Steve Kiblinger, .. Builder of a Milholland Better Half 2 cylinder VW and Legal Eagle Ultralight Airplane | Home
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George Schaub from Bellevue, Iowa declares the seat a victory in comfort.
The following series of pictures shows the control stick, aileron pulleys and rudder pulleys... The adapted tiller pulley and rudder pulleys are from RonStan Sailing Systems product no's RF573 and RF571The stainless steel saddle adapted to the tiller pulley is also the thrust bearing for control cable loads...
Please note that we have used Avex upset rivets in the stick bearing doublers and the pulley saddles!...
The phenolic pulleys in the stick bed tube are surplus from Roman and the Nylon aileron control pulleys are UL items from Aircraft Spruce & Specialities...
There will be a second short bolt on the top of the angle bracket (I don't know what Leonard does there)...
Use two 1.5 inch aileron cable pulleys on the left side and two 2.5 inch
2 additional bolts with bushings and wide area washers needed to keep aileron movements from flexing .025 alum housing at the rear...
Fuselage
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Sheet 10 of the LEU plan has a critical omission on some copies...
The engine mount drawing (A) located on the bottom left side of the sheet may be missing a dimension of 8 and 1/4 inches center to center of the lower 2 engine mount bolt holes... Without this dimension the builder will think the top dimension of 7 and 7/8 inches works for horizontal spacing on both top and bottom engine mounting bolts and it does not!
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The fuselage metal work is essentially finished, painted and the controls are being fitted. A pre-painting trial fitting of Empennage and engine case is shown below...
Current fuselage status is shown to the left minus the controls...
As we get time pictures will be included showing the jigs used and the fuselage building sequence.
We were only able to tack weld the fuselage with our MIG setup. The MIG was to hard to control on the .035 wall tube... I did make some welds around the seat front braces on .049 wall tube...
My aviation mentor, Roman Wasilewski, took the fuselage on his van to Grove Aircraft in El Cajon, CA where the fuselage was welded out by Steve Hatch using TIG...
Early building stages
The jigs were all cut from one piece of 4 x 8 x3/4 plywood except for the tailpost frame and the braces... Careful examination will reveal "U" bolts at stations 2 and 3 at the bend points and continued use of those 4 x 3/4 x 3/4 oak flooring blocks fastened down by 2 - 1 5/8 #6 drywall screws...
The tailpost is squeezed between blocks with a hole drilled to chamber the tube and the 5/8 plywood panel... The blocks are easy to adjust for alignment of the tailpost...
I tried to cold bend the bottom longerons at station 3 and 2... I got away with it at station 3 and broke 1 longeron at station 2 - now has a nice little finger patch on the bottom...
Fittings View
There are MIG welds on the seat bottom brace tube - all other welds are TIG...
Critical fabrication areas
Be sure to use paint that is compatible with the covering system... In the above picture you can see a paint repair with epoxy based primer to prepare the tubes for cover... It took 3 coats to cover the oil based yellow enamel (Rustoleum) and an ugly task...
We plan to powdercoat any future tube structure for both the lightness and durability it provides... Paint adds up to pounds of extra weight and it bruises easily...