Brief Description: continued baby steps on aileron controls
I really do feel I am making progress with these aileron controls, even though the pace of progress is painfully slow. By end of day today, I have cut the aluminum tubing and installed the rod end bearings on the rods connecting the belcranks to the ailerons. The rods connecting the control stick to the belcranks are still wooden dowels because i am not confident about how long they need to be. Since the belcranks themselves are now in final form, the overall system is getting more stable. Now very small changes in the length of any tube have clear impacts. I had to fine-tune the lengths of the control stick-to-belcrank rods to get it to the point where the ailerons were in neutral position when the control stick was vertical. But then the up and down deflections of the ailerons were out of whack, and the fix for that was to change the lengths of the control rods from the belcranks to the ailerons, but then they were no longer at zero deflection with the control stick vertical. I feel sure I will get this right, but I can see now it is going to take a series of smaller and smaller changes followed by other changes to correct unintended consequences. So I took the afternoon off to fly the Baby Ace in a stiff, gusty crosswind just for fun. And tomorrow I think I'll go skiing. More Thatcher build stuff on Friday.
