More Tailfeathers:

The horizontal is almost finished. I still need to add the bushings for the brace wires and of course attach it to the fuselage.

For the control horns I used .090 thick 4130 instead of the .063 (the plans say .065 but that is not a thickness made). The way these are made with no flanges, I just felt like I wanted a little more thickness in the pieces. The 1 ounce or so weight penalty is an acceptable trade off as far as I'm concerned. I'm sure the stock thickness is just fine, I just feel more comfortable with this. BTW, the odd looking bushing is just something I had laying around to allow me to use a bolt that was a little too long.

Propped up on the fuselage.

Tailfeathers cont:

To lay out the curve for the elevator tip I used a welding rod and curved it to what I thought looked right and then traced the line. I usually use a flexible yardstick, piece of aluminum etc. but today, the welding rod was handy so I used it.

After curving the 1/4" x .035 trailing edge tube I welded it on the side toward the center line and to the elevator spar on the outside edge. I flattened the elevator spar using my vise and a couple of pieces of heavy steel. I then touched it up with heat and a body hammer.

The plans call for the 1/4" tubing here on the counterbalance. Since mine is larger than the plans I felt I needed something a bit more substantial so I used a 7/8" x 035" tube. The extra 2 ounces of weight is ahead of the hinge line so it will only help with balance.

I notched the end with my cutoff wheel and then heated and used a hammer to form the end. You can see that the other side has not been formed yet.

I also departed slightly from the plans here as well. The elevator ribs call for the 1/4" tube to sit right on top of one another. This would entail two very long tapered cuts on the 1/4" material which would have been problematic. It's very small and would be hard to hold for sawing or grinding. What I did is simply let the tube be side by side at the trailing edge and be in line at the forward edge.

I made all the ribs on this ultra simple jig made of the usual finish nails in plywood and tacked them together. Then its a simple matter to use the bench grinder to form the ends.

Here are the ribs installed. Don't forget to use 5/16" spacers (I used bolts) to make sure the centerline of the trailing edge is in line with the centerline of the elevator spar.

I still need to add the two braces in the elevator. The 1/4" tubing really moves around a lot when you weld it and may be a tad small for the application. I've never seen this small of tubing used and I think that 3/8" might be a better choice but I would hate to add the weight behind the hinge line. Here is one half of the elevator basically complete except for the two mentioned brace tubes.

I welded the tail ribs together for a couple of inches just to make sure they are secure.

Tailfeathers Cont...

Now that the bushings are made I needed to hold them in position while I welded them. This is not easy to do by clamps etc. because the bushings need to be spaced a little from the tubes to allow for fabric and paint and still allow the elevator to pivot. On the Super Cub tail, Piper calls for 1/16" gap to be filled by weld material. These is easily accomplished by a simple jig made by drilling 3 holes in some pieces of plywood and trimming them with the bandsaw. Here is a pdf file with the layout of this simple jig: Piper Hinge Jig. I need to give proper credit, this came from Christian Sturm's excellent site  detailing his build of a scratch built Super Cub. Lots of good info there. www.supercubproject.com

Pretty simple to use...I made mine from plywood so they char a little. I tacked the bushings with heavy tacks using my MIG welder and finished with my Meco Midget Torch.

After building these hinges I found what I think would be a much better way. I don't have much experience building hinges like this i.e. Piper type with hinge pins, I've always used the Pitts style which tucks the elevator stab in much closer to the horizontal stab. Here are a couple of pics that a gentleman used for his Skybolt project. I may use this method for the vertical stab and rudder.He has some good construction pictures which are applicable to any steel tube welded fuselage at: http://www.captalrice.com/Skybolt.htm

Here I am welding up the "ribs" on the stabilizer.

So here is the elevator spar attached...next will be the rest of the elevator.

Tailfeathers:

I've decided to increase the size of the tailfeathers over the stock size. It seems to be general consensus that the tailfeathers are slightly under sized. The Breezy can also use a stock Cub or Super Cub tail yet they have substantially more surface area than the drawings. I'm not doing anything drastic just increasing the area a little. The depth of the horizontal is increased by 2  7/16" and the width is increased by 6" per side (8' total  instead of 7'). The tip end of the horizontal is increased to 10" as opposed to the stock size of 6".

Again, I use a very simple jig of a piece of plywood with some finishing nails, pretty simple stuff. The ends are mitered with my chop saw.

The end is not up tight so that's why there is a gap. I'll clamp the piece in place before I tack it.

The plans aren't clear as to what to do about the ribs in the horizontal stab. The plans show 1 rib per side but since I increased the span I figured I would go with 2 per side. The plans don't show what size tubing to use either, so I used 3/8" x .035 tubing that I happened to have on hand. This fit up took about 1 minute on the grinder.

 

Here's one side in place.

Once again I use my favorite magnetic clamps to hold things into position.

Here are the rest in place. I may put a small piece of sheet stock across these to give them a bit more rigidity although they are pretty rigid to begin with.

Time to cut bushings for the hinges. These are cut out of 1/2" bushing stock (1/4" inner diameter). I use a cut off bit on my lathe and then I don't have to face them later. You could just as easily use a hack saw and a grinder but this way is a little neater and quicker.

Hard to see here but I hold a small awl inside the tube so that it slides onto the awl when it parts instead of falling in the swarf tank or on the floor.

Here are the some of the bushings completed

I'm getting to the stage of needing to accomplish many small tasks and a few big ones. I still need to build the tail feathers, though I've been waiting in case I come across any Piper parts that are cheap. Still, I don't expect it to take very long to build them but it needs to be done. I also need to finish the gear. I'll probably wait on the wing attach until I start on the wings but I'm still on the fence about that. There are several gussets, pulley mounts and finish welds that I need to do and I'll get to those as I can.

I decided to finish up the control wheel, at least as far as I could without the actual control wheel in hand. I purchased a sprocket and hub from a local farm store. The hub is a keyed hub with a 5/8th's shaft hole. The key way is not needed and the thing is way over built for what we need but it fits well and is machined so that the sprocket can be slid on and welded to it. Here, I am drilling a 1/4" hole for the bolt. I drilled it a little undersized (C drill or .242") and then reamed it to exactly .250". Standard AN bolts are a tad under size and this is a good mix of being tight but not being hard to install. If it turns out to have too much play, I can always go to a close tolerance bolt which is a few thousandths bigger than a standard AN bolt.

Here is the sprocket welded on. I used my MIG welder for this as it is much faster and easier to use. I'm not great at MIG but it is good penetration and should hold more than the chain will. The sprocket is for a #35 chain. The #40 chain just looked way too big and it's not specified in the plans. The tensile strength is at least 1758 lbs while the #40 is 3125 lbs. The working strength is much lower but that is for large loads at fairly high , continuous rotational speed. We are essentially using them in a static type situation so one would expect to get the full tensile strength out of the chain. Also, this chain seems in line with what small Cessna's and Piper's use but to be honest, I haven't actually measured those so take that comment with a grain of salt.

The plans show the control wheel mount welded on the end of the shaft. I wanted a little bearing surface so I mounted the attaching disk on a piece of 3/4" x .058 tube and this will slip over the shaft and get a bolt through it.

Once I welded the square 1/8" thick disk to the tube I chucked it in the lathe and turned it so it would be round and concentric as well as 2" in diameter per the plans. I also faced the end to clean off the weld scale. This did cost me about .003" of material thickness but I think it'll still be plenty strong.

It's all put together, clamped in the vise and drill/reamed for a 1/4" bolt. Since I clamped it tightly before I drilled and reamed, this leaves it too tight on the bushing to turn freely. This is intended as I can now file about .001" off of one end of the bushing on the control stick and have a freely rotating but no slop connection.

Here it is installed. I still haven't decided if I'm going to add dual controls. I hate to add the weight because a lighter weight plane flies so much better. My friend Gary Angelo calls me "Maximum Mac" because I've always been somewhat obsessive about weight control while building my aerobatic airplanes. I even had one of, if not the lightest Challenger 2 long wing ultralights and that thing would get off the ground in 2 car lengths. It flew fantastic because I sweated about every ounce that went into it. Of course, it's much easier and cheaper for me to go on a diet than to obsess about a pound or two here and there but it all adds up!

The rudders are installed. The plans have you using 5/8" x .035" tube in the rudder pedal bushings and the bushings that are welded on to the fuselage. You then place a 1/2" tube as the shaft. The inside diameter of a 5/8" x .035" tube is .555" and this is way to sloppy even with some distortion from welding. I think .049" wall tubing would have been better. .058" is the size we should use, but there is significant weld scale and distortion so I think the .049" would work better. This is just for the bushings in the pedal and on the fuselage. I may need to make a slight oversized shaft/pin for mine. I'll see how sloppy it is when I get the control cables hooked up.

Overhead shot-note that I have added the gussets to the front. Of course this distorts the receiver even more and will require more clean up work.

Here is the inner landing gear mount that I built on the bench. It was a simple job to grind on it a little to get a good fit and then weld it on the fuselage. This way, I know that the holes are aligned and it is spaced properly.

This post is a little long and is a little eclectic. I jump around a bit because I can only work for short periods of time and it takes too long to set up some things so again, I pick some little things I can complete.

Once I drilled the holes in the control stick I welded in the bushings and the cross tube.

I then needed to cut the "saddle" for the tube on top that holds the control wheel and the chain gear. I used the mill and a 3/4" end mill cutter to quickly accomplish this.

The tube welded to the top of the control stick.

I made the spacer for the nose gear strut. I took the strut (oleo) from the original C-150 nosewheel and lopped off the end. It's inside diameter was too large for the tube I was using so I had to machine a spacer to go inside of this so the tube would fit and could be silver soldered in. It would've been easier to just turn the final piece out on the lathe from a solid bar I think but this will work just fine.

Here it is soldered to the receiving tube. This will slide inside the tube at the front of the plane for the nose wheel steering.

I still need to drill the final hole in the inner tube.

LANDING GEAR

I was going to build my own gear legs and even machined my axles (see previous post) but a freind had an older set of Cub/Super Cub gear legs in his throw-away junk pile so I asked if I could use them. He said, "sure, I was about to throw them away". They are in need of a good cleaning and a little repair but are overall in pretty good shape. I think this will save me some build time but we'll see. The reason these were going to the trash bin is because they are the older gear with the 1 1/4 inch axles. 6.00 x 6 wheels need 1 1/2" axles so I'll have to figure something out with that.

These are easily jigged up by raising the jig a little and placing the fuselage in it. This allowed me to slide a square tube under the fuselage so I could align each gear. I attached the brackets to the gear legs and then lined everything up and tack welded them on.

The bushings at the top of the Cub gear are wider than what is shown on the plans so I had to modify the attach brackets a little. This is easily accomplished by bending the bracket so it can be welded.

These are the stiffeners that are welded onto the attach brackets.

These are the brackets that are attached to the centerline.

I made them on the bench and then will fit the assembly to the fuselage and weld it in. Here, I spaced the the proper distance using whatever I had (washers, over-sized nuts etc.) and used old bolts to hold the washers and the brackets into alignment.