After working with fiberglass for what seemed to be an eternity, it feels great to get back to fabricating mechanical parts. The sad part about it all is having to disassemble the body. It looked so much like a helicopter with the body on.

Now it's back down to the frame with little mounted on it. Most of the other builders I talk to say things begin to move along at a faster pace after the body is done.

I took this shot of drilling the cyclic control stick to show the nifty V block configuration I bought at the local hardware store. It's made for mounting on a hand drill; but it worked great on my little drill press. It makes drilling holes in round stock precise.

Can you figure out how I took this picture with both hands in the picture?

Here are the cyclic controls and cables mounted on the ship. The whole fabrication was straight forward cutting, drilling and mounting. The important things in this assembly are keeping tight tolerances but maintain easy movement. There should be no slop in the movement yet it needs to move easy and smooth.

There's a nylon bushing around the clevis bolt that had to be slightly reamed with a D size drill bit to get the movement to feel free enough.

You can see how the cyclic control cables attach up top. It's a very clean, smooth operating mechanism.

It's fun to operate the cyclic controls and watch the gyrations of the cyclic. That's Jim off to the right making chopper noises.

I'll be taking the cyclic stick along with some other parts to be chrome plated. I'll also order a military style stick handle rather than use the stock handle from RotorWay. I'll take a picture as soon as I get it.