Steering
The steering uses a pair of handlebars connected to the rudders though a Morse cable.
Handlebars.
Handle bars and morse cable front
fixing.At the front end, the steering starts with a
pair of handlebars and a piece of 25mm steel tube.
This runs down through a bronze bush fixed to a plate.
a nut has been welded at the bottom of the tube and a
bolt fitted through the hull. The tube is simply
screwed on the the bolt so the bars can swivel round
on the bolt.
I used a 'U' bolt to clamp a flat piece of bar to the top of the tube and fitted the end of the morse cable to that. The movement of steering is restricted by two bolts mounted in the centre console so I can't put too much weight on the morse cable.
Rudders, showing linkage.At the back, the morse cable ends a right angle bracket. the center of the cable connects to the right hand rudder which is in turn connected to the left by a piece of aluminium tube and couple of rod ends.
Rudders.
I
have a pair of rudders made of
glass fibre on a foam and balsa core. I decided to
experiment with vacuum bagging to see if I could make
a glassfibre rudder without making two haves and
joining them together. With this technique, I made two
end pieces from "T" section aluminium, fitted captive
nuts to use as mounts. I sandwiched one at each end of
two pieces of foam with a piece of balsa down the
centre (just to give it some strength whilst I was
making it). The next job was to carve the shape. As
the foam is very soft, it was a simple matter to sand
it down.
I then layed up some glassfibre matting with resin, wrapped it around the foam, covered the lot in pin-pricked halar release film.
Next came a layer of peel ply followed by bleed cloth and the lot went into a plastic bag. Using a compressor from an old freezer, I sucked th air out which pulled the material and resin upto the foam. After a few hours, when the resin has cured, open the bag and trim the trailing edge.