I bounced around to a number of different things today. That seems to be the case more often than not now - working on one thing, then moving on to something else while I wait for parts or while I do research on how something is supposed to go together. For the seat back brace, I'm waiting on a part so I can remake one of the side supports. I continued to fit the center portion of the support together, but ran into another problem that I've emailed AntiSplat about (the company who sells the Almost 14 mod). The center cap that goes over the flap housing is supposed to just slide over the top of the Van's housing, line up with the factory holes and then bolt to the seat brace. I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong or if I have a wonky part. When I line up all of the holes for the flap housing, the cap doesn't even come close to laying against the horizontal brace. So I put a pin in that task and move on to something else while I mull it over.
A long time ago I purchased an ADHRS mount from Van's. I'm going to mount the ADHRS sensor in the tailcone just behind the baggage bulkhead. The sensor has to be mounted so it sets level in level flight. The Van's mount already has the math done to account for the slope of the tailcone, so it was just a matter of sliding the mount in place against the center brace and one of the J stiffeners until a couple of tabs hit. I used my right angle drill and drilled all of the holes (it'll just be pop riveted - there's no need for incredible strength here), then pulled the bracket out and put it in the "to be primed" pile for the spring.
I don't want to actually put the rudder pedals into the plane until I have the fuel line and other aluminum brake lines run (the fuel lines go in first - my pro built ones are supposed to be here this week). I still need to locate and drill the holes in the brake pedals for the brake cylinders though. This is not as straight forward as taking measurements and drilling the pedals all the same unfortunately. The way the rudder assemblies are set up, the rudder pedals aren't at the same angle, which means the brake pedals can't be set the same relative to the angle of the rudder pedal or things will feel really out of whack. For the rudder pedals, all that really matters is that the lower portion where your foot pushes is the same from your left to right foot. It's a round tube you push on, so it doesn't really matter what angle the vertical tubes attaching it to everything else set at. However, because the brake pedals are big and flat, it would feel very strange if they were set at the angle of the rudder assembly they are attached to - the neutral angle would be different for the left and right foot.
To attempt to get the brake pedals as close to each other as possible, I first clamped the rudder pedals to each other to make them even. Then, I clamped the brake pedals to each other using a file. I also stacked a couple of tongue depressors behind the file to give the brakes a tiny bit more angle back so they're not as easy to accidentally hit if my feet are on the rudder pedals.
All of this is done so that each brake cylinder can be independently located. Because each brake sets at a different angle relative to the rudder assembly, the cylinders don't line up at the exact same location on each pedal tab. I didn't have a great way to use a marker to mark the cylinder hole location, so I grabbed a 3/16" bit and scratched the brake tab while swinging the cylinder in a little arc. With that position, then I'll just find the center of the tab and drill the hole. Fingers crossed all of this works! That's for tomorrow though.
