I want to get as many tasks that require the wings on done before the plane leaves Malcolm’s shop. We can easily get both wings on in his shop. In my shop, it’s a chore just to get one of them on.

Earlier, we attached the (steel) torque tubes to the ailerons. So we’re going to work on the wing root end. First I have to fabricate the brackets that support the torque tube and bellcrank. The factory does this significantly different than Malcolm so my brackets are a LOT different then most others.

Here is the pilot side bracket:

And the co-pilot side:

Then the aileron cable support bracket has to be built. Here is the co-pilot side.

You’ll notice where the cable attaches to the bellcrank that there is a hole in the bellcrank above where the cable is mounted. That hole at the very top was the only hole in the bellcrank. Before we got to this point Malcolm started measuring for this extra hole. I asked him what he was doing and he said “The factory hole is too far out. You can’t get enough motion with that hole so you have to drill another one closer to the torque tube.” This kind of stuff used to make me nervous; Off the cuff mods that aren’t called out in the manual. But I’ve learned to accept it when Malcolm says “do it because otherwise it won’t work.”

After this we drilled the bellcrank and torque tube and bolted everything together. The manual says that we should have 2 1/2″ of aileron travel when the stick is moved from one side to the other. And we got… 2-1/2″. Had we used the factory hole, we would have had significantly less. Then we would have had to pull off the bellcranks and drill the second holes.