Lots of little details
I keep crossing things off the list of items left to do, and I keep adding stuff to it. Luckily, the stuff I’m adding is pretty minor. For example, clean the canopy, secure the wing conduit pull string, etc. I took care of a bunch of little stuff like that today.
I tried fixing the canopy skin. It will no longer catch, but it definitely doesn’t look pretty. Still need to do some cosmetic work there.
I was messing around in the cockpit and decided to look into why there’s a tiny bit of pitch freeplay in the stick. Turns out I never tightened the jam nut on the forward push rod. Guess I thought I would need to adjust again. Once I noticed it, the loose nut seemed like a glaring omission. Of course, I’ve looked down there a hundred times over the past few months and never noticed it. Luckily, the push rod is designed such that even if the nut is loose, the push rod can’t get free.
I then decided to check the other end of the push rod. Sure enough, that nut was loose, along with the autopilot servo push rod. Getting back there was uncomfortable, but I tightened and torqued everything that was loose. I’m planning on doing a full check out of everything on Saturday, following an annual condition inspection checklist. I would have found these loose fittings anyway.
Tightening up all the push rods reduced the freeplay significantly. There’s still a tiny bit left, but it’s got to be less than 1mm. Very, very minor. There’s absolutely no freeplay in the ailerons. I went on to measure the elevator and flap angles. The elevators are within Vans published specs, but the flaps go down 44 degrees versus the 40 degree max specified by Vans. I’ll double check, but that shouldn’t be a big deal.
I also installed the fire extinguisher. I put it right behind the passenger seat. It’s out of the way and accessible. It was tricky reaching under the seat pan to tighten the nut, but it’s done now.
I confirmed my inspection appointment with Richard Tardif for March 20th. Woo hoo! And I confirmed Terry Burch will do the first flight as soon as the weather cooperates after that. Double woo hoo!!