04/09/2011 - Determined to get plenty done today

First up for the day was riveting on the gussets, pretty straight forward, although remember the baggage bulkhead uses flush rivets, and I also needed to use a pop rivet on the bulkhead for the outer most hole.  Just could not seem to get either a rivet gun or the pneumatic squeezer straight !

The cockpit floor pans and seat backs have been given a black texture paint, as the seats will be black leather.  The seats are ordered and should arrive in November from Classic Aero.

The brake pedals and brackets have been coated with black gloss and a non- marking silver finish.  They look really smart, and riveting them together was simple

Pedals done, I needed to drill the arms for the brake cylinders. Fortunately fellow builders had already thoroughly documented what seems to be the best methodology for all this. First off I suspended the rudder bars from two pieces of 2 x 4, as a temporary jig. Then bolted the pedals on. Like many builders have done I have swapped the AN3-5 bolt on each side of the pedal and used AN3-56, you can see one of them in the second shot below.

Builders recommended using one big bolt to improve brake action (helps eliminate the tendency of the two bolts to work against each other when pressure is applied, and keeps the pedals aligned and less dreggy when returning to the neutral position by utilising one mutual axis of rotation).

With the pedals and brake cylinders on I clamped everything neutral. I set the rudder bars vertical and together (effectively the left rudder bar is leaning backwards and the right bar forwards) as after all this is how you'll want them to be in the aircraft. Then I used a piece of bar stock to clamp the pedals together. What you're doing is ensuring the brake pedals are aligned, when the rudder bars are aligned. This also has the added benefit of canting the brake pedals back just enough to hopefully eliminate the chance of accidentally operating the brake when using the rudder.

I used a threaded drill bit (#12) to mark the position of the brake cylinder. Once marked drilled away

Hey presto