Locating Rudder Cable Penetrations

[Bdflies]

Poking the knife through your newly covered and painted fuselage can be stressful. But you have to do it, to get those rudder cables to the rudder. Ask a few builders how they located the penetrations and you'll get a few answers, or at least that was my experience. I'm sure my method isn't new or innovative, but it worked great, so I thought I'd share it;
Before covering, I hooked up the rudder cables as they'd be when the plane was complete. I then clamped a straight edge vertically, to the outside of the fuselage, exactly where the cable touched the straight edge (ruler). The bottom of that ruler was level with the bottom of the lower longeron. This way, I could measure how far up the fuselage the cable would pass through the covering. I also clamped another ruler, horizontally, to the tailpost, extending forward to the first ruler. This gave the distance from the tailpost where the cable would penetrate. Knowing I'd lose the numbers if I wrote them, I just took a picture of the rulers in position. I did the same for the other side and found the dimensions identical. Pics attached.
I still took a long deep breath when I made the cuts, but with my pictures of the locations, the cuts are in the right place. I'm sure there are other ways to do this that work great. This was easy and worked great!

Bill

[BTAZ]

Great minds!

Pretty much exactly what I did, but I used a ruler and a framing square.. The framing square ensured a right angle between the two measuring tools.

[Battson]

You can also use a laser pointer, we did this once the fabric was taught but not silvered.

We had one person directing the pointer from inside the fuselage with the laser pointer sitting in the fairlead hole, and the other person outside eyeballing from the rudder horn. '

Once it lines up, mark the fabric with a pencil. Cut just a tiny fraction low of the mark, to account for the catenary curve in the cable.

[fairchild]

how about take 2 strings---- glue each one to a small magnet. Stick them on either side of the skin. Pull the inside one to the front pulley for the pedals--- pull the outside
one to the rudder horn. magnets will slide across the fabric if you tension the strings just enough to all most pull them apart. That might give you a straight line point before
cutting any fabric. havnt tried it---- yet---
Tim