The time has finally come. The left wing is ready to cover. I can only do one wing at a time so covering won’t be until at least next summer. There have been obstacles throughout the process, but it has been a fun learning experience and RANS has a great airplane that is easy enough for almost anyone to build.
The last steps were gluing the leading edge wrap and upper root skin to the spar. This marked one of my more time intensive obstacles. I had a mishap on the leading edge wrap. RANS calls to use a board to press the edge of the wrap to the spar during the gluing. I had the board a tad low on the spar and it didn’t end up holding the wrap to the spar (picture below). This meant I needed to remove the epoxy and get it cleaned up to reglue. I probably spent 3.5 hours getting everything cleaned up. The second time worked great. My strategy was placing the board on the wrap and seeing where it needed to go to press the wrap to the spar without bending the wrap. I then marked a line above the board on the wrap so I could place it in the same position after I had the wax paper down (to keep the board becoming one with the spar). This worked out great. The upper root wrap was no issue as well. I recommend to anyone getting ready for this step to just take a look before diving in because problems here are fixable, but it takes up some good progressive building time. haha.
Next was to smooth the transition from the wrap to the spar. I used SuperFil from PolyFiber to do this. It’s really light and easy enough to put on. I probably didn’t do an awesome job and that led to a lot of sanding for me. But, it worked.
Maria riveted in the upper root wrap and we were DONE with one wing. The next one SHOULD go somewhat quicker and then it’s on to the fuselage.
The wing is being stored up at Green Castle while the other one is built.
Thanks to all who have answered my questions and Ed at the factory. They have been a great resource. I always wonder how they feel with some of the questions I have and another builder put it very nicely. Ed is probably like the local computer guy dealing with “older” generation and their computers/smartphones. This thing is foolproof if you know what’s going on.
(10 h)
