Thorp Air Command - T18.net

There I was flying along on a beautiful day to an airport about 45 minutes away. So while enroute, I decide I want to climb a bit to get over some clouds, so I pushed the trim up button on my new handy dandy electric trim system I installed about 5 hours ago. Well, it sure trimmed up, and kept on trimming up! I turned off my autopilot, wrangled the stick to get it under control, and pulled the breaker. Well, I was right in the middle of nowhere, so about the closest place to land was back home. So off I went for about 20 minutes holding some pretty stiff forward pressure on the stick. I got home, no issues, and start looking into it.

Well, it turns out that my new Infinity stick grip was the culprit. There is a long screw that goes right in the middle of the grip, and it passes beside all those wires in the grip. I believe the grip installation instructions even mention to make sure you dont strangle the wires as you tighten the grip here. Thats easier said than done, but none the less, I thought I had installed the screw without strangling the wires.

As you can see, I was wrong. As the screw tightened the grip, it strangled and cut wires. The mangled pitch up wire decided to make contact with the screw on this flight, and gave me a little surprised. You can see in the picture below how the grip was tightened together and ate the wires. Again, I thought I had taken extra attention to make sure this did not
happen, but...

Anyway, just thought I would share this in case anyone was about to install the Infinity stick grip. I really like the grip, but I now have removed the middle screw out of the grip!!

Infinity Stick @#*+*#@ I still like the KISS system

you have a point Bill, I never had runaway trim with my manual trim system!

I flew a RV that had every thing connected through the switch. Flaps, radio, trim. wing leveler,starter,lights and several others that I can't remember, Made my head hurt

FWIT I removed the HEAVY gauge wires in my Infinity grips and replaced them with 18/20 ga wire . Much easier to deal with when closing the stick with the screws and when I routed the wires thru the control stick . I could have never routed the wires with that heavy gauge wire , let alone solder them to the Sub D connector . BOOM ! I have my trim CB's mounted within easy reach should I have a runaway which I can tell in an instant . BO YAH !

RB