I needed a break from trimming the canopy, so I went back to working on the pitot heat regulator mount. I went back and forth on where to mount it, from just attaching it to the nearby access cover, to building a bracket for it that would run between two ribs. I want it to be out of the way enough that I can get my hand through the large hole in the rib for pitot access without having to remove the regulator. The easiest solution is to simply bolt it to a rib web, but in the future when the skin is on and the only opening is the access cutout, getting two hands in to hold bolts and nuts would be almost impossible. I ended up drilling 4 mounting holes in the rib web just outboard of the aileron bellcrank (the rib between the bellcrank and the pitot mount itself), then went back to the scrap pile and made some nutplate mounts for the back side of the rib. Nutplates are at least a bit easier than nuts to deal with in tight spaces since once you get them started, you only need one hand. To simplify things down the road, I riveted the two nutplates together so as soon as one is on, the other is in the right position. I obviously could have just made it out of a single piece of aluminum, but didn't have anything quite big enough in the thickness I wanted to use.
Since the ribs have the raised edges around the lightening holes, the controller can't just set flat on the rib web. I had a few inches of leftover aluminum tubing from who knows what, so I cut down 4 pieces to make some standoffs.
The routing of the wiring to the pitot itself and the pitot and AOA tubing through this rib is still to be determined.
