This morning I decided to tackle the job of installing the TruTrak pitch servo. TruTrak is a great company that makes some of the most advanced autopilots in the world and they only sell them to the experimental crowd. They have experienced a surge in growth thanks to the RV-10 community so what follows isn't abnormal for rapid growth. Basically they are letting their QC slide. I have several problems with my pitch servo install, all of which are correctable, and they appear to be simply from what is probably new people cranking out servos to fill orders. Here is what I had wrong: one of the mounting holes was off by 1/4"; the control module looks like it was put together in a hurry as the box had gaps and the wire grommet was split; The instructions were basically nonexistent; and the mounting bolt to the bellcrank barely made it through the bellcrank. All of the items are easily repairable but the instructions thing baffles me. I'm engineering minded so it only took me about two minutes of looking at the pictures (and the original install doc that I downloaded from the website) to figure it out, but some guy who is more instruction orientated could install this thing wrong and end up in an accident. QC things like this I would let slide in the normal world, but as this is aviation I feel the need to make sure people watch for it. I know I will be chastised for not giving them a chance to fix the problem first, but I tryied to contact them in the past and never had anyone return the call or email. So anyway, the other thing I did today was attach the two master battery contactors to the battery frame. I also went around and put inspection laquer on several bolts on the airframe.
You can see the bellcrtank bolt and the offset hole in the top right.
Here the contol box has gaps and the wire grommet is split.
