Piper Tripacer to Pacer refurb

also due to the previous replacement of hinges and there being no more space for new ones the saw came out again and trailing edges of tailplane and leading edges of elevators were removed, now one of the pet hates for me is getting hinges accurately pos,nd so another 10 mins was spent drawing up a "core" for the leading and trailing edges again cut on the laser, this consisted of a strip of 1mm light ply with "notches" evenly spaced along its length to fit some nice new Du-Bro hinges, laminate some 6mm balsa either side of this and hey presto a trailing/leading edge with hinge pockets perfectly in line right down the middle.

see here




this first pic is of the rudder done the same way as the photo of the tailplane was carp



now on all my models i try to have the control surfaces removable forservice and repair, so out with the hinge pins and in to the pockets with the hinge halves and through them al a nice length of suitable piano wire





so pull out the wire and hey presto separate components

chris

finally for now a quick pic of fus with all the solid ply formers along the top of rear fus dremmeled away within an inch of there lives





of to do some DH2 next

chris

after an hour striping wing panels off a certain biplane last night i would guess atad messier, the pics above were taken before i started, !!!

chris

V nice Chris, tell me, rather than just unloading a worn model, does it give you a good warm feeling, doing an overhauls like this? i would imagine its quite satisfying

i like the process of restoration, they are the balsa bashers ARTF,s

chris

so only a little bit done on pacer today as its a DH2 day really. but i did make the lower ply mount for the elevator bellcranks and the bell cranks themselves.

both items drawn up in a simple cad program and cut out on a small cnc, ply mount is 5mm birch ply, bellvranks are assembled from three pieces of 1.5mm glass resin sheet

mount





bell cranks



chris

bell cranks are two layers of arm shaped glass and one disc in centre to give good bearing area,

so the mount is glued in place on two rails, it will also be screwde when i,m happy its in the correct place,








then the bell cranks are assembled with a brass tube bearing spacers and a 4mm high tensile cap screw, there will be an upper ply support but needed to see where it fits before cutting it out,








thats all today

chris

get that screw supported, and that will be a brilliant, very solid mounting, aint it fun being an engineer when you are dreaming up your own bits is this all done during your day job you lucky git, where do i sign up??

lunchtimes are a very valuable resource (as is after school) especially in a workshop equipped with CNC router, a laser cutter, vac former 4 centre lathes and a vertical/horizontal miller.(not to mention the brazing hearth, forge and casting crucible furnace and oxy set in the other workshop) and being a time served engineer and a fully trained CNC programmer/setter in a past life it seems rude to ignore them!!! so today i made the upper bracket, will fit it tomorrow as im off indoor flying tonight

hey ho someone has to do it.

chris

Had to look up what a elevator bellcrank was, but now I know I get it It looks really good Chris, enjoy your indoor flying

sorry sarah

being an old phart i just assume every one knows what i,m on about

chris

CeeJayP wrote: sorry sarah

being an old phart i just assume every one knows what i,m on about

chris

hehe Its ok, wasn't a criticism - it gives me something to look up and learn about

CeeJayP
If I had the option I would not mount the double bell cranks cantilevered one on top of each other but rather either side of the mount or better still between two mounts.
Its a truly wonderful airframe.

why? when the top support goes on, it will be stronger than a strong thing, there are things there i would have done differantly, but we would both have arrived at the same ending