As alluded to last night, tonight I finished installing the aileron trim components that rivet to the inboard seat ribs. These parts were fitted to those ribs a while back, but never actually riveted in place. The left-hand bracket, where the trim servo will mount, also needed to have the four attach nutplates installed, so that was the first order of the night – drilling all the holes to final size, deburring, countersinking for rivets, and riveting the nutplates. Then it was just a matter or riveting both brackets in place. There were more rivets than normal, since I mis-drilled the right-side bracket originally, and added a doubler for reinforcement.
Here’s an overview of the trim system, with the servo and actuating rod temporarily in place:
In this view, the front of the plane is towards the top of the photo, rear to the bottom. The trim system is a simple spring-bias setup. The control column will pass above the actuator rod here, from front to rear. Two springs will attach to the bottom of the column, one going left, one right, with the outboard ends of the spring attached to the actuator. As the servo moves the rod, the springs will apply force to the column in the same direction, providing a slight roll input to counter any imbalance, for example if one fuel tank is fuller than the other.
Next up, I get to rivet the outboard seat ribs to the bottom skin, and then it’ll be time to start assembling the mid side skins + armrest assemblies. I’ll also want to probably go ahead and order my fuel pump and filter, so I can go ahead and mount them and fabricate fuel lines before the forward fuse is closed up. It’ll be much easier without the forward side skins in place.