Apr 26, 2007     Pitch and Roll Parts - (5 hours)       Category: C16 Controls

I did all the parts at once, laid them all out on the floor so I could understand where they all fit, then installed them all at once. It worked.

1/22/21
Seems like this deserves a better guide to how the controls work. See the pdf below. PK

  Apr 09, 2009     Pitch and Roll Installation - (10.8 hours)       Category: C16 Controls

2009-04-09 (1 hour):

I completed the pitch and roll assembly nearly two years ago, but hadn't logged any pictures for it. Here you can see the forward bearing blocks and some of the controls installed. Today, I installed the map pockets, which I had made way back when, but not actually floxed in. One of them looks a little crooked, but it's just taller than it should be - it'll get trimmed down when I install the arm rest foam. I plan to make the arm rests in two pieces, one fixed top piece and one removable side piece (for inspection and maintenance of the control arms and tubes).

2009-05-25 (1.00 hours):

More tubes

The controls are an endless series of metal tubes. I prepared mine several years ago, but had removed them to keep them from being damaged, and also to lighten the fuselage the last time I moved it. Today I reinstalled them and verified that there was no play in the system. Works great!

2011-09-11 (2.50 hours):

Painting

This is nowhere near necessary, but I have four kids now and they all wanted some bling. I took a bit to paint the controls and tubes for the wing root. Moving surfaces are yellow, and fixed surfaces are red. It looks better than I expected, even though I didn't put much time into it. It's probably an ounce of paint, all told. I'll make up for it with lighter instruments.

2011-09-11 (4.25 hours):

Left Aileron

This took a lot longer than I expected mainly because I kept screwing it up. I wasn't getting my rivets flush enough (at one point I installed them upside-down) and having to drill them back out of the hinges/nut plates. But I got the left side done - tomorrow I'll do the right.

  Jun 13, 2020     Balance post-paint - (5 hours)       Category: C16 Controls

Post paint elevators and ailerons have to be checked for balance. The purpose is to prove these flight controls resistant to flutter. This is done by showing that the given control surface was built to have a center of gravity forward of the hinge point.

The elevator is easy to test - set up a knife edge, suspend the part from its hinge pin, and compare the part to a level. The photos below are sequenced to show the set up and then the result for both right and left elevators. The elevators passed, the left easily, the right by a narrow margin, both without requiring additional weights and / sanding. For the Cozy, this counts as a pass with no problems.

The aileron is harder to test - it is heavy and clumsy and there is no pin long enough to allow use of the same knife edge test. For the aileron, the test is to suspend the part from the center of the hinge and then compare the part to a level. The photos show the set up and then the result for both right and left ailerons. The ailerons passed with a narrow margin - I documented it with the level to make sure I was seeing it correctly.

  Apr 26, 2007     Pivot Mounts - (8 hours)       Category: C16 Controls

Just about everybody recommends Dennis Oelmann's rudder pedals, so I bought those. They cost $350, plus $10 for shipping, and are supposed to be well worth it.

Installing the controls was relatively uneventful. There's a lot of tedious parts fabrication (metalworking isn't my favorite task, glad I'm not building an RV), but nothing really all that difficult. I toyed for a while with the thought of using ball bearing pivots throughout, but eventually just stuck with the plans and used the nylon FMN10 bearings and bronze firewall bushings. They work fine, and there's no play in the system. At the time, the Cozy Girrrls hadn't yet produced their lovely caged bearings. If I did it over, I'd probably use theirs, but I don't really regret the decision enough to change it now. The system is actually relatively complete, although I've removed some components to protect them while other steps are performed.