39 Control System | Adam's RV10

I test fit the fuel supply and return lines in the wing roots. Everything looked good once I clocked the sidewall bulkhead fitting downward a bit. I plan to put some tubing on the fuel line to avoid abrading the spar and side skins.

**Left side before return line clocking.**

**Looking at the supply shutoff/filter setup.**

**Looking up on the whole supply line/filter**

I then went down the road of finalizing my rigging. Everything went well except for my elevator rigging, which was somewhat expected. I was fighting a couple of different things. The first was that my stick hits the switches on the Aerosport panel, like so many before me. Some end up bending their stick to get more clearance. I decided to solve it by adjusting the forward and aft stops as well as changing the aft rod end of the forward (F-1089) pushrod from a MD3614M to a MD3616M to get more thread length to allow me to unscrew it more, resulting in the stick not going as far forward, while still having enough thread engaged in the pushrod.

Additionally, I was very close to needing to do the elevator stop service bulletin. So I took the opportunity to do that as well. To do these changes, I needed to take the rudder and Vertical Stab off to get better access.

**Unbolting and unriveting the original aft elevator stop.**

**Showing the elevator horn angle and how close it is to being able to jam on the stop.**

**New aft elevator stop installed to address service bulletin and adjust travel as needed.**

I also installed a forward stop as well to help further limit the down stick travel by limiting elevator down travel to the min of 20 degrees.

**Horn sitting against new forward stop installed**

I then battled another issue with the control stick travel and a bolt head hitting the control column mount. This seems to be due to the angle of the stick weldment not being 70 degrees. It is causing the travel in the space cutout for the aileron pushrod to be biased forward as shown below.

**Stick forward only 3/4 travel in slot**

Van’s tells me that this is usually due to the pushrod lengths being off. So I spent a ton of time removing all 3 of my pushrods and re-checking their lengths. They were really close as they were. Then working on setting things up properly from aft to front. At the end of the day, even with the stock measurements of the pushrods, I still have the same issue, so that is not the root cause.

Below I show the interference with the bolt and the mount.

**You can see where the bolt was hitting.**

So I decided to carve out a half moon as shown above in the mount to create clearance for the bolt. At least one other builder has told me they have seen this a bunch of times and done the same thing.

One other problem that resulted from this forward bias, is that the aileron pushrod that connects the 2 sticks through the tunnel was rubbing on my fuel lines as shown in the video below.

There was no possible way to move the lines forward anymore due to me having a brake line in the way.

In talking with Tom, I asked him to make 2 new lines for me that were 1/2″ longer to solve this issue.

**New lines in place and rubbing problem solved.**

With that saga behind me, I then bolted the wings on permanently. There are 8 bolts holding each wing on.

I also finished wiring the wings. Below is the air temp sensor under the 2nd access panel on the right wing.

Wingtips were also installed and tested out.

Now there are a couple of things left to finish up and then it’s time to get ready for my inspection. Calibrating gauges, fuel tanks, doing fuel flow tests, etc…

I’ve spent the time since the last update jumping around three or four different sections of the plans. These sections really have been a lot of fun as they are all systems related, and seem to go pretty quickly.

The first part of the control systems section has you fabricate push rods for the elevator. Below are some pics of that process.

Template for drilling holes

Threaded end cap for rod end bearing.

Push rod connected to Idler arm

Then it was on to putting the control sticks and the control columns into place

White control column in place

Setting up the drill press to drill the hole that’ll secure the control sticks to their bases. Making sure everything is planar.

Control Sticks in!!!

I’ve left the bolts for securing the sticks loose for now, as I’ll likely be taking them out for awhile. Also there may be a need to cut them down later so they don’t hit the avionics panel through their full motion. This will somewhat depend on my grip and panel selections coming later.

Then it was on to locking the elevator bellcrank to the neutral position with a jig made up back in the empenage attach section. This is done along with a control column jig to center the control sticks.

Elevator bellcrank neutral

Measuring jig

The bolt in the measuring jig is passed through the elevator pushrod bearing end and needs to touch the spar wall, which it did. If not, I would have had to adjust the length of my elevator pushrods a bit to get things to neutral.

Then I moved onto the flap motor section. I decided to use an aftermarket flap motor from PH Aviation Services. The two big advantages to doing this are 1) The unit has positive stops at each end of the motors range. This provides the ability to get rid of the safety wire needed on the stock unit that just continuously runs when power is applied. it also allows you to use a flap switch on the panel that can be moved to the up position and left there as opposed to a momentary-type switch. and 2) It has an integrated position sensor built in. No need for external flap position sensors that seem to need continual adjustment/care.

The only downside is it is about 1.5″ longer than stock and does require some modifications, which I ended up spending way more time than needed and went back and redid a couple of things as I wasn’t entirely happy with how the first round came out. I basically had to use some 1″ x 1″ angle stock and also fabricate up some brackets out of .063″ aluminum stock to move the motor forward more to make up for its extra length.

Assembling the flap crank and torque tube

Flap motor installed!

New (left) bracket fabricated for the flap motor.

Closeup of the slot cut into the existing structure to accommodate the custom mounting angle

Below are some videos of the flap motor running through a complete cycle and what the torque tube is doing as a result. In the end, this will control the raising and lowering of the flaps.

I was also able to get the final custom fuel line back from Tom, and finish up installing everything including adding some angle and Adel clamps along the tunnel sidewalls to secure the lines up nicely.

New short custom line for the supply line to the pre-filter.

All Done!

One item I snuck in while waiting on other things, was to add the rear NACA vent SCAT tubes and vent controller which will ultimately blow air into the overhead console vents.