I finally come up with a plan that i think will work for my steering, the assembly i have made from 2 bearings, a bit of exhaust pipe and a couple of exhaust clamps and mounted to the cockpit front using a scrap piece of 6mm aluminum i had
Here’s the same shot as the last one but shows the steering arm moved to its full lock. As you will see in a later picture the exhaust tubing idea i went with also acts as a steering stop so that i cant turn the steering too far and bust the rudders or something horrible. I know people will say why not keep things simple and just have a steering shaft with a bearing either end, and i’ll respond with “cause i can” and its not heavy enough to be of concern and not any harder to make up. 🙂
close up of steering assembly
The bearings are held in place from sliding up and down the exhaust tubing by multiple dot punches on either side of the bearing
Here i have it in the vice just to show how i put it all together, there is two parts to the outer shell and one part slips inside the other then the two nuts you see half way down the slotted section gets down up to hold it all in place
This is one half of the two sections i just mentioned, you can see i cut a T shaped slot in this piece that way i can slip the steering shaft down the slotted section and then place then join the whole lot together. By doing this i can dis assemble and replace any part of the steering at any stage of its life if something should pack up in the future. I could of just welded everything together and be done with it , but that doesn’t make it serviceable later in life.
Here is the main steering shaft that is supported by a bearing at either end. The only thing i have left to do here is drill and tap a hole in the end of the shaft so that the shaft can’t slide in and out of the bearings. I’m not the best at explaining i guess but hopefully going by the pictures you can see what i mean.
Note 23-4-2005 : I have just realised that during my several plan changes of the steering in the last few weeks i have forgotten to take into account that when you turn right with the steering one would expect that the craft will turn right also , and now that i have changed the design several times i forgot to make those changes with it , therefore currently if i turn left the craft will turn right, so i’ll have to do some more modifications in this area.
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Note 2 : 25-4-2005 – Easy solution to the above miss calculation i made and that is … when i get the cables for the steering i’ll just get longer ones than i expected and run them right up the inside of the plenum chamber , then around the front and through the opposite side that way when i turn right it will “pull” on the cables rather than push on them which in turn will make me turn the correct way 🙂
