I had installed one of the floorboards and was just tightening the bolts on the first set of seat belts when I got a text message on my phone. It was from Kyle, Guitar Pick Custodian for The Jackson Two:
"We're here, where are you?"
I could only assume that he was referring to Bolton field when he said "here" because I couldn't fathom why he might think I would care if he was anywhere else.
"At the hangar," I replied.
"We're at JP's."
Oh, that's cool! I figured they must have come up to see the WWII bombers. I texted back that I'd be over in just a couple of minutes.
He replied, "We might be in the restaurant."
I couldn't let that one go. I'm built such that when the doctor thumps my knee with his little mallet, my leg doesn't make the expected reflexive twitch. Instead, I make a smart ass comment. I swear, it's completely involuntary. That's my excuse for texting back:
"Can't you tell? Look up - if you see blue with some puffy white clouds in it, you're outside."
[no response]
Well, I thought it was funny.
I closed up the shop, grabbed the camera, and went to look for them. They were, in fact, in the restaurant.
I hadn't planned on doing much tonight anyway - my heart really wasn't in it. I thought I'd knock out a couple of quick jobs by installing the floorboards and the seat belts. It turned out that I didn't get much further than painting the floorboards before the rumbling sound of large piston engine airplanes distracted me. I wandered down to the runway to see what was flying in. That was it for getting any work done.
Have you ever met one of those people that stretch their birthday celebrations out for a longer period than is generally accepted in polite society? For a few days before and a few days after the actual date it's all "me, me, me." I even coined a word for it: birthanukkah. Like Hanukkah, those that celebrate their birthanukkah seem to think the occasion should last for eight days.
You haven't run into that, you say?
Well, you have now. But we'll get to that.
First we need to get caught up on the RV-12. As you may recall, two of the three major control axes had been connected and were working, leaving only the pitch control to be finished. The first step in that process was the installation of a bushing that will act as a barrier to keep the stabilator control cables seated into the pulleys that they will ride over (well, 'under' to be precise). Being down in the under floor area, it was another of those tight fits that I'm becoming accustomed to. I'm virtually certain that the designers at Van's did careful calculations that involved determining the average size of a human hand and ensuring that every opening on the airplane would be 35% smaller.
The stab cables come in two halves that will later be joined together in a complicated process that has to be accomplished by putting both hands through holes that are, unsurprisingly, also 35% too small. But before that, the front halves have to be selected from a bag containing both the front and back halves. The front halves are easy to pick out - they're much, much shorter than the back halves.
The end with the threaded rod will go towards the back of the airplane. The back cable will also have a threaded rod at one end - it is these threaded parts that will be captured by a brass coupling to join the halves together. The hole in the threaded rod will provide a means to hold the rod fixed in place while the coupler is threaded on. To fabricate a tool that could be used to hold both halves of cable, I had brought along a wire hanger from home. That was to prove fortuitous, as it turns out.
Here are the pulleys. I took a picture of the bag they came in just in case I ever need to know the lot number of the pulleys I used in case of a recall (known as an Airworthiness Directive, or 'AD' in the parlance).
The plans had me attach the front half of the cables to the control tube first, then install the pulleys on top of the cables. I just stuffed the remainder of the cables under the floor board.
That turned out to have been a mistake. There is a step on the next page that has me trying to get those cables that I stuffed under the floor board routed through some holes in the bulkheads that are hidden under the floor board. In other words, the access holes for getting at those cables were 100% too small. In other, other words, there were no access holes for getting at those cables.
Fortunately, I was able to feed the coat hanger through the holes (with the help of Cadillac Pete lying on the hangar floor providing directional help - he never passes on a chance to lie recumbent on the floor, a fact that I attribute to his age) in order to pull a string up to the front, where I would use it to tie the ends of the cables and pull them back through.
Just as a note, the blue masking tape is there to keep metal shavings or other foreign objects from getting into the fuel lines.
Fitting the back halves of the stab cables onto the control horns of the stabilator was easy enough, as was drawing the cables through the tail cone using the string that had been put there last year for just that purpose.
Getting the cables joined together with the brass coupler was not nearly as easy. I had to lay down on the floor (the temptation is just as strong at my advanced age) and reach up through the 65% sized access holes. The threaded ends of the cables are cut in opposite directions, so turning the coupler in one direction will tighten the threaded rods of each cable half at the same time. It sounds easy, but there is a trick to it: you have to get both halves started into the coupler at the same time. If one side starts threading in a few turns before the other, that end will be fully tightened before the cable is fully tensioned. It took quite a few tries to get both of them right. It was also fairly difficult to keep the cables from getting crossed over each other - you really wouldn't want to have those cables rubbing against each other, or the rudder cables either.
We finally got the cables put together and tensioned up enough to hold them taut. The final tensioning would have to wait until after the party, when I would be in temporary possession of a tensiometer. In the meantime, we put the wings back on and I placed the seat cushions in the plane so it would look nice when all of the people at the party came over to see the plane.
I hear you. "Party? What party?"
Well, my loving spouse had arranged a 50th birthday party for me. Yes, yes, I know: my birthday was days ago and here I was just carrying on about birthanukkah. What's up with that? Well, we decided that a weekend party would be better since it would be easier for people to attend. That, and we wanted to have it at JP's BBQ, which is right there on Bolton Field in case anyone wanted to fly in. You know, just like that song.
I was put in charge of cutting the cake. Being an engineer (the nerdy kind, not the cool kind where I would get to drive a locomotive) I started with a precise cut right down the middle.
I then cut precisely identically sized pieces. Sixteen of them, to be precise about my precision.
There were twenty people at the table.
I didn't say I was a good engineer!
See if you can guess who didn't get cake:
I always get a kick out of JP's huge 'JP's Welcomes the Monkeys!' banner, autographed by Davy Jones, Micheal Nesmith, Micky Dolenz, and Peter Tork. I grew up watching their TV show and, although I shouldn't admit it publicly, I still like their music. So what's so funny about the banner? Well, they went to all that trouble to commemorate their visit by The Monkeys, when any true fan can tell you that they are actually The Monkees.
After the BBQ chicken and ribs and all the great fixins', we all rode over to the hangar in what must have looked like a funeral procession to the guy in the control tower.
With the sun shining just the right way on the wing, I could see my foot print from earlier in the day:
If you can't read it, it says "Van's." I guess I'm all about brand loyalty, even when they aren't even the same company.
One of the benefits of working for a very large corporation is the attention that they pay to diversity. This doesn't really do me a whole heck of a lot of good from a tolerance perspective, what with me being pretty muddled up with respect to ancestry and therefore not belonging to any of the traditional identity groups that have entire weeks named in their honor, but it does benefit me in that I get a "floating" holiday every year just like everyone else.
I can't definitively say what lead to the adoption of a floating holiday (which is a day that can be scheduled at the whim of each individual employee), but I suspect that it was intended to address the difficult questions that arise when one religion has a holiday that comes with a day off of work while another religion's holiday does not. Probably the fairest solution to that problem is to give everyone Christmas as a holiday since it's so secular now anyway and provide one additional day that can be used in whatever manner the employee may choose to address the other occasions.
This is all in the way of explaining why I wasn't at my paying job today. Through the years I have learned that the best way to ensure that I don't forget to use my floating holiday is to take it on my birthday. As such, today was the day.
I met Cadillac Pete for a fine breakfast at Bob Evans and from there we went straight to the hangar. Hopes were high that we could have the second of the three control systems finished and working. The first was the flaperons; today we would do the rudder,
I had started the installation of the rudder cables a few days ago, but stopped when I realized that I was going to have to remove the screws that had been used to secure a stack of ground wires and replace them with Adel clamps and bolts. Adel clamps are always a treat, but the one that was intended to hold not only the rudder cable's protective plastic sleeve and the ground wires too was a rare beast indeed. There was so much pressure trying to spring the clamp off and spray washers and wires all over the place that I had to resort to using one of the clamps that I had purchased in the surgical supplies aisle at Harbor Freight (Home of Approximately Sized Wrenches and non-Sterile Surgical Tools).
It was only six bolts, but it took the better part of an hour to get them installed. The lesser part of that hour was used to drink a bottle of water and recover from the effort.
The other end of the rudder cables also has a protective sleeve. This one won't have the benefit of Adel clamps to hold it in place, though. For these, a hole gets drilled near the end of the tube and safety wire is applied to hold the sleeve in place.
More than a year ago, I ran lengths of string through the tail cone just before installing the final skin. This string has been taped in place ever since, just waiting for the day when it would be used to pull the rudder cables to the back of the plane and out through the aft bulkhead.
Today was the day!
Having used the string and removed it from the tail cone, the last thing we wanted was for the ends of the rudder cables to get accidentally pulled back into the airplane. The plans suggested using wire or string for that purpose, but we decided to be a little more cautious. We grabbed a couple of long bolts from one of the parts bags and temporarily installed them in the cable forks.
Because I've done enough word work to know better than to attempt working with wood, I asked Pete to fabricate the wooden fixture that is used to hold the rudder pedals in a neutral position. I specifically asked that it be built from the highest quality Teak, so I was a little miffed when he arrived with a plywood fixture.
Just kidding, of course. Isn't this the spiffiest rudder pedal fixture you've seen today?
It fit perfectly, which yet again made me happy to have his help. Had I built the thing, it wouldn't have fit at all because I would surely have gotten at least one of the surfaces installed upside down.
With the pedals secured, we were able to pull the rudder cables tight and clamp them into place. The metal tabs secured to the ends of the rudder cables don't actually end up being installed at the back of the plane where you see them now. They are temporarily installed back here to determine where to drill the second hole in them. Once the second hole is drilled in each, it will be match drilled to another matching plate. In this manner, there will be two matching plates for each side of the rudder. The matching plates will be bolted onto a pair of arms attached to the rudder pedals, effectively creating a fork on the other end of the rudder cable.
Yeah, I had a heck of a time understanding it too. Fortunately I didn't need to understand it to do it.
There was another mystery, too. Notice how little of the tab extends aft behind the rudder control horn:
Now look at the other side, where a great deal more of the tab is extending out past the control horn:
I had no glimmer of understanding why that was happening, but I was assured by the factory provided drawing that it was supposed to be that way.
I left it for Pete, Chief Boffin, to figure it out. He noticed in the drawing that the offset is required because of the way the rudder pedals are offset front-to-back:
With the tabs removed for drilling and fitting, we could final-install the bolts that will hold the control cable to the control horn.
To match drill the tabs, a bolt gets fit into the factory drilled hole and the second holes get drilled by the builder.
There is excess tab to be cut off of each tab, so it was off to the band saw.
Which was an abject failure, so it was the off of the band saw. The blade simply couldn't make a dent in the steel. Plan B was immediately put into effect.
The grinding wheel was used to round off the ends. A notable quote that I directed at myself was overheard by Pete after I absent-mindedly grabbed hold of the tab with my bare fingers. I think it was something like "Of course it's HOT - that's why you're holding it with pliers, you idiot!"
Installing the tabs onto the cables and rudder pedal arms required me to get fully into the airplane for the first time ever. Even though I swore that I would never do it, I treated myself to a birthday present: I made airplane sounds.
I tested the rudder movement while I was in there.
I got another present too. Pete had brought me a bag full of goodies from a meat market down in the southeast corner of Ohio. Corn, trail bologna, bacon, and beef sticks! So far I've only tried the beef sticks, but they are fabulous!!
Oh, and the bacon-themed birthday card? That was from the three other bacon-lovers in the house, daughter Egg and our binary quadrupeds, Hogarth and Cabot.
