Source: 2014 Q1 Beartracks, Russ Erb

For years my tail wheel steering has had a large deadband in it. As USN Test Pilot Ed Kolano wrote about in the October 2013 Experimenter, freeplay/deadband/slop in a control system is generally bad and should be minimized. It introduces a non-linearity in the control that makes it difficult to use. In my case, the deadband was so large that I wondered just how much of my steering was coming from the tail wheel and how much was coming from differential braking.
In my case, the deadband was a systemic problem in the design of the connection between the rudder and the tailwheel steering yoke. The springs were connected to the steering yoke by a short chain. Like particle physics, the chains are inherently quantized. You could only adjust the length of the chain in increments of one link. In my case, the number of links I had left too much slack, but taking one out would stretch the springs too much. Not only would that take away most of their effectiveness, but they would also be very hard to install.
I couldn’t just take one out on one side because that would leave me perpetually taxiing in a circle. Possibly amusing, but not very practical. After much staring at the tail wheel steering system and much noodling, I knew that I needed a way to connect the springs to the steering yoke that I could control the length of the connection to a very small increment. I decided to try using control cable and Nicopress fittings, much like used on all of the control cables in the airplane. I made up the cables you see here, and they worked out very nicely, with about 1/16″ of pre-load in each cable. Was it an improvement? The first time I tried taxiing after the modification, my feet tried to use the same gains they had used for the last three years. This resulted in me almost over-controlling the airplane! Fortunately the back taxiway at Rosamond is very wide. After I dialed my gains back, I found the airplane to be significantly easier to taxi.