Last update prior to Oshkosh.
Fuselage is ready for a light sanding followed by the topcoat colors after I get back from my summer tour in a week and a half or so.
I’m also finishing up my wing rack build today and tomorrow so I can transport/store the wings more compactly.
See you at OSH!
(6 h)
Today the right wing was moved to its temporary home while awaiting covering. It was a lot of fun and went very quick since I didn’t have the learning curve of the first wing. A friend helped me finish sanding down the filler on the leading edge and off we went.
That also meant it was time to finally bring the fuselage home to work on. It was great to see it sitting in the garage after not seeing it in all its glory for about 7 months haha. I’m looking forward to learning some new skills and going through all the challenges of the fuselage.
In other news, we seem to have found an N-number for the plane; N611SU. 611 is my wedding day and 1SU looks like ISU when written in block letters. I’ve got another one reserved, but I think this one will be the one. I also need to start thinking about paint for the plane.
(3 h)
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)
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)
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)
Finally got a decent stretch of work done on the plane. I fixed my issue with the spar attach bolt and got everything put back together. Then I started attaching the pitot/static lines to the ribs and drag braces as well as the flap teleflex cable. I also got all the fuel fittings installed and ready to go to the next step. I found a neat tip on the EAA site in regards to using nylon ties. They suggested using some small heat shrink tubing as anti-chafe material as well as helping to keep the tie in place. It was an inexpensive trick and makes it look very nice.
The next process is fitting the skins which will hopefully be in the next week or so.
(5 h)
It’s been a crazy summer for us. Decided to go back to school in May and that picked up in July making this month a bust. So it’s probably only been a few hours between June and July.
I did make an interesting discovery that has added about 1.5 hours of work to the project. My impeccable timing meant that I figured out the hole where the bolt goes to attach the forward spar to the fuselage was not straight enough. After a quick email to RANS the fix is to replace the inside and outside doublers to get a fresh start. This would have been a somewhat simple process if I had caught it earlier. It’s not too bad now, just annoying. The process meant removing the root rib and clip, removing the fuel tank, remove the forward bolt on the compression tube, and removing the rivets holding the doubler in. This took about 40 minutes since I was taking it slow. Waiting on the parts from RANS to get everything reinstalled.
We both were able to go up to Oshkosh for a day. This meant Maria got to sit and look over the plane. She seemed excited about it and I imagine relieved that it was actually possible to get an airplane from a box. Got to look at engines and start to dream about some avionics. It’s pretty neat what’s out there for experimentals at a pretty reduced cost compared to the certified world.
Until next time.
(2 h)
this has been the longest gap in building so far. Hopefully there are not too many more of these. I spent a few hours today getting some little things wrapped up. I got the aileron cables installed, root rib riveted in, fuel cap assembly finished, and got the pitot tube assembly fitted up. My kit uses the new style pitot tube from RANS.
The next steps are getting the pitot/static lines ran as well as the flap cable I also need to run some fuel lines before I start installing some skins that will make access to the wing more restricted than it is presently. Hoping July will have some more building in it.
(3 h)
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