Control sticks installed

We trimmed the control sticks for the grips, getting them to be tall enough that they clear the switches on the panel, but they were still hitting:

Trimmed control sticks in place

Stick grip hitting the flap switch

The angled bushings from Tosten helped, but didn't fully fix the problem - so I did what any reasonable person would do, I 3D scanned the stick and designed a new one:

3D scanned stick overlaid on a sketch of the extended stick

Options for the stick extension

Rendering of the extended stick

Scanned original stick overlaid with new stick

Attempting to get this fabricated, however, proved to be nearly impossible due to the 6" bend radius - the few places that actually gave me quote wanted something in the high 3 digits for it, so we resorted to the solution others have found, which is bending it a bit further.

I drilled the aft holes for the angled bushings:

Stick grip bushing installed and secured through screw hole

and primed the parts of the stick where the bending damaged the powder coating, as well as all of the top tip which remains visible even with the cover on:

Stick grips masked for priming

Primed stick grips

and finally, I installed the sticks and stick grips in place:

Sticks and stick grips installed in place, with the covers on

With this, the only thing left in section 39 is final-adjusting the pushrod lengths if needed, after all the surfaces are connected.

Time lapse:


Total control system rivets: 37
Total control system time: 20.8h

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