First Condition Inspection

[akarmy]

Well, I finished up my first annual condition inspection on the new plane. For this first one I decided to enlist the help of Aircore Aviation in Arlington WA. Jim Scott is a friend of mine and knows so much about the Rotax 912 and planes in general that it was great to get his eyes on the details of this plane.

So, what did we find? Just a few things here and there. A broken alternator mount (factory weld didn’t hold) was quickly re-welded to fix it good as new. Found some lead in the plugs & bottom of the oil tank as expected since it’s been eating a steady diet of 100LL. Found some metal shavings on the magnetic drain plug in the engine. Looks as if the plug has never been removed since the engine was new. That’s a watch item to see if it’s clear now at the next oil change. I found the aileron push tube that runs under the seat was installed wrong which caused it to rub on the bottom of the seat pan. This was the source of my stiff aileron problem that I’ve been chasing down for the last few weeks. I suspect it’s been installed that way since new and never was found until now. Found one fabric tape on the bottom of the fuselage that’s lifting up a bit. Needs to be sealed back down.

A longer term project is to rewire the plane to provide more standard routing of wires and chafe protection etc. Also the fuel system needs to be re-plumbed a bit and a new header tank installed to clean up the fittings. I also would like to put some new fuel lines in that I know to be ethanol proof before using much auto gas.

Overall everything looked great. New Oil & filter, New plugs, a Carb balance, little welding & shot of spray lube and it’s good to go!

[Dorsal]

Andy,
Congrats on the inspection, can you elaborate on how the aileron tube was installed wrong?

[akarmy]

So the tube that goes from the bell crank at the front left side, and passes under the pilot seat back to the aileron rotator thingy (not sure what it's called) but where the push rods hook to behind the seat.

That tube has a about a 15deg bend in it. Mine was setup such that bend pointed towards the centerline of the fuselage. This at first glance would seem to be correct as it is the most direct path between the 2 points you are trying to connect. Problem is that will not allow the tube to sit low enough to clear the seat pan.

What I had to do was loosen up the 2 jam nuts and simply rotate the tube 180 degrees so the apex of the bend pointed towards the outside of the fuselage which now allowed the tube to drop down a bit lower. You carefully adjust the rod ends so that they hold it from hitting the lower fuselage tubes. When compete and seat pan installed I now have about 1/4" under the tube and 1/2" between the tube and the seat pan.

Kind of a subtle routing issue that was not clear by looking at the install manual. It only talked about making sure to clear the front bolt head on the bell crank by shimming it up. (which had been done already on mine)

Hope that helps if someone is rigging or inspecting this area. Made a hugh difference to the flying quality of the plane having free ailerons as they were designed to be!