Playing with control sticks

This is the purpose of page 31-11

I found it fun to go to the bicycle store to buy handle bar grips for the control sticks. I even took one of the control sticks with me and the guy at the shop was intrigued as he had never seen such handlebar.
The fun stopped with step 3 which requires to route the wires inside the stick as there is an obstruction at the bottom very visible on figure 2: the sleeve that gets the bushing does not leave a lot of room to guide the wires. The solution: use a fishing line with a sinker (all out of my fishing box!) and use gravity to route the wire from bottom to top. I found this idea on the VAF forum, my usual source of inspiration.

The next challenge was the installation of the control sticks which requires to drill the bushings at 1/4". My drill got stuck several times as it is difficult to secure the bushing tightly without risking to crush it in the vise. I finally got the two sticks installed on a temporary basis as specified but the task was cumbersome with lots of filing to get everything to fit together. Here is where I am tonight: are not my control sticks grips cute?

More Wiring

I have finished page 31-10 today, nothing special, just waving wires through bushings, putting terminals at the ends, stripping replaced deburring, working on my stretching while crawling around the fuselage... if only I was 20 years younger! (well, may be not after all, 20 years ago my daughters were in college, I did not have the money!)

More Wiring and a good surprise!

We spent a few days with friends at our cabin in West Jefferson last week. We have at about 5 miles the great KGEV/Jefferson airport and I went to visit and inquire about hangar availability. My thinking was that given the high cost and low availability of hangars in the Raleigh area, Jefferson might be a good option to finish the plane and test it. While explaining my situation to the airport manager, he told me, to my great surprise (and delight!) that there was a gentleman who had a flying RV-12 in a hangar at the airport. As he kindly gave me his name, I contacted Kim Michell the next day and we had the opportunity to meet right away at my cabin. The RV-12 is the second plane he has built. He built and owned a Falco for several years before building the RV-12 in the last 2 years. Before returning to Raleigh I visited his hangar and saw his nice yellow RV-12. We will have more opportunities to discuss our common interests during my upcoming trips to West Jefferson. I have never imagined I would find an RV-12 owner at Jefferson airport as, in Raleigh, the closest RV-12 flying is more than 1 hour drive away in Carthage.

Here are the pages I have been through during the last three weeks

 On Page 31-7, I could only do steps 1, 2, 5 and 8 because I know that the other steps will have to be modified for the Skyview as they are currently designed for the Dynon D100 glass cockpit. I am facing this issue now constantly as I am progressing on the wiring and I am afraid that soon I will have lots of loose end wiring all over. I need to beef-up the documenting on these incomplete steps, on the instructions as well as on the lose wires in limbo themselves.