Saitek rudder failure, repair

[Mac 256]

Doing carrier traps on Thursday, my Saitek rudder pedals broke while taxiing. Took it to AIMD in the hangar deck who worked miracles on it. Go Navy!

AIMD report, first attempt:

The failure, cheap plastic anchoring a very strong spring.

What it's supposed to look like.

Big spring, cheap plastic

Crazy glue first

Rough up the substrate, preparing for 2 part epoxy reinforcement

2 part epoxy cures in minutes and is very strong

But... it did not bond strong enough for the tremendous force of that spring

 

Next, polyurethane reinforcement for the second attemp:

The hook angle was wrong, the spring was too loose

Constructive use of 2 vice grips and careful elbow grease re-orients the hook as well as both ends of the spring

Re-installation complete

The design, obviously, is very poor. The repair was difficult, time consuming and precarious but, for now, it will do. However, there is a tiny bit of looseness in the spring's ability to return the pedal to its home position. I can live with the now repaired $200 Saitek cheap design

 

 

[Mac 256]

Yup, they work fine.

 

Geko, very much appreciated your LSO work for us. And, Geko, Redd, and Zeus Nato, thanks for the great flights this morning. I definitely need to do many more traps. I intentionally launched, worked the pattern and trapped/boltered with a very light load to get accustomed to that cursed float on final. Next carrier quals, I'd like to do the opposite: close to max weight.

[Geko 141]

Yeah, your approaches today looked pretty good mac, I only had to give you minor power/altitude calls, and you come in consistently to the left of center (but you were good at correcting it when I called it). The main thing holding you back is just that throttle control in-close, all your bolters were barely floated over the 4 wire, or from settling too much in close and hook-skipping, so just work on smoothing out those in-close corrections and you'll increase your boarding rate dramatically.

And yeah, coming in at 33-34k lbs makes it much more float-resistant in-close. Would recommend you stay a little heavier for sure.