peices of ply made for a quick fix.

The rudder setup came out well. I hate to look at exposed linkage, but this is a better setup IMO.

Colin

[flyloose]

Looking good....If you choose to paint the external linkage and horns orange, you’ll barely notice it 👍

[Colin]

Eric, I might paint the control horn to clean it up a bit. It would help satisfy the OCD lol.

I noticed the rubber servo grommets allowing a bit of sponginess in the stabs. Because the servo sits at a slight angle the case is taking some twisting load. I think I'm going to take the grommets out and hard mount them to the block. Is this common practice in the jet world? I hadn't done it on my Viper, but the surfaces were much smaller and the servo geometry allowed for more mechanical advantage.

Colin

[RC_MAN]

I buy the hard mount servo inserts from Len (Stegl). They do the trick nicely.

[Colin]

Thanks, I'll have a look at those. I tried a few different things last night. With and without grommets, with and without eyelets, different servo arms, large one piece servo mounting washers/plates. I've concluded that I'm probably being too picky.

The best solution so far was to use the rubber grommets with washer plates and no eyelets. I came onto the mounting screws to compress the rubber as much as possible and the servo case no longer moves. I also loc-tited the servo horn to the output splines.

Colin

[Colin]

I got the nose wheel steering done this evening. The control arm required a new hole for good geometry and decent travel. I had to come up with my own linkage since nothing was included.

While I had the gear out I noticed the ball end of the air cylinder was making pretty hard contact with the fuse. Enough that the door wouldn't close properly with the gear up because it was deforming the fuselage. I had to grind away some of the ball link and install new hardware/spacers. The bolts they used were excessively long and cut off with side cutters. It still rubs, but I can live with it. Nothing was tight or thread locked, so it's a good thing I took it out.

You can tell by the blocked up double gear mount they attempted to stop the rod end from hitting the fuse. A for effort!

Colin

[Colin]

I got the remaining nav/taxi/strobe lights installed today. Not overly scale... but it's close enough. I opted for the larger ones hoping they're clearly visible during the day.

I got it all done only to find out I had the green light in the left wing. The worst! Luckily I hadn't glued it in yet.

Colin