Finished up rigging the Aileron cables today. The first order of business was to block up the control sticks, centered, preventing any movement. This is necessary so I can pull on the cables to get them taught before swagging. I already had the ailerons themselves blocked up in neutral position.
I ran the aileron cable from the wing root around the top pulley and down through the fairlead. Then I swagged the turnbuckle onto it. Next, I cut a length of cable and swagged a shackle on one end. I fit that end on the control sticks. Ran the other end around the front pulley back through the frame to the rear pulley. I swagged that end to the turnbuckle to complete the connection.
The hard part on swagging the sleeves is to get the cable tight while doing it. It takes a bit of effort and three hands to do it. For the third hand, I use needle nose vise grips with rubber fuel line pieces fit over the jaws so I don't damage the cables. I lock the vise grips on the cable after I've pulled them as tight as I can get them by hand to lock them in place while I wield the big crimper tool. The initial crimp is critical as it will hold everything in place, but if you get it wrong it's disastrous as it can't be removed and requires cutting the cable. This may require a whole new cable to be fashioned. Get it right the first time!
I then moved on to the cross aileron cable connection. Each cable exits the wing root and connects to each other at the rear of the head rack. These cables get connected directly together via another turnbuckle. The problem with this connection is that it is at the top of the head rack on the center line of the aircraft. Not easy to reach. I used a couple of vise grips as before to get the cables through the turnbuckle and sleeves and to hold them in place while I adjusted them to center the turnbuckle on the center line of the aircraft. Once I was happy with the alignment I swagged one side to set the position. I then pulled the cables as tight as I could and set the other side. This allowed me to remove the vise grips (and their weight) from the cables. I then completed the rest of the crimping.
A little trick was to loosen the turnbuckle a few turns while pulling the cables tight before crimping. I did this because I knew I couldn't get it as tight as needed with the vise grips weight pulling down on the cable. The weight created some slack that I could not remove while crimping. After I crimped everything I re-tightened the turnbuckle back to it's neutral position which pulled any slack I had in the cable back out. This put me right where I wanted to be, tight cables in the neutral position.
The last task for the day was to rough cut out the slot in the side seat trim piece for the aileron cable pass through. I decided to see if the passenger side slot would fit on the pilot's side if I flipped it, it fit perfect. So, I use it as the template, laid it on top of the pilot's side piece and traced out the slot. I then proceeded to nibble it out with the nibbler tool. I verified the fit and it was right on, so I'll finish final sanding and filing tomorrow.
