Today started with my EAA Technical Counselor giving my work an inspection and some training on tube flaring. I had my initial visit with my first part which was the vertical stabilizer. I thought since I am done with the tail and started the wings I better get a visit to make sure my eye for things was still dialed in. Doug looked over all of my completed parts and I received a passing grade, he thought I was doing a good job. We then did a few flares with my new Rolo flaring tool. The instruction that came with the tool leaves something to be desired. Doug showed me how the flare should sit in the fitting; I now have a better feel for what a good flare should look like but I have a few more practice flares to do before I will feel comfortable enough to flare the tube coming out to the Pitot tube.
My next project was to determine how big of a Derlin ring to make for an aileron stop. The plans call for you to make an angle out of aluminum to rivet onto the aileron hinge bracket. The plans don’t give you an exact location, you sort of figure out where it needs to go to limit the aileron travel. Several other builders have what I think is a better and easier design. The upper part of the bracket on the aileron has an aluminum bushing, if you fabricate a ring out of Derlin rod (hard plastic) that this aluminum bushing will fit in then you effectively create a stop because this plastic ring will hit the aileron hinge bracket. The key is to figure out how big to make the Derlin ring.
The plans have a full size DWG of this area so I made a tracing of the bracket on the aileron, I then rotated it around the hinge point until it contacted where the plans show the angle bracket. I then could measure the radius which gave me the diameter of the ring, looks like .660 inches. Some other builders have said they have used ½” Derlin rod to make theirs so this looks very close. Of course my assumption is the stop on the DWG is positioned where it needs to be to limit the aileron travel to the specifications.
Doug caught me with my eyes closed.
Template of hinge rotated. Line is hinge bracket edge with perpendicular line
Yellow is the Van's aileron stop, the green shows where the nylon ring will go, should do the same job
