Month: October 2015

Maria had to work a 28-hour shift over the weekend, so that meant it was airplane building time. I got a lot done and because of that I am ready to glue the leading edge skins down sometime this week.

I started the day by getting the fuel fittings installed into the tank. This is always a chore since there is no easy way to hold everything in place. But I persevered and got it done. With that done I was able to move on to getting the ribs into place. I got them all clecoed into place and then clecoed the rib stringers into place to make sure we were good to go.  I then proceeded to rivet the ribs to the spar. Like the previous stringers, I needed to remove some material for almost every spot where the lower one riveted to the rib. The stringer was just too close to the rib and I want everything to last! I also installed the tip rib and got the stringer for it installed as well. Along with riveting the ribs, I had to finish up the aileron bellcarnk by riveting the bell crank rib reinforcement in, installing the aileron cables, and tightening down the bolts holding the bell cank together and to the plane.

After all that work, I final installed the fuel tank. With that done, I could rivet in the root and number 2 rib. DON’T FORGET TO DIMPLE THE RIVET HOLES FOR THE ROOT AND #2 RIB! You can make it work afterwards, but it is kind of a pain. I spent a lot of time dimpling the root skins and took a break for dinner. Had a friend come over afterwards to help with some more building. We finished dimpling everything that needed to be dimpled, installed the root skin reinforcements, and riveted the leading edge wrap stringer to the leading edge wrap. We then clecoed it in and finished the evening by installing the tip bow wrap. That one is always an interesting project. Easy, but interesting.

That wrapped up my Saturday and probably was about 7 hours of work.

On Sunday I worked and got the lower sight fuel fitting installed and then riveted in the lower root skin. Today I finished up by getting the flap teleflex cable setup and ready to be secured. That’s my last item to complete before I can rivet the upper root skin in and begin removing the anodizing from the spar in preparation for adhesion.

It’s going pretty good and I’m looking forward to starting on the fuselage.

(11 h)

Things have been moving right along. I haven’t been very good about putting the updates out to the interwebs though. So, this is my big update for about the last two weeks.

The first thing to note is that I got the rib to clip areas primed. After that Maria helped out and riveted the clips to the ribs. We then riveted the clips to the spar for ribs 4 and 11. One thing I realized after this was that the modified clips for the root rib probably could be riveted in before the trailing edge spar fitting is installed. If you go much further, the rivet for the lower hole in the trailing edge root rib clip hits the spar fitting. Not impossible to deal with, but might make life a little easier. I then worked on getting the ribs into place. This requires the removing of drag braces and one compression tube to get everything to fit right.

The bellcrank was finished prior to the rib work and is ready to be finished once the ribs are final installed.

Up next was the always nervous fuel tank drilling. I first drilled the holes for the sight gauge fittings and the tank withdrawal fitting. A few days went by prior to getting the rest drilled since this happened a little bit before I got the ribs clecoed in. Once the ribs were in I clecoed in the upper root skin to get the center point for the fuel cap opening. I got that done relatively quickly and painlessly. I learned from the left wing that I should go ahead and finish all the drilling of the retainer, scupper, and cap holes so I can clean the tank out prior to installing the fuel fitting. I didn’t do this last time and I had to be creative to clean then and hope I didn’t leave anything in the tanks.

So that’s it for now. This wing is going pretty quick. I’m hoping to get the fittings in today or early tomorrow so I can get the tanks leak tested and get the ribs final installed.

(10 h )

I’ve resumed work on the right wing. Over the course of the last week, I’ve gotten the tip bow in, the bellcrank brace installed, and everything else up to that point. So far it’s all going pretty smooth. I’m getting ready to start straightening the ribs so I can be ready when the time comes for that which should be soon. I’ll get some pictures up soon, but I just wanted to put a note down about the current progress.

(8 h)