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Stick grip clearance - anyone achieved full 25 down?

sritchie

Well Known Member
Hey all,

I'm in my final rigging stage and am gearing up to modify my control sticks so that my Tosten military-style grips will not make contact with my Aerosport panel when the elevator hits the down stop. I've found many approaches in the forums:

1. bend the control stick
2. cut off the bottom of the stick to move everything back
3. buy / make an angled bushing for the Tosten grip to tilt it back ~8 degrees and gain clearance
4. add a new control stop to limit the elevator closer to the allowed 20 degrees of down travel from 25 degrees.

I am going to attempt a combination of 1 and 3, and try to avoid 2 so I don't have to redrill the attachment hole.

MY QUESTION IS: has anyone making these adjustments ended up with the full 25 degrees of allowed down travel in the elevators? I would love to keep the full allowed range here but every report I've found involved limiting elevator travel as well.

I will mock this up next time I'm at the hangar, but wanted to poll the crowd here to see if

- this is possible, or
- if there are MORE options for how to achieve clearance that I have not considered.

Thanks!
 
I just did this a couple of weeks ago. I borrowed a tubing bender from a neighbor and tightened the bend of the sticks enough for the Tosten grips to just clear the aft most switches.

It was a very iterative process, as the control sticks have a lot of bounce back. I had been dreading the process and but I think once I got started, I had both of them done in around an hour.

The one I used looked a lot like this one.... Good Luck!

https://www.harborfreight.com/12-ton-hydraulic-pipe-bender-32888.html
 
That's fantastic, that is the bender I was going to use. Do you happen to know your final elevator travel after the bend?

"Iterative process" is dripping with meaning deep into the RV-10 build :)
 
I don't remember the exact number of degrees, but I do remember that I was able to get to the high side of the range called for in the plans 20-25 degrees, so likely around 23 or 24 degrees. I can't imagine when you would need that much down elevator... outside loops :) ???
 
I only want the 25 in this case because I didn't read that 25 was the MAX allowable, and spent last night filing the control stops to let me get an extra degree of travel. I'd love to avoid having to undo that!

Widening the control stops isn't the end of the world of course. If I need to do it I think I will RTV some grommet edging onto the stop to provide a touch of padding[0]. That should let me avoid riveting on new metal.

But hopefully the bender + maybe the new bushing will get me there.

[0] https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/appages/grommetedging.php?clickkey=4582
 
I think you could get the full 25. I have the angled bushings from Tosten, but I ended up over bending the sticks slightly, so I just went back to the straight bushings. I think if you bent the sticks and used the angled bushings you could likely get the full 25 degrees without hitting the panel.
 
One other option that I used was to trim the bottom of the stick where it inserts into aileron connector, in order to bring the stick back toward the pilot by about 1-1.5 inches. That did require drilling new bolt holes in the stick, but avoided the need to bend the stick.

However, I am using a Ray Allen G407 stick grip (with custom switches) which also lowers the total height of the grip, as only the top part with switches sticks up above the top of the Van's stick, with the lower hand grip portion sliding over the stick. So this may not give you enough movement with your grip?

Just another thought that worked for me.
Cheers,
 
You can also cut from the top, my 14 clears the panel including the cabin heat push pull which typically is a the problem.
 
I remember having these issues to resolve and I too wanted full travel as per Vans specs.
The trouble is that each change on one side is affecting a change elsewhere.
For example, if you cut too much from the top, the stick will be way down between your legs and limit your aileron movement due to leg interference.
Same is true if you cut it from the bottom.
Clearing the panel on the down travel by installing an off set bushing might solve the interference problem but you are now interfering with your family jewels on the up travel limits. Although you may never need full up travel, every run up involves a full travel control check and this is where you find out that your body parts are limiting the control stick travel.
I did a little bit of everything, bent the stick by making it red hot to tweak it just a bit. I also cut the bottom of the Tosten grip off as much as I could as well as the top of the stick.
The end result was full travel as per Vans specs but only when I am not sitting in it. Like everyone says, you really never need full travel.
 
The end result was full travel as per Vans specs but only when I am not sitting in it. Like everyone says, you really never need full travel.

I fully agree other than one addition. You really never need full travel after FAA inspection. Not everyone sets dinged on it, but my DAR definitely checked for full travel. He didn’t check actual degrees rather he looked for if it was a stop or an obstruction limiting movement.
 
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