It’s been forever since I have put up and update. I haven’t had a lot of stuff happening, so I waited until I got some substantial work done.
I’m at the point where I am attaching the metal skins to the root area of the wing and leading edge. This has taken a while due to various reasons. The tip wrap was confusing, but simple once you get it on and see what it should look like. That’s why I included copious pictures in the hope that someone may find it easier than me the first time around. The bottom root skin was final installed and lines were marked on the spars for where the anodizing needed to be removed so the sheet metal can be glued down.
I had a misunderstanding with what the tape on the rib to wrap contact area was for. That led to a call down to the factory where I’m sure they look forward to my very technical questions haha. So the foam tape is to smooth out the area so the edges of the areas that were fluted don’t deform the leading edge wrap. The first tape I had was heavey duty, but not very foamy. RANS mentioned that they have recently been using the kind of foam tape you use for poster boards. So, that was the answer and we’ll find out in a year or so if that works :-). Next step was removing the anodizing. I had a hard time figuring out the best way to do this. I’ll await the screams of horror, but in the end I put a flexible 80-grit sanding brush on the dremel and was very careful about how long I spent in areas. I don’t think it should cause any ill-effects and there doesn’t seem to be any deep cuts from staying too long in one area.
One issue that had me worried was that I had a few rivets that didn’t pull tight in the leading edge wrap stringer. They were loose enough to turn and move around. Not sure why that happened. In the process of drilling one out, it enlarged the whole. On the recommendation from another airplane person, I put a washer on the stringer side and called it good. Another issue with the wrap is that there were two areas in between ribs that exhibited “oil-canning.” I called RANS and was told that I could put an extra stringer in there and that should do it. Again, not sure why this happened. (Note: I decided to forgo this as it seems that some loose rivets were contributing to the issue.)
Something that I couldn’t find in the text or just missed was a hole on the forward part of the upper root skin. There is a hole on each side that must be transferred on the 1st and 2nd rib as well as the leading edge wrap. This may have been obvious, but since RANS does an awesome job with making my life easy, I didn’t want to just drill a hole that I couldn’t find reference to.
Another task somewhat completed was the fuel cap assembly. I got it attached although I’m going to wait to break open my fancy DOW 730 sealant until the other wing is ready. Then I will sell it (maybe) and make $10’s of dollars (maybe).
On a somewhat related note, the group I was in that owned a Cessna 140 and a Cub recently dissolved and the planes have been sold. A recent endeavor to go back to school while working and building a plane should take up most of time though. I’m still instructing and part of a club, so I will still have some airplane access although not as cheap. So ends the first chapter of pseudo airplane ownership.
(10 h)
