Time: 3 Hours
Now that I have my finish kit I need to finish up the few little tasks I had started while waiting for the new kit. The first task was to finish the internal rudder stop I got from flyboyaccesories. The stock rudder stops are made from aluminum angle and riveted to the sides of the fuselage aft end. These are pretty ugly and I didn’t like the way they look. So the first thing to do was put it into position and drill for two AN-3 bolts to hold it into position. You can put it on the outside of the bottom rudder hinge or inside the hinge. I decided to put it inside so it looks better. Once I had the holes drilled I quickly found out that the lower rod end hits the inside V of the stop so I marked it and sanded it to fit.
After cleaning up the center so the rod end didn’t hit I started the process of trimming the left and right ends or legs so that I could get the proper rudder deflection.
The plans call for 30°-35° left and right and a minimum spacing of 1″ between the aft edge of the rudder and the respective elevator.
To get the degrees I taped a plumb bob to the tail wheel spring in the center just below the leading edge of the rudder. I then taped a plumb bob to the aft end of the rudder. I then took a protractor at the point of the forward plumb bob and squared it up with the tail wheel. With the protractor in place I marked the 30° and 35° marks and extended them out towards the aft end. Now I had a line that I could swing the rudder to and get the correct measurements.
So from this point it was just trial and error as I sanded a little bit off at a time to get the rudder to the correct deflection. After that was done I had 33° both left and right and a gap of 1 3/8″ on each side. That’s where I stopped today since I had a tooth drilled earlier and was a little sore. Tomorrow I plan on working on that last rudder task of finishing off the lower cap.
