Elevator Control Rods

This weekend I took the time to build the control rods for the elevators.  This is a task I did before when I did the ailerons, but it had been awhile.

No pictures for cutting and priming the tubes.  You can use your imagination.  The real issue is you have to drive X number of rivets around a circumference of a rod.  You start with a strip of paper that is the exact circumference of the rod.  Then you divide that value by the number of rivets.  So you have 8 rivets that need to fit a 6.5″ circumference, then you make a tic mark every 13/16″.   You then wrap the paper around the rod, and transfer the tic marks to the metal.  Drill.  Rivet.

Drilling can be done several ways.  I chose to use the drill press for more accurate holes.

My drill press is plenty able to handle this with my pipe guide.

I used my pneumatic puller to set the pulled rivets.

The one on the left is the rod from the control stick to the bell crank.  The one of the right is from the bell crank to the elevator.

Now I’m ready for the step after drilling all the holes in the HS.