RocketBoy Aircraft Products

Parts and accessories for your F1 Rocket or Homebuilt aircraft.

   Cool Products

   Free Software

  F1 Canopy Covers
  
        Cosmic
      Rocket Stuff

   Heater control Module
    Homemade EFIS
   HID Landing Light
  Equipment cooling
   Pitch Control Module
   External Power unit
  Painting it!
   Electrical
   Alternator
   LED NAV Lights  

Regular Rocket stuff

  Baffles    
   Balancing
    Cables/Throttle
    Canopy
    Control Stick
    Cowl
    Engine OH
    Firewall
    Paint
    Soon...
    Soon...

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Copyright © 2002, 2003 by
R. Gross
Rocketboy Aircraft Products Inc.

Throttle quadrant and engine control cables

The assembly manual doesn't' specify how to control the engine and leaves this up to the builder. I wanted to insure the cables were VERY securely attached as well as me making them easy to replace. a loose cable = crashed airplane.
I considered several throttle quadrants. Most were beautiful devices, very capable of the job at hand. Most were quite expensive, HEAVY, with prices around $200. No problem for me except why buy this nice thing only to cover it up not to be seen? I went with the lightweight, proven and inexpensive three lever quadrant from Van's Aircraft. I also order an RV-8 rear throttle kit. More on that HERE.

Here is the Vans' throttle quadrant. It's mounted to a hat shaped bracket which is riveted to the fuselage side. The Van's quadrant comes with some real cheapo wood knobs. I replaced all these knobs with anodized aluminum ones. If you look carefully, you can see I needed to drill a new hole in the throttle arm for the rear throttle pushrod. This was needed as the existing hole required to much force from the rear throttle to operate it.

You can see the routing of the cable in this picture. The firewall holes use rubber grommets and stainless steel firewall shields. This setup is working well in flight testing.

All three cables are installed now. The yellow clamp was made from some Aluminum angle .100" thick from Home dept. It allows the cables to be easily removed by removing a single screw. Know the Blue anodized throttle knob!

A detailed view of the cable clamp. it was easy to make, taking about 30 minutes total.

The setup is nearly complete except for a red anodized mixture knob, and the quadrant cover.

At the business end, the cables attach to the engine like this. I used a similar method of anchoring the cable sheath. The big red plate is made from .090" AL. It attaches in four places, at the two injector mount studs, and at the two rear case boss fittings. It's too strong. I should have drilled lightening holes in it.

The cover is attached now. Still needs the top cover plate.
 

"Sadly, artificial intelligence will probably never be a match for natural stupidity."
- Rocketboy