Sunday, August 12, 2012

Saturday, August 11, 2012 Still Working on the new Hand Throttle

A month or so ago I had ordered some cabling and other parts to complete the sub-project of converting the foot-feed throttle control to a control-bar-mounted hand throttle. Earlier in the week, Richard had proposed several options and finally after I took the parts to him, he found a way to fabricate the cable-end so it would fit on the lever that was mounted on the trike. Today he came down in the afternoon to hopefully get it finally installed and working.
But in the morning, before Richard came out, Bob Frolund came out to the airport to borrow the snowmobile trailer so he could haul some stuff up north. It was the first time I had been there myself since he and I were last there. While he was there he wanted to check out how the bracket he had made for the folded wing was working, and also to see if we could figure out how to get the wing inflated on the carriage. We got the trailer out of the hanger and hooked up to his pickup and then turned our attention to the trike. We saw some issues with the bracket that needed to be tweaked, and he has plans to resolved those issues.
But the wing was still stubborn and would not inflate. He saw that the left wing would fold out fine, but when we tried to stretch out the right wing, the left one would retreat back. He suggested that we tie down the left wing to a stake in the ground so it could not retreat back. He had a tent stake in his truck and drove it into the ground and tied the wing to that. We tried again to push the right wing out, but it resisted. Then suddenly it popped open and the haul-back tensioner came back as it should. At the same time, the left wing sprung loose from the stake. Turns out it was tied too closely to the stake and needed more slack; easy problem to solve. So this procedure to get the wing inflated should work in the future, hopefully.
So after a break for greasy tavern burgers for lunch in a local Winsted bar and grill, Bob took off.
After Richard arrived, we set about to get the throttle cable installed. With much frustration, nothing seemed to fit or to work the first time. Richard had to make constant adjustments to get things to work together. The cable housing wouldn’t go into the control, the location of the other cable end was wrong qhich required drilling a new spot for the cable to attach to the hand control, but to do that, he needed to move the bolt that attached the plate to the control, then the starter switch needed to be moved, because it was in the way, then the wire connecting the hand control to the new cable needed to bne replace by one that would retract property and on and on. But the more critical issue was to ensure that the new hand control would open the carburetor to full power, and retract it back to idle. It wasn’t doing that initially. Richard worked for several hours to get the proper balance, but he finally succeeded to make the proper adjustment.
Finally, at about 5PM, we quit, thoroughly exhausted. But we’ve made progress, and hopefully next time we’ll be done with this phase. Then I can get to the process of flying.