Well, my intent for tonight was to put in some more time on the throttle quadrant situation, but that didn’t really happen. After the last work session, I went back and read through the whole odyssey from the first time I did the throttle quad stuff. One thing I’d forgotten was that normally, the linkage between the front and rear throttles uses clevises at either end, but I’d gone with rod-end bearings in order to move the linkage outboard a bit and get some breathing room on the holes.
This is a useful thought because where the new front throttle lever sits is really close to being in alignment with the linkage going through all three holes. So my thinking after doing all that reading was that maybe I could use a clevis up front and minimize the tweaking of the passthrough holes. First thing tonight was to figure out where I’d put the clevises (which I confirmed that I had ordered by checking my Aircraft Spruce order history). Then it was on to taking a second look at the setup. I did confirm that the linkage is pretty well-aligned with the lever, but that’s as far as I got.
One major difference between the rod-end bearings and the clevises is that the former have male threaded ends, and the latter female. So I can’t attach the clevis directly to the linkage, I need something like a piece of threaded rod to tie them together. And it seems I have nothing of the sort lying around the shop, so I had no way to move forward with trying out the new linkage. Guess I’ll be making a Home Depot run in the near future…
I’m not even logging any hours for this, since all this took me about ten minutes in the shop.
The night wasn’t a total waste, though…I came back inside and spent some more time mucking around with panel design. I like this overall layout with the EFIS screens and other stuff in the main panel. Right now I’m playing with switches on the far left (lighting switched will be on the right console, not shown here), not sure I want to put too many there. This isn’t even representative of all the switches I’ll actually have – for that I need to think some more about what my electrical system is going to look like. I’m kind of thinking of grouping the switches a little more intelligently, maybe putting some up at the top of the main panel, such as things I won’t be using regularly in flight (engine start stuff, emergency bus, etc).
The idea for the Infinity stick grip diagram on the right side I shamelessly stole from another builder on VAF. I think it’s a great idea and a great way to clearly document what all the stuff on the stick will do.
