A couple of projects for today’s shop session. My buddy Jimmy gave me his motorcycle lift which I plan to use to support the center of the fuselage. Yes, its probably overkill. This thing will be supported with weight in it at only 3 points, but until that time I want as little risk to the structure as possible. This will allow me to support the middle easily at any orientation. I began by doing a full test of the rotisserie and rotating the fuselage completely upside down.

Next I measured the highest and lowest points.    

With the measurements in hand, I made a makeshift support. I will readdress later. Likely with a highly specialized milk crate. 

I also stopped at Lowe’s and picked up to extension bit holders for drilling out the middle two ribs under the wing walk doublers.     

The snap bushings supplied by Van’s are from Heyco and have an inner diameter of 0.27″. The tubing for the pitot and that AOA tube are 0.25″. I didn’t like the extra play so I ordered Heyco snap bushings (SB 432-243) with 0.24″ ID. I was worried they’d be too small, but it turns out they are an absolutely perfect fit.   

Next I ran the pitot & AOA tubing. Mike Bullock had needed to order some additional tubing for his AOA home-brew so I jumped on the order and ordered 100 feet of the green tubing. The blue tubing is left over from Mike. In the end, I”ll be able to sell all my extra tubing on VAF and save a bunch over using SafeAir1.   

The next problem I faced was determining how to route the lines around the bell crank. I came up with two options. The first option, shown below, routes the tubes around the outside of the bell crank. The one thing I don’t like is how severe the angle is on the green line (shown with arrow). Yes, it will probably be fine for 2000 hours, but I can do better.     

The second option was to route the lines under the bell crank as shown here.  

What I wasn’t sure of though, was how far down the bell crank will go. On the plans, using Van’s AOA, it stipulates leaving 5/8 of an inch. That being the case this should work. But again, I don’t like should. I did a lot of messing about here including mounting the aileron and playing with the position of everything.

That was as far as I got today. When I want to put my wings back into their corner, I realized that the ailerons will hit the rudder. I’ll have to flip the horizontal stab.    

Squire enjoyed sunbathing. It was a gorgeous day at the airport.