Hangar Washing & Aileron Rigging

TLDR

• House keeping in the hangar
• WIP: rigging the ailerons

Details

House Keeping

My hangar is so incredibly dusty for some reason. I decided to take a pause from the airplane for a few hours and do a cleanup in the hangar.

In the morning I pushed the airplane out, vacuumed the space, and power-washed the floor as much as possible without getting water onto crates/tables/other things on the floor.

There was only one issue, my hangar doesn’t have water supply. To use the power washer, I bought a 30-gallon storage box from Home Depot, and drilled a hole in the side to install a household water faucet. Then I connected the faucet to my power washer with a garden hose.

I filled the big storage box with water and put it in my car’s trunk so it was elevated relative to the power washer. Essentially, this created a gravity feed of water supply. The power washer worked happily with this setup.

Aileron Rigging

Started to rig the aileron. From the maintenance manual the aileron movement range is 24 +/- 3 degrees. I adjusted the torque tubes to make both ailerons flat at the same time, then tested the movement range with an electrical angle meter. The movement is exactly +24/-24 on both sides.

However I noticed the torque tube directly connecting to the control has a problem when moving the control stick laterally. The torque seals on both sides are broken. I turned the control slowly to watch the control tube, the tubes have a slight turn on the rod end as it reaches the control stop. The movement is barely noticeable but it’s there. I think it’s because the rod end has to turn left/right on the AN4 bolt, and the washers clamping the rod end limits how wide it can wobble. I plan to replace the washer with a narrower one and see if it can give the rod end just a little more movement angle. To be continued.