29 March 05 - Wing Leveler Servo Stuff

We'll have to wait for another day or so before the mounting hardware comes in for the Altrack, but it's probably not a bad idea to play with it just to see how all of this is going to fit together. I've been told this installation is trivial, and it probably is. I guess there's only one way to find out . . .

How the mounting brackets fit in there. Note that the bottom bellcrank bracket is replaced by the one for the servo.	Servo with the pushrod in place. It came with little prefabricated pushrods that seem to be terribly cute after working with larger ones. Cute airplane parts? Maybe I'm losing it, here.
There's the whole mechanism in there, showing how it's going to work. As soon as we get the bolts in and resolve the questions that are pondered below, it won't be much trouble to get it in there.

There are a few questions that we're still pondering, and have not yet come to any sort of spectacular answers that we're both pleased with:

• How are we going to get wires around this thing? There's some space under it, and although they would fit there, would that be better than bringing them around over the top or under the bottom of the servo? In all probability, it won't make a lot of difference. Wires over the top would be okay if there was a way to make sure that they wouldn't fall down into the bellcrank, and wires at the bottom would be okay in that they would seem to be less likely to foul the bellcrank, but they would make getting the servo in and out a pain in the rear. Maybe under the servo? Don't know. That looks okay but it's a bit scary to have wires that close to where they would be able to tangle in the bellcrank. It would probably be fine, there, though.
• What's the best way to mount these? The bolts that we have ordered are threated all the way through. If you're supposed to put them in from the top, though, we'll need some locknuts (or something) on the bottom, and then I'm not entirely sure if it's okay to torque to normal specs because you're would be torquing against the threads instead of against the bolt head, which I assume is what the spec is based on. On the other hand, if you put it in from the bottom (which isn't really recommended), you wouldn't have to have nuts, but then you have bolts in upside down. Probably that's okay, too, if you slap some locktite (or something similar) on there.
  
  Why would you have to use nuts if the bolts are pointing down (like they should be) and not up? Because the whole servo is threaded and the mounting bracket is not. It'll make sense if you think about it long enough . . . trust me.

In any case, we're probably just stressing too much about this and need to do any one of the options and then get some sleep. As long as you're careful with any of those methods, I expect that they would be okay.

Previous log entry

Back to the log

Next log entry