'Its a long story ...
After relocating the plane to GA via 26' U-Haul, We put the wings back on, rigged the wing wash, the dihedral and incedence are fixed and can not be adjusted, reconnected the push/pull tubes and checked the aileron travels at the trailing edge per the manual. They were not even close. How can that be? With the stick centered the trailing edges were faired. We began adjusting the tubes and eventually the turn-buckles in the door posts. This went on for many hours with no real success. There was no logical pattern to how the adjustments affected the travels.
My assumption is that the bellcranks in the wings produce the differential travel to help control adverse yaw. If you get these bellcranks out of phase with each other, the up / down travels from right to left are all over the map, even though you may have the trailing edges faired and stick centered.
Once you have loosened the cables from the sticks to the door post bellcranks you basically have to start from scratch. There is no "rigging" feature, that I am aware of, built into the system. Would have been very easy to put a rig pin hole in the idler tube or one of the post bellcranks at manufacture, but they didn't.
Anyway, what I came up with was to take a piece of aluminum angle and span across the bottom of the two bellcranks in the cabin. I secured the cranks with some small C-clamps. This held the top pivot points (where the aileron tubes connect) of the bellcranks vertical. I then put my digital level with magnetic base on the side of the control stick and began tensioning the cables. I set the stick perfectly vertical while reaching the specified cable tension. I then adjusted the aileron push tubes to get the trailing edges of the ailerons faired with the wing at the inboard station. After this procedure we checked the travels and they were very close. We made a couple small adjustments on the stick stops and called it good. I think I still have one aileron with slightly more up travel that the other side but I just don't believe that you will ever get them dead on or even within a 1/16". It's a 60+ year old airplane with wood wings.
I am no authority on rigging and this is just one opinion of a solution. It worked pretty well for me but there are probably some guys out there that know better methods. Some say rigging the ailerons is a non-event, but for me it was a major pain until I came up with this procedure. Maybe it will help someone else, I don't know.
M. Banks
F-24, N4263S
--- On Wed, 11/17/10, jwm1801 wrote:
From: jwm1801
Subject: [fairchildclub] Re: Fairchild 24 Rudder rigging
To:
fairchildclub@yahoogroups.com
Date: Wednesday, November 17, 2010, 1:08 PM
Thank you for your response. I have not rigged my ailerons yet. When you say they were a pain, how so?? JON
--- In
fairchildclub@yahoogroups.com, Patricia Banks wrote:
>
> Just finished all of the rigging on my 24 .... the ailerons were a pain in the neck but the rest went easily. The rudder return cable is the short loop just to the right of the left stick under the floor. It is a 1/16 cable and tensioned to the manual call-out it sings like a banjo string. Seems way too tight and I did not tension mine to the full tension but pretty close. The other rudder cables are a little tricky because everything moves. Taking the tension on the front cables under the floor the rudder pedals try to move and give inconsistent readings. Behind the mid-ship bell-cranks its the same thing but he rudder will deflect. You can view it as a closed loop system but it doesn't seem to work that way. My front rudder cables are somewhere around 45lbs, the rear sections a little less but again, getting an accurate read is difficult. I didn't do this myself but it seems to me you would need a way to lock the pedals and rudder in place to
> accurately set the tensions. The trim cables were fun as well because every time you cycle the trim the tensions change. You have to equalize the tensions by working the handle back and forth when you stop, and just keep playing with it. The trim drive broke while I was adjusting mine so I had to machine a new shaft for the trim mechanism. These things happen. I'm no expert and I am sure there are others who will have some sound techniques. I hope you get some beneficial responses.
>
> Regards,
>
> M. Banks
> F-24, N4263S
>
> --- On Tue, 11/16/10, jwm1801 wrote:
>
> From: jwm1801
> Subject: [fairchildclub] Fairchild 24 Rudder rigging
> To:
fairchildclub@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Tuesday, November 16, 2010, 3:58 PM
>
> Group,
>
> The manual calls out 51 lbs for the rudder cables and 165 lbs for the rudder return cable. I am having a hard time achieving these numbers. Any suggestions? Any of you other F-24 owners know what you have your current rudder cables set at? Any help would be appreciated. Thank you, JON
>
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