Building the (Old) FLYLINE Great Lakes 2T-1A Kit (28)

All that’s left before flight testing is rigging. In this case that means both rigging the functional controls…hooking the servos to the surfaces…and making up the wing and tail brace wire groups. Let’s look at the servos first.

I used Sullivan Gold-N-Rod splined nylon flexible concentric tube connectors (S-504) for the connections between the rudder and elevator servos and their respective control surfaces. The outer (red) tubes were installed in the fuselage prior to covering. Here I have fitted the inner (yellow) tube with the threaded insert, clevis and keeper that are provided with the hardware set to the rudder. This is a pretty standard set-up for push-pull concentric tube control connections, but it’s helpful to have a look at what one is supposed to look like, ready to fly.

With the rear end (the part that attaches to the rudder control horn) all measured, cut, and hooked up, I have plenty of extra length, or overhang, of yellow inner rod at the servo end.

The rudder, back out of sight to the left, is clamped in the neutral, or trail, position. I have held the assembled threaded rod and clevis in place to measure where the inner rod will need to be cut off. The best place to start is to have the threaded rod extend two or three threads beyond the inner end of the threaded part of tle clevis, and then thread about half the remaining exposed threads into the inner rod. This will provide plenty of contact area for a reliable connection and also leave the maximum possible margin for fine adjustment of the control surface neutral setting later on.

Here the yellow inner tube is cut off to length and I have threaded the 2-56 metal rod into place.

The stock 2-56 Sullivan clevis is threaded onto the rod and attached to the rudder servo output arm with the short piece of rubber tube that is provided slipped over the clevis as a safety guard to prevent it slipping loose. There is sufficient room at either end of the clevis assembly to permit full freedom of movement of the servo

Both the rudder and elevator servos have been connected to their respective control surfaces and I have placed the Airtronics RX-6000 2.4 gHz receiver in position held down by a couple of pieces of sticky back hook-and-loop fastener. On this airplane I am using two servos, each on its own channel, to actuate the ailerons. A separate extension cable for each of them is already plugged into the receiver. These will connect to the aileron servo leads attached to the wing. The receiver antenna cables are not yet fixed in position.

The Airtronics 2.4gHz receiver uses a dual antenna arrangement, and the ends of both antennas must be arranged in a ninety-degree orientation to one another. As there will be no appreciable stress or load on these antenna wires in operation, a short piece of masking tape is sufficient to hold each of them where I want it to be. The servo cables coming out of the receiver are bundled neatly using a small nylon cable tie. I do this to be absolutely certain that nothing is loose and free to flop around inside the airplane in flight.

I'm going to include semi-functional wing wires on this airplane...they will bear a symbolic load and look like their full scale counterparts, but will not be necessary to hold the airplane together. In that case I would have built load bearing anchor points into the primary structure. This is a sample flying wire attachment pin made from ordinary hobby shop steel wire, bent into a loop and crimped to permit secure attachment.

This is the same flying wire attachment pin inserted into a hole drilled into the lower wing mount structure and secured with ZAP-a-GAP. Those little ridges I crimped into the wire will give the ZAP something to grab and hold.

I am using 15# plastic coated beading wire from the craft store for the rigging wires. Each wire is attached at the strut end by looping it around the short 2-56 screw that holds the strut in place. Here I have slipped a crimping collar (also from the craft store) onto the wire loop and crimped it tight using (guess what?) a crimping tool from the craft store.

This is the working end of a different flying wire. I have crimped the collar in place, trimmed off the excess length of cable, and am tightening the strut attachment screw that holds it all in place.

This is the same operation from the lower end. In this case the loop-and-collar assembly at the other end is complete and I have pulled the tension I want into the wire using a surgical clamp. Next step will be to crimp the collar while holding the tension.

Those little craft store beading wires collars aren’t intended to hold heavy loads, so I am giving them a bit of help with some ZAP to be sure nothing slips. Remember that this sort of flying wire attachment is OK for appearance-only installations…NOT for fully load-bearing jobs.

Here’s a look at the inboard end of the wing wire assembly. On this airplane the forward flying wire attaches to the landing gear strut assembly…on another design the arrangement might be quite different.

Same deal looking at the left interplane strut. Here I am using the loop-and-screw attachment everywhere.

This is the same deal at the inboard end. I used strut screws as attachment points where they existed and inserted those wire hooks everyplace else. I’ll add the javelins (those stick braces where the wires cross) before we fly.