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PmWiki /
LeftWingAmount of hours spent on left wing: 69.5 December 4, 2008 - 1h I dimpled the skin and flap brace rivet holes together, countersunk the hinge and riveted the hinge on. Removed the hinge eyes like I did on the right wing and cut the two pieces of hinge pins to length and bend them accordingly. Had some trouble getting them in the combined flap and wing hinge eyes, but after a bit of pushing and pulling it went in.
 
November 25, 2008 - 2.5h I'm done riveting the left wing! Only thing left is drilling the flap hinge on and mount the tip.
 
November 24, 2008 - 2h Got a lot done in 2 hours tonight. Finished riveting the inboard skin and started on the outboard skin. Having the wing in the craddle makes the riveting so much easier! Even by myself it's no problem reaching the rear spar rivets; okay, okay I do have long arms :-)
 
In the picture on the right (with me in it) it looks like that skins is bending too much, but don't worry it's not!
November 23, 2008 - 3h Michela helped me move the left wing to the table and Adriana helped me riveting the inboard skin on.
I started to do some rivets by myself, but this is definitely pretty hard to do and I had to drill out a whole bunch of rivets, because the skin didn't fit very well on the main spar.
After reclecoing the skin (this time starting with the main spar) and re-riveting some rows, the fit was much better.
After having done some rivets on the table, we decided to move the wing back to the wing stand and do the riveting verically: this made it much easier to reach through the inspection panels to reach far away rivets. Still this is going to take a while...
November 20, 2008 - 1.5h Laid the last hand on the left wing before closing it up. Mounted the pitot heating module on a rib.
And guided the electrical conduit through the ribs. This was pretty tough where the ribs are closely spaced, but pretty trivial anywhere else.
 
November 19, 2008 - 3h Lots more pitot work tonight. Using unibits and dremel tool I made the hole for the pitot mast in the bottom skin. The hole is not perfect due to some unintended moves I made with the dremel, but it will do. It's the bottom of the wing after all and can probably be touched up in the painting phase.
 
Then I drilled and tapped the holes in the pitot tube itself to mount the tube to the mast.
 
Last but not least I bent the aluminum connections coming out of the tube to connect to the AN fittings I mounted on the rib. After flaring the first tube, I remembered that I forgot to put the sleeve and nut on! Grrr, had to cut the flared end off and do it again (this time with the nut and sleeve on). As you can see in the picture the AOA tube almost wasn't long enough anymore, but it just about made it. If it would be too short, I could always just put the fittings on without mounting it on the rib, but that wouldn't be as nice.
 
November 18, 2008 - 0.5h Started preparing the bottom wing skin for the pitot tube mast hole.
Also started preparing the pitot tube itself for drilling the mounting holes to the mast.
 
And look at this nice heating controller :-)
July 19, 2008 - 2h Riveted both the flap brace and the aileron gap seal to the left rear spar.
 
July 17, 2008 - 2.5h Primed the aileron brackets and flap and aileron seats and riveted the brackets together and partly on the rear spar. This can't be all done with the squeezer so I have to finish this with the rivet gun tomorrow.
 
PS I noticed that I countersunk the wrong side of the outboard aileron bracket, so I exchanged it with the part for the right wing. It turned out that for the right wing it is the right side!
July 16, 2008 - 0.5h Scotchbrite-padded the aileron brackets and the aileron and flap seats (or whatever these are called) and alumi-prepped them. Tomorrow is priming time!
July 15, 2008 - 2h Nice to have a night without proseal for a change :-) I assembled the aileron brackets and match-drilled them to the rear spar.
 
Also cleco'd and match-drilled both the flap and aileron braces to the rear spar.
 
July 9, 2008 - 3h Today I spent some time on getting the window for the leading edge light sanded down and installed. The method that duckworks describes to hold the window tight with the tape works well.
 
After installation it looks nice, but it does look like there is still some space between the window and the skin at some places. I'll look at this later.  
July 5, 2008 - 5h Another long day in the shop. This time I didn't even switch on the compressor as I have been deburring holes and edges and dimpling the left bottom skins and the fuel tank skin. And now my back hurts; ouch!
July 4, 2008 - 5h Happy July 4th to everybody! And what a productive day it was. Adriana, my neighbor came to help my rivet the top skins on the left wing today and although I thought this would take two sessions, we managed to do it all in 5 hours. One warning for those who read this blog and are also building an RV: there's many different rivet sizes being used on the skins. Make sure you use the right one for the right hole (I had to drill out a couple because I forgot to look at the drawing...)
 
Adriana's feet under the wing and Argo who we couldn't get to come help us riveting
 
Top skins all done and looking really nice
The last I did today was cutting out the plexiglass window with my Dremel and a cutting wheel for the leading edge light. I'll have to do some grinding and sanding tomorrow to get that nice.
July 2, 2008 - 3h Finished the leading edge riveting today! I had a lot of trouble getting blind rivets in the spar-rib combinations so I decided to grind down my cheapo poprivet tool even further than I already had and that had the effect I needed: I could get in just enough to push a blind rivet in their respective holes.
Here's the grounded down poprivet tool. Hardly any metal left!
After that I squeezed rivets into the holes that connect the leading edge edge with the spar. Looks really nice now. It's good to see the LE without cleco's.
 
July 1, 2008 - 1h Not too much time in the shop tonight. Dimpled the bottom side of the ribs and riveted the most outboard rib of the leading edge to the spar; what a pain! I could do some with the squeezer and had to do some with the gun and bucking bar. I think I will use blind rivets for the other ribs (approved by Vans).
June 30, 2008 - 2h Dimpled W-703 today, filed down the corner where the skins overlap, put some alodine on the skins where it will touch the ribs and cleco'd the wing together again including the leading edge. Next couple of days will be riveting time :-)
June 29, 2008 - 3h Lots of hole and edge deburring today and dimpling of skins too (C-frame stuff). Not very exciting to talk about so I won't bother anybody with it. Had some fun too and went to see Jeff Vaughan's almost finished 7A at Brandywine airport. Some pics can be found on the Arrival and Wing Stands page. Oh, I primed the spar flange as well in preparation of the skins.
June 28, 2008 - 6h A very productive day again. I cut the hole for the duckworks leading edge light and installed the light mounting plate in the leading edge. The plexiglass lens will be done when I do the right leading edge light (HID) so that I can process them both at the same time. I also don't have a band saw yet, so I will have to buy one for that.
 
The raw and finished cut-out. As always the Dremel was an great tool for this.
 
The mounting plate mounted inside the leading edge.
I drilled all the holes and installed the platenuts on the W-423 joint plate.
 
The last thing of the day was countersinking all the skin holes in the main spar.
 
Doesn't sound like a whole lot of work does it? But it definitely was :-) And now... it's time for some nice Thai food! (I think I deserved it)
June 27, 2008 - 2.5h A major milestone reached tonight! I've riveted together my first leading edge. Went very smooth and I only had to drill out and redo 3 rivets. After so long time not having touched the rivet gun that was not bad at all.
Here I am in the middle of pounding rivets (skin in the craddle)
 
Here I'm done. Both sides came out nicely. I was surprised to feel how light this structure is!
I also primed the leading edge light mounting bracket, so tomorrow I can hopefully finish the installation of the dickworth leading edge taxi light.
June 26, 2008 - 3h I decided to paint the rib sides that are going to be visible through the leading edge light window gray instead of the zinc-oxide yellow that looks kind of messy. Before the painting I riveted the platenuts on that are going to hold the lights.
Next was dimpling all the leading edge ribs (with the squeezer) and the leading edge skin (with the C-frame). And yes Van's is right, the dimples come out nicer with the C-frame than with the squeezer. It gets less distorted that way.
Next I put some alodine using the Touch-N-Pen on the skin where it is going to touch the ribs before cleco'ing it all together. After some edge deburring tomorrow I might actually start to rivet this thing together!
 
June 25, 2008 - 1.5h Not too much time in the shop today. Primed the left leading edge ribs and cut out the hole for the tank access cover with the new fly cutter that came in the mail today. Worked great!
June 24, 2008 - 2h Since I have to wait for the fly cutter I ordered from cleaveland yesterday, I started to debur the leading edge ribs tonight and prepare them for priming (scotchbrite pads and alu-etching). I also decided to start drill the holes for the platenuts that will mount the duckworth light backplate in between the two outboard ribs.
I've decided to put the taxilight (a 100W halogen bulb) in the left wing and the landing light (the 50W HID lamp) in the right wing. Using the soldering iron I removed some of the blue stuff around the rivet holes on the skin. 
Tomorrow I plan to prime the ribs and dimple the leading edge skin. June 3, 2008 Started doing work on the left tank. It is documented on the 'Wing Tanks' page.
June 2, 2008 - 6h I had a day off from work today and spent most of the time in the shop. And what a productive day! First cut the material to size for the doubler (26x10 inch). According to some posts on the web it is not necessary to cut it down to 9 1/4 inch. Also the drawing is right and the description is not (it tells you to overhang the rear spar by an inch). After that I clecod the top skins and doubler on the left wing structure.
 
And here's a picture of yours truly match-drilling the skins.
Clecod the bottom skins on the wings and match-drilled those as well.
 
Next step was clecoing the leading edge structure to the front spar and match-drilling all of the holes.
 
That was followed by fitting the 408-1 rib in the end together with the joint plate which is used to keep the leading edge and tank skins together.
 
Yup, this was a good day. Looking forward to getting that first wing finished :-) Not looking forward to all that deburring and dimpling though!
May 30, 2008 - 4h After a couple of weeks of traveling for work and a visit of my mother-in-law, I finally got some time in the shop again. Primed the last four main ribs and started to rivet the ribs, main spar and rear spar together. I used the rivet gun for the main spar and could squeeze all the rivets on the rear spar. I put some tape over rivet holes that should be kept open for now.
 
After that, with the help of Michela, I put the left wing structure back on the wing stand.
And put the jacks underneath to make sure the wings are not hanging down in the middle. Used a string of yellow wire for that.
May 11, 2008 - 2h I managed to hung the left wing in the wing stand today. What a nice sight to the eye :-)
When putting the leading edge skin on, I notice a slight problem with the bolt on the outboard side: the skin doesn't fit there. Seems I have to move that nut a bit outwards to make that work.  
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