May 16, 2005

8-10 weeks from today, I'll have a wing kit...woohoo! Placed the order today, and it's about time. That puts delivery just a week or so before we leave for Oshkosh.

August 11, 2005

The wing kit arrived today! Captain John, friend and fellow RV-7 builder, drove up from Plymouth MA to help us unpack and inventory. The boxes were big and bulky...definitely a multiperson job.

Ellen and I ripped open the wing spar crate. Just had to gaze at those beautiful gold anodized spars!

Van's did a first-rate job of packing all those parts, and ABF got the boxes to our house undamaged. Everything looked great during unpacking.

August 23, 2005

Completion of the inventory was delayed due to a work trip. Had to go to California for more fun with helicopters...

I finished up the inventory this evening. Nothing was missing, everything was in good shape. What a great job by Van's! Now it's time to start building. Bring on the platenuts!

September 7, 2005

First step...getting things set up in the shop. Here are the spars, laid out for countersinking.

Like a lot of other new wing builders, I agonized over how best to make nice, clean countersinks for the tank and access plate screws. Some folks claimed that the Van's approach - attach the nutplates first, then use a #30 piloted countersink that eventually engages the nutplate hole - seemed to result in chattering and countersinks that weren't smooth and concentric, because the countersink starts cutting with nothing to center it.

My friend Jim used an alternative technique - a jig with a #30 hole to center the countersink pilot. With this approach, the countersink pilot is supported all the time rather than just when the countersink is deep enough to engage the nutplate hole as in Vans' technique. I decided to use the jig approach for the tank attach screws. Here's what it looks like...

How to make this jig? First drill the #30 hole in your scrap Al, then center it under one of the tank attach screw holes. Once the hole is accurately centered, clamp it in place and match-drill to the #40 rivet holes on either side of the screw hole. You'll need two sets of holes in the jig - one for nutplates parallel to the spar, and one for the angled nutplates at the spar's root end.

To use the jig, attach it to the spar with #40 clecos, then clamp the plate in place and remove the clecos. Then, countersink the hole to the appropriate depth. The positioned plate and countersunk hole look something like this...

The first 2005 issue of the RVator has some improved instructions on how to countersink these screw holes to the proper depth without going too far. I strongly recommend you read up on this procedure before countersinking your spars...you might just save yourself some serious heartache.

The finished product. Looks good!

September 15, 2005

I decided to take a novel approach to countersinking the spar holes that accommodate the wing access plate - I followed Van's directions. That meant countersinking rivet holes, riveting the nutplates to the spar, then countersinking the access plate screw holes. I experienced none of the chattering or other problems reported by other builders. I think the key here is using a low-speed, high-torque drill to drive the countersink - a cordless drill works fine.

While getting ready to countersink those additional wing spar nutplates, I noticed that most of wing spar doubler plate (or "waffle" plate, as Van's calls it) holes were somewhat oversize. Here's a number #30 rivet in one of them.

I fired off some pictures and questions to Van's. More to follow...

September 17, 2005

While working through my wing spar hole questions with Van's, I moved on to fabrication of the wing tiedown plates and spacers. It was much easier to lay out the spacers on the bar stock, pilot-drill the center of each 1" hole, then cut the holes with a 15/16" hole saw.

Regardless of what's marked on the hole saw, they all seem to cut a hole that's about 1/32" larger than spec, so using a 15/16" saw for these 1" holes left slightly undersize hole in each spacer that were easy to finish to final size with a Dremel tool.

John Sannizzaro stopped by today. He had a brand new tap that was just itchin' to be used on my tiedown plates. We tapped both tiedown plates...came out fine!

September 20, 2005

I've been trading emails with Van's over the last couple of days about the slightly enlarged holes in my wing spar doubler plates. Turns out that there really isn't any problem, the enlarged holes are an artifact of the CNC punch process - and they're ok. I don't want to rehash the whole discussion on this page, so here's a link to a Van's Air Force thread on the topic.

September 24, 2005

With the spacers fabricated, the next step was match-drilling the spacers and tiedown plate to each spar. Some other folks have had problems getting the spacers aligned between the plate and spar. My approach was to mark two vertical lines on each spacer, each one halfway between the center hole and the left or right side. I then aligned and taped the spacers to the spar so that the vertical lines were centered in the spar holes to be used for match-drilling the spacers to the spar and tiedown plate

Here's everything clamped/bolted together, ready for drilling.

September 25, 2005

I'm heading to Alaska for two weeks, so the goal for today was to finish match-drilling the tiedown plates and associated nutplate mounting holes, then to prime the plates, spacers and also the countersunk main spar holes. By the time I get back from Alaska, the weather here may be too cold to prime parts outside. Here are the tiedown plates.

And here are the spar countersinks.

October 7, 2005

Got back from Fairbanks, Alaska...it was a long, tiring trip. But we finished everything we set out to accomplish, most of which involved flying helicopters in icing. Here's a pic of the test aircraft after an hour or so in clear ice.

Fairbanks is an amazing place for airplane nuts. Some airplanes that you'd see in museums in the lower 48 states, are flying every day in Fairbanks hauling supplies to outlying communities. Here's a Curtiss C-46 departing Fairbanks International (PAFA) with a load of fuel oil.

And here's a very rare find...a Carvair. It's a DC-6 that was modified decades ago to carry cars, and only a handful still fly.

On my day off I managed to log some float time with a flight from the Chena Marina float pond, just a mile or so west of PAFA.

Another rare bird...a Turbo Otter at the float pond.

October 13, 2005

Time to ease back into RV building. Did a lot of nutplate riveting...thank goodness for the pneumatic squeezer!

October 15, 2005

Got the tiedown plates riveted together and bolted onto the wing spars today.

October 31, 2005

I had two more work trips during the last two weeks, so there isn't a lot of visual progress to report. This entry is the culmination of bits and pieces of work done around travel and family stuff.

After the front spars were prepped, the next step was constructing the rear wing spars. The first task in this process was deburring the spars themselves and match-drilling aileron reinforcement plates to them. Nothing difficult here, I just followed the plans - with one minor exception.

These reinforcement plates fit snugly up against the rear spar's upper flange, and I match-drilled the #40 holes on each spar flange and reinforcement plate. The instructions don't specifically call for dimpling these flanges before the rear spar is riveted together, but it would seem to be easier to do it now while the parts can be dimpled separately...so that's what I did.

Note the aileron pushrod hole cut into the reinforcement plate. The location of this hole is traced onto the plate during match-drilling. A Dremel tool with a carbide cutter makes quick work of "roughing out" the hole, and a sanding drum on the Dremel takes care of the rest.

The rear spars' attach plates and associated doublers are actually RV-8 parts, and must be trimmed according to the plans.

After deburring, countersinking and dimpling the reinforcement and doubler plates as required, I alodined them using the always-handy Touch-n-Prep pen.

November 3, 2005

It's getting darker earlier, and I didn't have much time to get parts primed after work - so I just did the stuff previously alodined.

November 8, 2005

Time to rivet all those rear spar parts together. Follow the advice in the plans to tape up those holes that aren't to be riveted at this time...those -4 rivets aren't fun to drill out.

And here's the finished product. Success rate on these rivets was 100 percent...no drill-outs required!

November 19, 2005

I'm in wing rib hell. Try as I might, I can't do this every day for hours on end. So, I've been devoting an hour or so each day after work for the past week deburring holes and flanges. And since I probably get too worked up over smoothing the edges, it's gonna take several sessions.

November 30, 2005

Took a break from wing ribs to build a wing jig over the Thanksgiving weekend. Captain John trekked up from Plymouth to lend a hand and some brain cells.

Our basement workshop has some drawbacks that we had to consider for the jig. First, the floor isn't remotely level, so that meant designing a jig that could be aligned at the posts and spar supports to level the spars themselves. Second, the ceiling is old plaster over a rusting metal lath, so it really couldn't be counted on to support posts. So the solution had to be more or less free-standing, anchored only to the floor.

With those limitations in mind we fabricated four posts, each one five feet high and consisting of two 2"x6"s glued and screwed together. Here's the assembly line in progress; Captain John is in the background, attaching a 2'x2' plywood plate to the bottom of one post.

Here's one post with support gussets yet to be attached. After each plate is bolted to the floor, the gussets are screwed to 2"x4" anchors on the plate (not yet attached in this picture). There's just enough play in the posts to allow them to be adjusted and aligned, after which the gussets and posts are clamped to hold everything in alignment while they're screwed together.

The posts are now bolted in place, and ready for the arms that will support the spars themselves.

But first, there's more rib prep - flanging and fluting - to be done. And there was much rejoicing...yea.

December 31, 2005

Happy holidays! Working in cahoots with Captain John, my wonderful wife snuck around and bought me a Sioux 2X rivet gun for Christmas...very cool! Unfortunately, I'm not at a place in the wings where I can use it. I'm still in rib prep hell.

This little gadget does indeed help out. It's mentioned in 23 Years Of The RVator, and you can find plans for it floating around the internet. It makes flanging the ribs much easier...I did a whole pile of wing center ribs in an hour or so.

January 7, 2006

Rib prep is complete. You've seen pictures of fluted ribs before, so I'm not gonna waste my disk space and your bandwidth on one.

One thing to note here - the fluting process tends to bow the flanges back out a bit. Although the wooden flanging tool puts the flanges right at 90 degrees, I wound up bending the flanges a little past 90 with my hand seamer so that they popped back out to the right position. If I were building that flanging tool now, I'd modify it to put a little extra bend in the flanges to avoid all the extra manipulation with hand seamers.

Before the main ribs went on the wing, I drilled holes for electrical wiring conduit using one of the locations recommended by Van's - in particular, a 3/4" hole on the lower portion of the web between the first and second lightening holes.

If you choose to use this approach, beware that Van's only depicts the hole locations on inboard ribs - the ones with "D" shaped lightening holes up front - and you'll have to do a layout for the outboard ribs as well. Once I had a pilot hole laid out on all three types of "L" and "R" ribs it was easy to cleco one of those ribs to its opposite - an "L" rib to an "R", and vice versa - using the tooling holes, and simply match-drill in preparation for opening the holes to 3/4" with a Unibit. My conduit holes came out fine, and were lined up well enough to accommodate Van's flexible corrugated tubing.

January 8, 2006

Today was a big day!

With rib prep done, it was time to start clecoing the wing boxes together. Here's the left wing box going together.

...and here's the left wing box clecoed together.

I must say that this is a big morale boost, just as much as completing the horizontal stab. I had to leave this set up for a day or so just to admire it. After all the main ribs were match-drilled, the nose ribs went on and were match-drilled.

After everything was match-drilled, it all came apart for deburring. I commandeered Ellen's cordless screwdriver after seeing some builders use it for deburring, then realized that I didn't have any way to attach the 1/4"-28 threaded countersink to the drill. Avery sells a gadget that does this, but I was far too impatient to wait for one.

So I headed to the place where I do my best thinking - the hardware store - and came up with a good idea for attaching the countersink. I bought a 5mm deep-well, 1/4" drive socket and a 1/4" drive adapter for the drill. Back at home, I drilled out and tapped the socket for 1/4"-28 threads. The socket and drive adapter snapped right into the drill and I was all set.

Using the drill I was able to debur both front and rear left spars and wing ribs in only 30 minutes or so. The nice thing about this approach is that I can use those long 1/4" drive extensions laying around the tool box for deburring in hard-to-reach spots.

January 15, 2006

It's rather anticlimactic to say much about the right wing, because everything is the same...mostly. I found I had to do some mental gymnastics to mirror the left wing's rib layout, as depicted in the plans, to the right wing.

Here's the right wing clecoed together...

January 28, 2006

I spent a lot of time over the last two days finishing up the wing ribs. Cleaning and etching took most of Friday evening.

With all those ribs prepped, there was nothing left to do but prime them...so I did. John Sannizzaro kindly lent me the use of his paint booth, otherwise I'd be waiting for a really warm day to do them in the back yard. Even with John's facilities, priming those ribs took a significant chunk of the day. Here they are in their yellow-primed glory...

I'll be putting support arms on the jig over the next few days, then it's time to rivet the wing boxes together.

February 3, 2006

I mentioned support arms in my last entry, and I've been researching how best to fabricate them. One important part of getting the wings settled in the jig is eliminating any twist before the skins go on. Surfing the Van's Air Force website, I came across a really neat design by Rudi Greyling of Johannesberg, South Africa. His approach uses aluminum angle arms supported by threaded rods that can be adjusted to precisely level the arm.

One pic will convey the concept better than I can explain, so here's one for your edification and enjoyment. Click on the picture for a larger version.

Thanks Rudi, that's a great idea!

February 4, 2006

Captain John and his wife visited today. Before heading out to a movie and dinner, we riveted the left wing's front spar and main ribs. Prior to John's visit, I tried doing a few of these rivets myself - it's significantly easier to do them with a partner and I was grateful for John's help. Plus, he's already done this procedure on his RV-7 wings.

Here we are, riveting the wing walk ribs.

Two pairs of hands made quick work of all those ribs, and only a couple of drill-outs were required. Here's the finished product.

I used my Christmas gift from my wife - the Sioux 2X rivet gun - on these rivets. The gun hits a little harder than I expected, but not quite as hard as my Avery 3X gun. It definitely hits a bit faster and feels better, probably because it's a little heavier and doesn't transfer quite as much vibration to the hand.

I also tried some Snap-Socs on the rivet set. If you haven't heard of them, Snap-Socs go over the end of the set and help keep it centered on the rivet. Supposedly they help minimize smilies on the rivet and skins/flanges, and they seem to work as advertised.

February 5, 2006

With the front spar rivets done, squeezing the rear spar rivets was a piece of cake - mostly. I neglected Vans' instructions to put the rivets' manufactured heads on some of the thinner rib flanges, and wound up with some distortion of a few flanges. I called Van's to confirm that this wasn't a serious error, and they agreed that it was better to leave those rivets in place than to risk damaging the rear spar by removing them.

That only happened on a few ribs; the rest came out fine and I'm glad to be done with this. Here's the finished left wing box.

One last thing...some extra attention to the plans is appropriate here, especially to the drawing that shows which rear spar rivet holes should be left open for future work. Take some tape and cover up those holes - you'll save yourself some heartache by not having to remove rivets from them.

February 7, 2006

Got the left wing in the jig today after attaching some aluminum angle to the outboard rib as a support. Now I need to come up with some type of center support...

Getting the ends level was a snap with the adjustable supports and a digital level. The extra work to fab those supports was definitely worth it!

February 10, 2006

Yesterday I finally came up with a (relatively) inexpensive way to jack up the wing center per the plans. I used some spare threaded rod, Al angle and 2x4s to make these little adjustable supports.

The only feature that isn't apparent in that picture is the flat surface on top. It's just a piece of plywood left over from a wing crate, with a nut attached to the bottom with JB Weld. I didn't want to clamp anything to the spar center lest it be damaged if the support was disturbed or kicked out of place.

With the support in place, all that was left was to use it to remove any sag from the wing box. I didn't have a plumb-bob or fishing line, but I did have a spiffy new laser level I found on sale at Sears. So in an awesome display of obsessive over-engineering, I used the laser level to get the wing box adjusted and sag-free.

The picture is a little dark, but you can see the laser line illuminating a row of rivet holes on the spar. I'll definitely use the approved solution (fishing line and plumb-bob) to check twist before the skins go on, but the laser works well. And that threaded-rod support made it wicked easy to adjust the spar.

February 15, 2006

John Sannizzaro came up over the weekend and we knocked out the right wing box. A couple of days later I put the wing in the jig.

Next step...leveling the right spar's ends. Gotta love that SmartLevel and those adjustable support arms! I also double-checked the left spar's alignment.

February 17, 2006

Getting both wings in the jig was a big hurdle. Now it's time to start working on the skins, in this case trimming and match-drilling the wing-walk doublers.

The instructions are confusing in this area; they imply that the wing-walk doubler extends an inch past the rear spar. But that's incompatible with the doubler dimensions as specified in the plans. A doubler fabricated per the plans and positioned the correct distance from the front spar isn't long enough to overhang the rear spar by an inch. Other builders have had the same problem; some followed the dimensions in the plans, others altered the doubler to comply with the instructions. Also, some folks who had a 1" overhang eventually had problems with the doubler getting bent down and interfering with flap retraction - not something I'd like to have happen.

Based on my observations of the wing walk structure, and some information I got from the VAF website, I chose to follow the plans dimensions rather than comply explicitly with the instructions. That results in a doubler that overhangs the rear spar by about 4/32-5/32".

I was on a roll, so I pulled out the top left wing skins and clecoed them on. No problems here, and big visual progress to boot!

February 20, 2006

Before match-drilling the left wing skins, I decided to double-check the spar for any twist. I had previously used the SmartLevel to adjust both ends, but I decided to double-check them using Vans' recommended method - measuring the distance from plumb-bob lines hung from clecos on the spar, to the top edge of the rear spar. The picture below shows the setup.

Turns out that I didn't need to be concerned....the measured distances were within 1/32" of each other. I guess I can live with that.

February 24, 2006

Not much progress over the last week, I was only able to get the left wing's top skins match-drilled and the bottom skins clecoed in place. One thing to look out for here is match-drilling the tabs on each rib that fit under the spar flanges, since they can easily be misaligned even though the main part of the rib is clecoed to the skin. Look at the hole alignment before you drill, and adjust as necessary.

February 26, 2006

When will this project be done? When pigs fly!

March 4, 2006

I finished match-drilling the left wing skins over the last week. I ran out of #40 clecos and was delayed a bit while some new ones arrived from Avery. I didn't realize how crappy my old ClekoLok clecos were until I bought the WedgeLok clecos that Avery sells...quite an improvement.

While the left wing box was still together, I installed the SafeAir pitot mast. This is a relatively easy process if you take your time when trimming the hole in the skin that will accept the mast.

The first step is placing the mounting template on the lower skin, just outboard of the most outboard inspection hole. One thing to be aware of here is that the recommended mast location is right next to a rib. After discussing the mounting process with John Sannizzaro, who turned me on to the SafeAir mast, I moved it outboard one rivet to provide some more room for riveting and pitot plumbing. After the template was in place, I traced the outline of the mast hole onto the skin and used a unibit to drill some starter holes inside the outline Here's the template in place - sorry for the crappy picture, but you get the idea.

Enlarging and shaping the hole took some time and patience; I started with a side-cutting bit in the Dremel, and finished up with a fine needle file. After the hole was done I fitted the mast inside, marked the forward rivet holes, then removed it and final-drilled the holes to #40.

With the forward holes clecoed in place, I marked and drilled the rear rivet holes per the directions. Here's the end result...the installation looks great!

March 11, 2006

Had a tech counselor visit today from Jon Ross - his beautiful RV-8 is featured in the April '06 RV of the month in Van's calendar (my friend and fellow FTE Mike is in the back seat). Also visiting was future RV builder Rich Prignano. Jon looked at progress so far on the tail and wings. It's nice to have a TC again...thanks Jon!

March 13, 2006

With the pitot mast installed, I went back to the right wing and began match-drilling skins after double-checking the wing box for twist and sag.

There isn't too much to tell about this process - it's pretty much the same as the left wing - with the exception of a couple of skin-to-rib holes that I couldn't line up no matter how I clecoed the skins to the wing box. I tried adjusting the flutes around these holes, no luck there either. The problem holes are circled in this picture.

Not wanting to drill the holes with this misalignment, I consulted Van's and my tech counselor. They both agreed that an acceptable procedure would be to drill the holes, then fabricate a dimpled doubler plate that will be held in place by the wing-to-rib rivet. Sounds good to me.

March 20, 2006

Got both leading edges clecoed together over the last week. It's kinda nice to see some good visual progress with not a lot of work.

I spent a little extra time making sure that the ribs were set correctly. If they aren't fitting as snugly as possible into the leading egde skin, the ribs' rear flanges may push the leading edge away from the spar, resulting in a gap between the leading edge skin and main skins. A little effort pulling rivet holes into alignment with a 3/32" punch before clecoing will pay dividends later when fitting the leading edge to the spar.

Having mentioned that, I couldn't eliminate the gap completely on the right spar but it's reduced enough so that skin expansion during riveting should close the gap almost completely.

The next step was fitting the leading edges' inboard ribs and tank joint plates. I discovered that the joint plate stock material Van's shipped was a half-inch too short...d'oh! Had to wait a bit while (free) replacements were shipped.

With the joint plates mounted and leading edges drilled, it's on to the fuel tanks.

April 24, 2007

Welcome back to the wings! I'm wrapping up the tanks, but in between tank sealing and riveting sessions I started to do some work on the rest of the wings. Over the last five days I worked on the leading edges, getting the W-423 joint plates deburred and dimpled, and starting work on the landing light installation. No pictures of the joint plates - pretty boring stuff.

The landing lights are more interesting, I'm putting 100w Duckworks lights in both leading edges. The Duckworks kits come with decent installation instructions, and following them I had no problems with the installation. The first step in this process is using the provided template to mark holes on the outboard ribs for the screws that will hold the landing light brackets...

...and for the hole that will be cut to let the light out.

The next step is cutting the leading edge hole. As you might guess, there's a slight bit of a pucker factor here because of the potential to screw up the leading egde skin. To make the hole, I pilot-drilled holes at each corner of the hole and opened them up with a Unibit. Then I used a side-cutting bit and a cutoff wheel in the Dremel to rough-cut the whole opening. The side-cutting bits don't cut agressively so they're a little easier to control.

I followed that up with a sanding drum on the die grinder, followed by a small scotchbrite wheel on the same tool. The end result was a nice hole. After that, I match-drilled the lens mounting brackets to the skin - sorry, no pictures.

April 28, 2007

I've been tying to finish as much of the leading edge work as possible before they go on the wings for good. That includes the Angle of Attack (AoA) system I bought from Advanced Flight Systems. The "A" kit for this system includes the pressure probes that provide static pressure above and below the wing to a processor that computes AoA. If you've got a hankerin' to know how this system works, click here (MS PowerPoint required).

These pressure probes go in the outer portion of one leading edge; the locations are specific to each airplane design. Captain John had already installed an identical system in his RV, and he lent me a drill template he fabricated for the port. Here it is taped in location on the left upper leading edge.

Here are the holes...two for the #4 screws that hold the probe in place, and a #60 hole that actually provides static pressure to the probe.

Here's the upper probe temporarily screwed into position. The Duckworks instructions hint that the screw holes can be dimpled with a #30 die, but I couldn't get the screws to set flush in a test piece of scrap - so I called Cleaveland and ordered a set of #4 dimple dies - worked great.

Here's the upper probe itself, the lower probe looks very similar. The quick drain on the bottom of this probe allows moisture to be drained from the probe. The kit comes with a 'poker' that's inserted through a hole in the underside of the leading edge to push in the quick drain.

Small-diameter tubing connects that barb on the probe to the processor in the cockpit. I won't install them until the leading edges have been riveted on to the wings.

May 3, 2007

After cutting landing light holes in both leading edges and fitting the AoA probes in the left leading edge, it's time to debur, dimple prep and prime the leading edge skins, landing light parts, joint plates, and a lot of other miscellaneous parts like the inboard leading edge ribs. So...after deburring and dimpling - not very visually exciting, so no picture - that means the obligatory wash/degrease/scuff/etch process.

Here are the landing light brackets and the inboard LE ribs drying after being alumiprepped.

And here's everything after priming, and after back-riveting nutplates to one of the W-423 joint plates that fasten the leading edges to the tanks.

My goal is to get both leading edges ready for riveting in the next week.

May 5, 2007

With the leading edge prep work done, I clecoed them together. Here's the left leading edge.

The next day, Captain John and I riveted them.

John and I have a pretty good riveting rhythm going...I shoot and he bucks. Using my Sioux 2x gun with a straight mushroom set (yep, we're going bareback here - no swivel set or rubber guard) and the tungsten bucking bar I bought from Bucking Bars by Webster, we got really good results.

May 13, 2007

Over the last week I deburred the primary structure (front/rear spars and ribs) on both wings. Important stuff, but boring...so no pictures.

The only thing worthy of note is the process I used to re-torque the fiber-lock nuts that hold both tiedown plates to the spars - one of the steps in getting the wings ready for leading edge and skin riveting. Until recently, I think most builders just used a torque wrench to snug those nuts in place without regard for the drag exerted by the self-locking feature of the nut. Overcoming that extra drag "uses up" some of the force applied by the wrench, so it's important to add that extra 'drag torque' to the torque specified for the nut. That ensures that the nut itself gets enough torque.

So how do you figure out what that drag torque is? It's easy...just set your torque wrench to the lowest possible value (1-2 in-lbs on mine) and see if the wrench will turn the nut. If it doesn't, add torque in 1 in-lb increments until the nut moves...that's the drag torque. For the batch of AN365 fiber-lock nuts I was using, that worked out to be 4-5 in-lbs - but your settings may vary. Adding that 4-5 in-lbs to the normal 20-25 in-lbs for the nut gives the proper torque setting. Easy!

May 25, 2007

Over the last two weeks I worked on scarf joints between the overlapping portions of the inboard and outboard skins on both wings. The idea behind these scarf joints is to taper the thickness of the skins where they overlap. The top surface of the bottom skin gets tapered so that the edge is about half the thickness of the rest of the skin, and the bottom surface of the top skin gets a similar taper. When the two surfaces come together on the wing, the overall thickness of the joint is reduced. The whole joint isn't scarfed, just the portion within 3" or so of the spar.

Here's one scarf area marked out on a skin, with some duct tape in place to protect the places I didn't want to taper.

Some buiders use sandpaper or files to taper the skins. As you can tell from the picture above, I used scotchbrite discs in my die grinder. By varying the grade of disc and grinder speed, I was able to control the amount of material removed. I worked outward from the duct tape, increasing the grinder speed, pressure and dwell time as I approached the corner.

Here's one finished taper. After the sanding was done, I cleaned and alodined the area using a Touch-n-Prep pen. Worked great.

Here's one finished scarf joint - if you didn't already 'get the flick' on how this works, you will now. This is the joint where the inboard and outboard skins overlap on the left wing's upper side. Remember, just the forward 3" or so of the joint is 'scarfed'.

This was a time-intensive process...tapering eight skins for upper and lower scarf joints on both wings. But in the end, I think the results were worth the extra effort.

May 26, 2007

While doing the scarf joints, Ive also been dimpling the wing structure. Got the left wing done today. Once again, boring stuff...so no pictures.

June 19, 2007

Not much going on with the wing structure in the last three weeks - my time has been spent working on the tanks. All I accomplished was re-checking the jigs to make sure there's no twist orsag as I get ready to put the skins on for good. I also started deburring wing skins. Boy, that's a lot of fun.

Yet again, more stuff that I won't waste your bandwidth with boring pictures.

July 5, 2007

Got the wing skin edges and holes deburred this weekend. Four skins per wing times two wings = a lot of deburring. The edges were easy; the holes took a lot of time. I used Ellen's cordless screwdriver and threaded deburring bit adapter that I fabricated last year.

July 7, 2007

I've been avoiding countersinking the skin attach holes on the spars, but I couldn't put it off any longer - I hate drilling/cutting those things. I reviewed Vans' instructions on countersinking and found out - once again - that their instructions were right. They specify that countersinks which accept dimpled skins should be deep enough so that a test AN426 rivet should sit flush to 0.005" below the countersunk surface. So, I tweaked up my countersink and did some checking with the depth measurement pin on my calipers just to make sure that everying was set correctly - then fired away. Here's the beautiful finished product...

...and here they are primed. I really don't like to prime in the shop, but in this case I had no choice. I cranked down the air pressure and flow volume on my HVLP detail gun and had no problems.

July 16, 2007

It's time to dimple the skins. Dimpling a relatively stiff part like a leading edge is easy to do with minimal help, but the wing skins are large and floppy. Even with Ellen's help, some additional support was needed. So I dusted off the support table plans that came with the DRDT-2 and made a runto Home Depot for some particle board and carpet remnants. Throw in some wood glue, wood screws and a little elbow grease, and voila - a dimpling stand.

With an hour's help from my awesome, wonderful wife, the skins were dimpled. Following that, I whipped out the squeezer and dimpled the wing inspection plates and corresponding screw holes in the wing skins.

August 7, 2007

No, I haven't been doing nothing for the last month. Go look at the Tanks page to figure out what I've been up to.

Over the last four days I finished installing the Duckworks landing light kits in both wings. This is one of the last things I needed to do on the leading edges before they go onto the wings for good. Most of the ticklish and potentially expensive stuff got done back in April, like cutting openings in the LEs. What's left is trimming and fitting the plexiglass lenses, and installing reflectors and halogen bulbs in the light brackets.

If you're reading this you either (a) are building - or want to build - an RV, (b) don't have anything better to do, or (c) are my mom. So for the benefit of you folks in group A, I'm gonna give you the gory details of finishing these lights as I learned to do it.

The first step is taking the plexiglass lenses as provided and trimming them to a size slightly larger than the leading edge opening - the instructions give apprpriate dimensions. You gotta provide enough space on the top and bottom for mounting strips, but not so much extra that you can't get the lens in and out through the LE opening - which you'll have to do when changing bulbs. To make this a little easier I stuck a drop light in the leading edge and used the illuminated opening to measure and lay out cut lines on each edge of the lens, as well as to marks the opening itself on the lens..

Before working with the lens, I covered it with removable masking tape to make marking easier and protect against scratches.

Once the cut lines were marked on both lenses, I trimmed them with a cutoff wheel in my Dremel.

Following the instructions, I then fabricated "handles" from fiberglass-reinforced packing tape and coaxed the lenses into the leading egde. Pulling the lens tight against the leading edge, I match-drilled the mounting screw holes through the skins into the lenses. It's important to keep that lens snug - it directly affects the final fit of the lens - but not to push on the lens from the back. That, apparently, can make the lens too snug and make it difficult to install. It's also important to use a dull drill bit to make those initial holes in the plexi; sharp drill bits dig into the plastic and can cause it to crack. Here's the lens with all but one hole match-drilled and clecoed.

The next step was edge-finishing the lenses and drilling the mounting screw holes to their final sizes. Edge-finishing was easy with some sandpaper. I opened up the holes to final size using a special plexi drill bit from Avery, then countersunk the screw holes with a #30 piloted countersink. Countersinking is another opportunity to crack the lens if you go too fast - slow and steady gets the job done nicely.

A few other steps need to be accomplished before the installation is done. First, the reflectors and bulbs must be installed in the light brackets. Duckworks provides automotive driving lights that must be disassembled to provide those parts; the only gotcha here is to make sure you wear gloves when handling the reflector and bulb - skin oil on either can cause them to get too hot. Otherwise, it's straightforward.

Second, the retaining brackets that hold the lenses in place had to be final drilled and have nutplates installed to accomodate the lens mounting screws. The brackets are match-drilled to the leading edges just as the lenses are. The only real work here is installing the nutplates, and attaching the brackets to the lenses with two-sided tape. One last thing - the skins must be dimpled to accomodate the mounting screws...#6s, I believe. Do yourself and use a real #6 dimple die set. The instructions imply that you can use #30s, but that just wouldn't look right.

Finally, the light brackets were installed and the lenses attached. Overall, I was pretty happy with the results. The right wing lens fits a little better than the left, but both will get the job done.

August 27, 2007

Got the wing skins and inspection hole covers prepped and primed today, that's the last major work on the skins before they get riveted on the wing boxes.

September 23, 2007

Over the last two weeks I started wiring the landing lights on both wings and plumbing the AoA pressure probes on the left wing. It was much easier to do this stuff before the leading edges go on the spars for good. The pressure probes were easy - just attach the 1/8" flexible tubing to the barbs on each probe.

The landing light wiring was a little more complex. I upgraded the bulbs to 100w, and with the length of the wiring run from each light to the fuse block in the fuselage, I upgraded the wiring to 14 AWG. Given that the lights aren't in an easily-inspectable area, I spent some extra time installing standoffs to make sure that the wires won't flex or rub against anything that might cause shorts or breakage. The standoffs came from a local supply store, and per a recommendation from Bob Nuckolls of AeroElectric Connection fame, I used Shoe Goo to hold them in place. I'll let you know in a few years if it holds up.

Here's the left wing with LL wiring and AoA probe plumbing. Notice the local ground on the outboard rib; using the airframe as a ground path for large-current DC power consumers saves weight and space. There's a little service loop on the LL wiring that will make it easier to replace the bulb at some point in the future.

And here's the right wing LL wiring.

October 3, 2007

With the leading edge wiring and plumbing done, it's time to attach the leading edges to the spar. This is one of those "it's going on for good" tasks so I spent a little time cleaning up the outboard spars - primer touchup, general dusting, etc - before nailing these things on permanently.

One of the minor headaches of attaching the leading edges is how to rivet their ribs to the spars. The plans call for solid AN470-4-x rivets, but access is limited for driving the rivets from behind the spar; even with a ground-down double-offset rivet set, there just isn't much room to get on the rivet heads without scuffing or denting the spar or main ribs. And my arms aren't skinny enough to work a bucking bar inside the leading egde. So I opted to use the blind rivets that Van's says are an acceptable substitute. The only downside is that the limited space between main ribs and rib-to-spar rivets makes it difficult to get a blind rivet puller on the rivet stems.

But that was a problem I could solve. At Oshkosh this year I bought a very skinny blind rivet puller from Avery, it has one of the smallest heads I've ever seen on a rivet puller. Even so, I still had to grind down the head quite a bit to get it to fit. Here's the final product; note that I covered the ground-down upper surface with tape to protect the ribs, and also to keep the guts of the puller in place since I had to remove basically all the enclosing metal at the top.

After pulling all the rib-to-spar rivets, I squeezed the AN426 skin-to-spar rivets. No problems here, everything came out great! Here's the obligatory hero picture.

October 20, 2007

I was out of the shop for a week on a work trip to Germany, then I had a bunch of home stuff to do so not much progress in the last couple of weeks. When I did get back in the shop I did some final prep work on the wing spars and ribs in preparation for riveting the upper skins.

At Oshkosh this summer I bought Avery's 12" double-offset back rivet set and mushroom back-riveting bucking bar. I had great hopes of back-riveting all the upper skin rivets, so Ellen and I started using this method to rivet the upper inboard skins.

I must say that I was disappointed with the results. First, it's not easy to get that long double-offset set squarely on the rivet and rib flange so we had some "drillers", as Captain John would say, or poor rivets that need to be drilled out. And once we got the positioning right, it was obvious that the combination of back-riveting and Vans' rivet length callouts were giving shop heads that barely met specs. Using longer rivets just magnified the problems of getting the set positioned correctly.

After getting a sanity check from Captain John on my riveting results, I decided to abandon the back-rivet set. With the tungsten bucking bar and a little practice with the straight mushroom set on my 2X gun, we were able to get results just about as good as back-riveting by using the normal shoot-from-the-outside approach.

November 11, 2007

I've been stewing over the fit between the fuel tank outboard edges and the inboard leading edge skins; the tank skins stand slightly proud of the leading edges and they "pillow", or bulge up between the joint plate nutplates when screws are installed. So I started tinkering around with the tank-to-leading edge fit. I used a stick of delrin with a slot cut into one end to edge-roll the tank edges, and although that helped, it wasn't enough to completely close the gap.

Other builders have had the same problem and pursued a couple of different approaches. My good friend Jim doubled up on the nutplates and screws on the joint plate, and that worked really well. Some folks on VAF recommended shims inserted between the leading edge joint plate and inboard rib. Although that approach require some work to drill out rivets and fit the shims, I decided to try this approach first with the extra nutplate solution as a guaranteed solution if the shims didn't work.

So I measured the tank-to-LE gaps and the length over which the gap needed to be shimmed, then fabricated a small shim blank of 0.025" alclad for the right wing and a longer shim blank of 0.032" alclad for the left. After carefully drilling out all the LE rivets affected by the shims, I slid the shim blanks in place and marked rivet hole locations in them. Drilling, deburring dimpling...and voila, the shims are ready for priming and riveting. Stand by for the completion of this little adventure...

November 12, 2007

Captain John and I did the upper wing skins today with the mushroom set and tungsten bucking bar. Came out wicked nice!

November 26, 2007

We had family visiting for Thanksgiving, so not much progress recently. Got the skin-to-rear spar rivets squeezed for the upper inboard skins, except for the rivets that butt up against the rear spar doublers. Those will have to be bucked. Also did edge-finishing on the aileron mounting brackets and flap reinforcements. Sorry, no pictures.

December 13, 2007

We're getting ready for a holiday trip to South Africa and we've been working hard to get the upper skins riveted on so that the wings can come out of the jig. I had great help from Ellen, Captain John and Kevin Johnson. Even my mother-in-law stopped by...

Ellen did a great job bucking with the tungsten bar...

...and I had all sorts of fun with the Sioux 2X gun.

The only technical comment I have here is that, as is usally the case, Vans' rivet callouts were too short. I up-sized the rivets where necessary to get good shop heads. There are a few things left to do on the wings before they come out of the jig, and those require some skilled help - so until they're done, I'm starting on the ailerons.

January 6, 2008

Captain John stopped by today and we finished the last riveting that needed to be done before the wings come out of the jig. With the tanks off, we riveted those inboard leading edge shims in place and I must say they came out very nice. Won't be able to tell how they worked until the tanks go back on.

We also finished the last few upper trailing edge rivets, the ones that can't be squeezed. And with that, the upper skins are completely riveted.

January 8, 2008

The primed areas on the spars got a bit scuffed while taking the tanks off and putting them on while fitting shims. So before the tanks went back on for good, I masked off and re-primed those scuffed areas.

January 21, 2008

I need to crack open the left tank to install an anti-rotation bracket on the flop tube. Waiting for fresh proseal and new AN fittings arrive, I installed the right tank, torqued the tank attach bolts, and installed the tank skin-to-spar screws. The shimmed area on the right wing came out much better than I expected...

February 3, 2008

Got the corrugated plastic conduit (purchased from Van's) installed in both wings. Took a couple of days, and caused a lot of blisters - but it's done. I decided also to open up some of the rib tooling holes, per Vans' instructions, to hold additional wiring. Turns out that 7/16" OD snap bushings (also purchased from Van's) are the perfect inner diameter (~0.25") to hold the strobe cable that Whelen sells with their lighting kits, and between enlarged tooling holes and unused 7/16" holes for the pitot line, I can run strobe cable outside the conduit. That hopefully gives a little electromagnetic separation for reduced stobe noise in the audio system, and also frees up some space in the conduit for additional wiring.

With the conduit installed and the right tank replaced, the wings are now ready to come out of the jig!!!

February 14, 2008

I've been fighting off a moderate case of the flu, but couldn't resist finishing the wing cradle. I'm very ready to get the wings out of the jig!

There's really nothing too complex about constructing the cradle, I followed Vans' plans and everything worked fine. I won't bore you with a lot of in-process photos, but here's an end shot of the cradle before installing the casters that Captain John was kind enough to salvage for me...

...the outboard end with casters installed...

...and the inboard end, similarly equipped. Had to finish here, because it's Valentines Day and there are gifts to be purchased.

February 15, 2008

The only remaining work to be done on the cradle was attaching carpet. I moved the entire assembly outside so I wouldn't gas myself with contact cement, and 1 hour later, the cradle was complete. Our driveway is somewhat sloped, so I was glad I saved the chocks I made for the Mighty Archer. It's nice to be able to use them on the Mighty RV - or at least a part of it.

And then it was time to take the wings out of the cradle. As with so many parts of this project, I couldn't have done it without Ellen. I shanghai'd her right after she got home from work, we unfastened all the clamps and bolts holding the wings in place, and moved them to the cradle. The fit was just about perfect.

If you're an RV builder and have gotten this far, you know what a big deal this is. If not, let's just say that it's like giving birth to a child - one major component at at time!

March 7, 2008

Dang...when the wings are out of the jig, you think you're almost done with them. Well, friends, that ain't the case. Next on the agenda is all the stuff that goes on the back of the wings - aileron brackets, aileron gap seals, and flap hinge braces. First came the aileron brackets. These gadgets take a little mental effort to figure out how everything fits together. Fortunately, Van's included a complete set of drawings in the bracket subkit - they depict the brackets for both wings, and not just the left side as usual for their drawings.

After doing some basic edge-finishing on these things, I clecoed them together then clecoed them to the spar. Wherever possible I tried to do all the match-drilling with the bracket in place, just in case the alignment shifted when the brackets were clecoed to the spar. Here are the left wing's brackets clecoed in place.

I neglected to take any pictures of the flap brace and aileron seals - sorry. Just use your imagination, or keep reading for pictures in a later installment.

March 24, 2008

With match-drilling and priming complete, I started riveting the aforementioned aileron brackets, gap seals and flap hinge braces onto the wings. The only gotcha on finishing and riveting the brackets together is that some rivets require countersinking to to avoid interference with the aileron as it moves, and it's easy to countersink the wrong side of the bracket. Ask me how I know.

So after riveting the brackets themselves together *and making sure to insert those spiffy little captured bearings you see in the picture below) it was time to rivet them onto the rear spars. I was able to do some of these by myself, but some of them required a two-person approach. Captain John was able to come up for a few hours and provide some always-appreciated help. Here are the same two brackets featured in the March 7 installment, except now they're permanently attached. Cool.

The right wing mirrors what you see above. The aileron gap seals go on after the brackets, and John helped here as well...

...and also with the flap hinge braces.

With all that complete, it's off to the ailerons.

August 17, 2008

Over the last couple of weeks decided to take a break from the ailerons and start working on the left wing's pitot line plumbing. I was considering two ways of doing this; per Van's plans with a piece of aluminum tubing and some bulkhead fittings, or with the plastic lines and push-to-seal fittings that came with the SafeAir pitot-static plumbing kit. The fact that I'm installing a heated pitot actually made it impossible to use Van's original design, since it only calls for a simple aluminum tube pitot connected to a bulkhead fitting. On the flip side, the heated pitot could melt the SafeAir plastic tubing. So...I came up with a hybrid approach.

The pitot tube end was easy. I just moved Van's original bulkhead fitting from the wing underside to the wing rib just inboard of the pitot tube, then bent and flared a short piece of tubing to connect the pitot tube to the bulkhead fitting. This is to allow the pitot tube to be disconnected and removed for maintenance in the future via access from the outboard inspection hole. Although you can't see it in the first picture, there's an AN fitting hidden by the pitot mast.

The other side of the bulkhead is attached to a piece of aluminum tubing that extends inboard under the aileron bellcrank and into the middle inspection bay...

...and is connected there to an AN-to-1/4" NPT fitting (available from GAHCo) onto which is threaded a SafeAir's push-on connector. Plastic line is run inboard from there through the wing root. The short piece of aluminum tube acts as a heat sink, keeping the plastic tube from melting. And using the plastic line inboard will make it easier to route the line through the wing root area to the cockpit.

Why no bulkhead fitting at the aluminum tube's inboard end? Pretty simple.

September 1, 2008

I wrapped up work on the heated pitot by wiring up its electrical connector. I purchased the pitot as used-serviceable from our local flying club; got a great price, but the connector wasn't with the pitot. That meant buying one from Aircraft Spruce for the exorbitant price of $57.75. But it has an inspection stamp on it, so it must be worth the price. Soldering the pins on the connector was no problem; 14 gauge Tefzel wire was chosen to support the expected 10 amp current draw from one of the cockpit electrical busses. Here are the soldered pins...

The only tricky parts here were routing wires to the connector so that it could be removed with the pitot tube, and installing the ground such that the crimp connector could be visually inspected and disconnected if necessary. Some plastic tubing and a couple of tie-wraps made a good standoff.

September 2, 2008

I had already pulled lengths of Van's corrugated black conduit throug the wings, but hadn't bothered to permanently attach them. Didn't have anything else to do today, so I mixed up some proseal and made the conduit installation permanent.

I also caught up on one smaill detail. I had previously installed local ground studs in each wingtip for the landing and nav lights, and had used steel AN hardware to make those studs. I had a sneaking suspicion that galvanic corrosion could result from running electrical current through steel fittings in contact with aluminum, and after some digging in AC43.14, I found that was indeed the case. I ordered some special aluminum washers from GAHCo and reworked the grounds so that only those washers are in contact with wing structure. Problem solved.

September 4, 2008

Spent the last couple of days routing wires from the landing lights into the now-permanent conduit. Nothing tricky here, except that I routed the wires through the outboard spar lightening holes and that meant some extra work securing the wire.

Nothing particularly sexy on the right side except the use of some heated and hand-formed poly tubing to keep the wire from rubbing against anything...

The right side wire is bundled with pneumatic lines from the Advanced Flight Systems AoA probe. This actually made it easier to run the line, because I was able to use a Click Bond standoff.

I used self-fusing silicon tape to seal the holes and prevent chafing where wiring enters the plastic conduit. With all this fun complete, I went back to working on the ailerons.

October 11, 2008

Jon Ross, my Tech Counselor, and Rich Prignano flew up from Long Island for a project visit today. This was my last chance to get a set of expert eyes on the wings before I close them up. There were no serious issues, and Jon seemed to be happy with my work. Cool!

January 9, 2009

Ellen and I have been plotting for the last month about getting started riveting the lower wing skins. Ellen wanted some extra practice, so I set up some practice pieces and we shot some rivets. Came out good! Unfortunately, I have back-to-back work trips to Seattle and Huntsville so progress will be limited until mid-February.

March 1, 2009

I had a target of opportunity to get Captain John and Dave "Wicked Stick" Rogers up for a little riveting assistance on the lower wing skins. Ellen and I had started riveting the right inboard skin around the wing walk and rear spar and John, Dave and I picked up from there. Dave is one of the most skilled RV riveters around, and I was glad to have both his and John's help. Dave and John did some riveting while I stepped back and took a picture...

And lest anyone think that I didn't do any work...I'm the one wielding the rivet gun.

After a good morning's work, we headed for the Sunset Tap and Grill.

August 1, 2009

I had a great time at Oshkosh, camped with Captain John, Rich Mileka, Dave Rogers and other EAA folks from Boston. Also got to hang out with my friend Jim Piavis who brought his new RV-7 to Oshkosh for the first time.

The RV formation flights were amazing! They surely put the warbird folks to shame...

August 2, 2009

Halfway there on the wing skins...woohoo!

So why has it taken so long to get those damn wing skins riveted on? Some folks do solo bucking and shooting on the lower skins, but I've chosen to do this as a team. So Ellen and I do this work when we both have time, and when we don't, I work on the fuse. But today we managed to complete the lower skins on the right wing.

We used a hybrid approach when riveting the skins. On the inboard skins we followed Vans' instructions to the letter, riveting in a "chevron" pattern that leaves enough room at the front of the skin to reach up and buck the rear rib-to-skin and spar-to-skin rivets. But on the outboard skins we started out using the book approach, then switched to a bay-by-bay method for the outer part of the skin. Once we could gently peel back the skin, we reached in from the outboard end and did a rib, then the forward and rear spar-to-skin rivets that were outboard of the rib we just riveted. It's really easier to do than to explain.

September 4, 2009

Finished up the inboard skin on the left wing today. We've been slowly working through this process one bay at a time (see the 2 Aug entry).

September 13, 2009

Ellen likes to leave little notations on the airplane, like here where we drilled out a rivet. If you're old enough to know the "Oh Nooo, Mr Bill!" reference, you're just old!

Perseverence pays off, especially for us really slow builders...the left wing's inboard lower skin is riveted on!

October 31, 2009

Over the last month and a half I've been alternating between the wings and fuselage. We're working our way outboard on the left wing's lower skin. I tried for a really artsy photo here, but don't think I got it.

With the skins riveted in place around the pitot mast opening, I test-fitted the mast. Turns out the skin expanded outward a little bit during riveting, so I had to tweak the holes a little bit to get everything to line up. Came out ok...

Almost done with the outboard skin...

November 6, 2009

I'm pushing hard to have the wings done and out of the shop before the December holidays. I really don't want to be moving the wings around outside in the snow. So I've scheduled Dave Rogers and John Sannizzaro to help me get the left wing outboard skin done in one marathon session. So until that's done, I'm doing a bunch of clean-up stuff like fitting bellcranks and pushrods.

Because I'm using the SafeAir pitot mast and a heated AN-5812 pitot tube, I can't follow Vans' instructions on routing the pitot line. If you look a little earlier in this page, you'll get all the details on how I decided to use both solid aluminum and plastic pitot lines. When I final-fitted the bellcrank with the solid pitot line in place, I found out that I have some rubbing between the line and the bellcrank pivot.

So...I had to remove the existing hard line and hand-bend a joggle into a new piece of tube, then fit that into the wing. What a pain in the ass. I used a Click-Bond tie-wrap anchor, attached with structural adhesive, to hold the joggle in place on the spar web. Problem solved.

November 8, 2009

Continued doing detail work today. The right wing skins are done, so I lubed and installed the bellcrank and connected the small pushrod to the aileron, and installed washers and spacers on the aileron pushrod attach hardware. With that done, I inserted the bellcrank jig provided by Vans.

I also fabricated a fixture per the plans to indicate when the aileron is in the neutral position; that's the wood strip you see in the pic below. It's simply a piece of wood with two AN bolts spaced to fit in tooling holes in the outboard wing rib. Parallel lines drawn tangent to the bolt holes extend back (or to the top, in this case) and the aileron is neutral when its trailing edge is centered between the lines. I've seen other, more complex ways of doing this but the plans approach works fine.

After than, it was a tedious but straightforward process to adjust the small pushrod rod-ends to align the aileron to neutral.

November 9, 2009

With the right aileron aileron jigged and aligned, I test-fitted the right flap to see how hard it would be to align the flap and aileron trailing edges. That part wasn't hard but I did discover that when the flap and aileron TEs are aligned, the flap hinge wouldn't have sufficient edge distance for the rivets that attach the hinge to the wing. I can't do a better job of explaining this than Brad Oliver did, so see his website entry for more details.

Bototm line...just as Brad and others did, I ordered a piece of wider hinge material to give the required edge distance.

November 14, 2009

Got the wider hinge material in from Aircraft Spruce - quick, easy and not too expensive. I re-fitted the right flap and checked edge distances. No problem!

One complete hinge has two leaves. That coveres both flaps. For some unknown reason, I thought the FedEx triangular tube mailing box deserved a picture...so here you go.

Plenty of margin on egde distance, but that forward (or lower, in this picture) edge of the hinge will have to be radiused to fit snugly inside the flap brace. Nothing that a few strokes with the file won't fix.

November 15, 2009

Today was the big day to finish riveting the lower wing skins. Dave Rogers provided his superior bucking skills and we knocked out the remaining three ribs and spar-to-skin rivets in a couple of hours. Yeah, I know it took waaaaay too long to get this whole effort done...but we're done.

The guilty parties...me, Captain John, Dave and Mitch at the completion of our work. As is our custom, we adjourned to the Sunset Grill and Tap for well-deserved refreshments.

November 16, 2009

With the left wing skins in place, I jigged the aileron and fitted the flap. Sorry, no new pictures. Use your imagination or scroll up to the Nov 8/9 log entries.

November 20, 2009

With both flaps fitted and aligned, I match-drilled the hinges to the wing skins and flap braces. Nothing magical here, but following Brad Oliver's lead I started drilling and clecoing at the ends of each flap and worked my way into the center. Worked great! Once again, no pictures...sorry.

November 21, 2009

Prepped and primed flap hinges today. No big mysteries here, so no pictures. Getting ready for the final push to finish everything on the wings...

November 28, 2009

Today was the day I hoped to finish everything. First step was to cleco the primed flap hinges in place.

Next step was to rivet them in place. Easy work with the squeezer, but I took my time. No need to sprint to the finish line.

I borrowed Ellen for one last session of wing riveting to get the pitot mast in place. Call me sentimental, but I wanted us to do this last bit together because Ellen has been my constant support through this process.

After that, I installed the flaps with temporary hinge pins...and the wings were complete. Holy merde, it's been a long haul!

December 12, 2009

We're building in a large (by Boston standards) one-car garage, so we had to move the wings out to make room for the fuselage. Today was the day we rented a large U-Haul truck to make the move to our storage space (and eventual building location) at Hanscom Field (KBED). I'd already moved the empennage out there earlier this year, so bit by bit the airplane is making its way to the airport. Ellen is holding the cradle in place while I take one last picture of the wings at the house.

The wings in the truck. That cradle is pretty solid, but we didn't want anything shifting around during the 11-mile drive to the airport. So everything is tied and chocked securely.

The trip was a non-event, and we got the wings safely to the hangar. Cool!

The shop is empty, but not for long. After a little cleanup and rearranging, I'll continue on with the fuselage.

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