Rigging a 35-70?

[Russell Williams]

I'm looking for any information folks may have on rigging a 35-70. On Spinach the aileron cable tension is set way too high, it is like the stick is set in concrete. I am also re-rigging the tail after recover. Of course there's no info on the TC that I can find. Anybody have drawings or some other info?

[William B. "Skip" Freely]

Russell . . .

I owned NC14481 back in the early '60s, and also did not have good rigging
data. A particular problem was setting the dihedral correctly . . . it really
seemed to make a big difference on stall speed (and consequently landing),
and I had set it too low. It would spin in a partial or full power stall, which
is a real jerker in a plane that gains so much speed. As I remember, the
thing ws red-lined at 160, but when I recovered my wits the first time,
the thing was up near 200! E A S Y does it! When I finally got the
specs on dihedral (from the Aerospace Museum in San Diego, which had
a fire later and destroyed all the priceless documentation), I reset it, and
it thereafter flew like a kitten. I didn't have any particular problems with
aileron or other control cable tension, and when I flew Spinach with John
Crittenden way back when, it was not obvious that there was any problem.
Sounds like you need to look into that . . . it probably has been disassembled
and re-rigged several times . . . so you have to go stop-to-stop, and get the
same friction throughout.

I am a stickler on safety, and figure I won't fly until things are RIGHT !


Skip

[Russell Williams]

Thanks for the reply Skip. Lowering the tension on the aileron cable has greatly improved the feel, and Spinach stalls just fine so I don't think there's a dihedral problem.

I've gotten some data on elevator rig from Joe Rankin for a Model 75, which as I understand it is essentially the same airframe as a 35-70. I'm going to go with it for now.

Agree on getting it right with rig, I don't want to end up in a situation where I run out of elevator authority to break a stall.