I got a Private Message asking about how I mounted the Piper Blade-style Pitot on the Valkyrie, and as this was not the first time I had been asked, I figured that I might as well answer where it can be seen by others. The bottom line was that this was really easy to do. The blade is designed to mount on a flat surface, so all I needed to do was pick the surface and make sure it was stable. I decided that I wanted to keep it close to Van's design pitot position, and the best place I could find was just outboard of the rib that is just outboard of the aileron bellcrank access. I simple made a doubler for the skin (before the skin was mounted), and test-fit the pitot. I added nut plates (not in these photos), and the structural part was done. (You can see the doubler plate and hole for the pitot.)
Since this was a heated pitot, I was a little concerned about hooking up a nylon or plastic line to the metal assembly, so I rigged a test by putting on a short segment of line and hooking the pitot up to the power supply (with the resistor I planned to use to control the current. In a few seconds, it got hot enough to smell. In thirty seconds, the nylon melted off. I decided to use a metal tube all the way to the wing root! This photo shows the roughed in connection I made. I ran the line next to the spar, under the bellcrank pivot to make sure there was no danger of interfering with the controls. At the first Condition Inspection, everything was still in good shape.
Like I said up front - pretty simple!
Paul
Since this was a heated pitot, I was a little concerned about hooking up a nylon or plastic line to the metal assembly, so I rigged a test by putting on a short segment of line and hooking the pitot up to the power supply (with the resistor I planned to use to control the current. In a few seconds, it got hot enough to smell. In thirty seconds, the nylon melted off. I decided to use a metal tube all the way to the wing root! This photo shows the roughed in connection I made. I ran the line next to the spar, under the bellcrank pivot to make sure there was no danger of interfering with the controls. At the first Condition Inspection, everything was still in good shape.
Like I said up front - pretty simple!
Paul