Week 65 - 18  February 2004

Tonight was entirely spent working on the elevator controls.  I think I will start backwards and explain the pictures of tonight first.  The first picture is up elevator with radio control.  The second picture is down elevator with radio control.  The third picture is the servos in the fuse which is upside down for the picture.  The last picture shows the nose bubble on the fuse.

The reason for the nose bubble picture is to show the builder of another project, "Heavy Date",  the fit.  From the pictures of his project, his nose bubble does not look correct.  I was contacted to see how ours fit and I did not have an answer, as we never tried before.

Now for work done tonight.  First we removed the elevators and bolted the #4-40 ball links and reinstalled the elevator.  Next  we installed the threaded ends to one end of the carbon fiber rods which are 38" long.  After some discussion, we started building the servo rails.  They are stationed right behind the navigator's gun window.  Once the rails were build, we installed the Hitec 645MG servos and attached the push rod to the elevator.  We had to remove the elevator and enlarge the holes through the rear bulkheads for proper push rod placement.  After putting everything back together we marked the proper carbon fiber length.  Then we installed the threaded ends to the servo side of the carbon fiber rods.

Now we installed a temporary receiver with battery and tried it out.  Greg was the first to elevator fly the bird.  When he got done Rick and I had our turns.  Heck, even my daughter and her boyfriend got their turns.  Once we finally got the grins to subside from our faces we called it a night!

--
Gary Himes
 

Week 66 - 25 February 2004

Did you ever have one of those nights when everything you touched turned to ****? Well we had one of those nights.  The rudder servo got raised and bolted into position but the two elevator servos are still not bolted down yet. Next the horizontal stab and elevators were removed to get access to work on the rudder end. The last picture shows this with the rudder controls temporally held in place and some electric wire mocked up to figure the pull-pull cable paths. We called it a night and hoped for better progress next week.

I know this is short tonight, guess I am just out of wind.

-- Gary Himes