Pedal Fitting
01/07/11 17:00 Filed in: All
Back to Work
The directional pedals are a fairly straightforward sub-assembly, so it was an easy thing to work on to get back in the swing of helicopter work. I cut the walking beam and tried my hand at polishing. Aluminum takes on a wonderful shine with a bit of work.
These photos are as much for my own benefit as for any reader that may (or probably won’t) read this. Once fitted things get disassembled and will need to get back together properly.
A little technique carried over from the RV building is to take a handful of nuts and drill out the nylon lock plastic. These can be used for preliminary assembly and will have the exact size of the final item. I mark all those trial nuts with red nail polish to make sure they will not find their way into the final assemblies.
I have read a number of builder logs that have replaced the aluminum pedal bearing plugs with a more suitable material since aluminum on steel is not the best long-term idea. I may do so eventually as well. One thing I learned in my years of abortive aircraft building is that I should build per the plans and modify later - otherwise it’s likely I will never ever finish in the first place.
It took a lot of fiddling, but I was finally able to achieve the pedal and cable travel specs called in the prints. Hopefully this will be duplicatable on final assembly.
The directional pedals are a fairly straightforward sub-assembly, so it was an easy thing to work on to get back in the swing of helicopter work. I cut the walking beam and tried my hand at polishing. Aluminum takes on a wonderful shine with a bit of work.
These photos are as much for my own benefit as for any reader that may (or probably won’t) read this. Once fitted things get disassembled and will need to get back together properly.
A little technique carried over from the RV building is to take a handful of nuts and drill out the nylon lock plastic. These can be used for preliminary assembly and will have the exact size of the final item. I mark all those trial nuts with red nail polish to make sure they will not find their way into the final assemblies.
I have read a number of builder logs that have replaced the aluminum pedal bearing plugs with a more suitable material since aluminum on steel is not the best long-term idea. I may do so eventually as well. One thing I learned in my years of abortive aircraft building is that I should build per the plans and modify later - otherwise it’s likely I will never ever finish in the first place.
It took a lot of fiddling, but I was finally able to achieve the pedal and cable travel specs called in the prints. Hopefully this will be duplicatable on final assembly.