Its cold out! I had a little spare time this evening to begin work on a few miscellaneous projects. First up, I need to route some conduit to the tail of the plane for the elevator trim and the rudder strobe. I’m going to use the same flexible tube conduit from Van’s I used in the wings. A few builders have created new holes in the bulkhead, but I’m not a big fan of drilling extra holes in this location. I’m going to use zip ties. To help protect from chaffing I made some small doublers from the split tube conduit I have for each zip tie / bulkhead location.  

Here is the conduit with the extra conduit doubler on top.   

Here is the final version of the left rudder cable fairing I made in the previous session.

While I didn’t take a photo, I also fabricated the second fairing for the right side tonight and then primed.

I also made the bonehead mistake of placing the static ports one bulkhead further forward than they are supposed to be. I drilled them out quickly.

I’m going to use an oops rivet to fix. I slightly countersunk the surface, and here is the result. I still need to drive the rivet, but it is impossible to do solo.  

Next I ran the static line in its proper location. I didn’t trim the tubing, and will wait until my new static ports arrive. You can also see the conduit installed in this photo. I’m not entirely sure how far forward I will bring the conduit at this point. My thought is that I will bring it forward to either the battery location, or to the first bulkhead (by the rear seat) that has a location drilled for the aft battery. The ELT remote, elevator trim, battery cable, and strobe wiring, will all have to be routed here.  

Session time: 3.0 hours 

First task for today was to drill the rudder cable routing holes through the center section. I used a step bit (unibit) for the forward holes, but because of the bracket for mounting the floor plates, I could not do the same for the aft holes. I was able to get the aft hole started with a step bit, and then I used a number of incrementally larger bits through the forward hole. This allowed me to avoid hitting the floor mounting bracket. 

Here you can see the aft hole. It is drilled to 1/2″.

Unfortunately, the length of the 5/8″ drill bit, when combined with my drill, is too long. The drill hits the mounting for the fuel selector valve, and as a result I cannot access the aft hole at the proper angle. My 90 degree drill extension will not accept the 5/8″ bit (even with a reduced diameter shank. So I’m not sure what I’m going to do. To be honest, I think I may grind a portion of the drill bits shank to fit in my 90 degree extension. We’ll see if another idea presents itself. 

As I was stalled on the rudder routing, I turned my attention to a rudder fairing. Apparently they sell some overpriced ones on Aircraft Spruce and some other places, but I also found some simple instructions for a do-it-yourself version. First cut a piece of .020 to 4″x4″, then mark out the measurements show. Note that I messed up the outer lines. The correct lines are in red.

Start by bending the center to 90 degrees, and then bend the outer lines to 45 degrees. A hand seamer, some wood, and a vice are helpful. Here is the rudder cable exiting the fuselage in stock form.

Here is the fairing I made following the instructions I stole from another builder here. Note that the fairing overlaps the skin joint. To correct this, I marked the location of the skin joint and then measured and marked a symmetrical portion on the upper flange of the fairing. This picture isn’t great, as the fairing will sit a little bit lower on the left to not interfere with the hole for the attachment of the protective tube. 

Here is the result after trimming and priming. I plan to secure the fairing with pro-seal.