Bell Cranks and linkages

Knocked off a few niggling little jobs today. It's been hard to work around uni and last night was my first good sleep all week (3am - 11am). will be no such luxury tonight, this counts as procrastinating and i have a meeting at 1pm tomorrow (sunday!) and about form now till then worth of exploded axonometric diagram to do...

Anyway i got the bell cranks designed and cut out. All the linkage bits i pretty much thought up as i went along, though i had a vague idea of what i wanted; they definitely had to be bigger than before, and i wanted to minimise friction and slack as much as possible. The little carbon forks on the fibreglass rods I think were a good idea, easy to make, we will see whether they hold together or not. they look pretty tough anyway. My little stainlless threaded fork is an M5 turnbuckle body that i cut up, and took about 5 minutes to make with the grinder. The thread is done for you its great.

I also took the opportunity to finish off the cams and do the wand as well. The centreboard system is pretty done save a bit of bog and the ball joint on the flap. Im waiting until I've done the gantry before i cut the rudder to length and put its linkages together.


I checked the centreboad foil angle of attack today too (first time in the boat) and its what i wanted (good management more than anything i think!) between +1.5 and +1.8 degrees on roungh calculations. Much more than that and you start paying drag penalties, but form memory up to about that range you only gain 1% or 2% Cd but significant Cl.

Also i went to pick up the carbon tube I got from CST for the gantry from the post office as i was out when the courier rocked up (as is always the case) but the post office is apparently shut on the weekends??? wtf? how backward are we! I now get the whole '5 working days' thing. There must be an easier way to get something from one person to another... in this day and age.