The fuel tanks require some meaty brackets on the inboard leading edge. They’re fabricated from angle stock, cutting an airfoil shape one way, and a bell-curve-esque shape the other. Time and care was spent here, and it paid off. However, I wouldn’t have minded taking a bit more off initially, especially where the curves met […]
The tanks were clecoed together and and attached the wing. My videos go into detail, but this was a fairly painless adventure. I created the first tank on the bench, much like the leading edge. While this was a worthwhile adventure, it wasn’t exactly “correct.” The tanks are built on the wing in a few […]
Leading edges went onto the wing–still everything up to now clecoed together with very few rivets placed. The ribs were not hard to get into the skin, so either Van’s made some adjustments to the tooling or all the straightening and deburring really paid off because I heard these can be a real pain. They […]
This is the skin summary post! All skins at this point have been attached, some have been removed. First top skins are clecoed on, then bottom skins. At one point all skins were on both wings. Then it’s the old game of match drill, cleco shuffle, match drill, and then remove parts–except the top skins. […]
Tonight I was able to put the finishing touches on the wing stands. These were tough. There’s a lot of fabrication, measuring, leveling. I did not have proper levels, so I purchased a laser level, torpedo level, and line level. All these were helpful. My 3′ spirit level worked great for some tasks, but there […]
The picture does most of the explaining. The right wing was riveted together first. In all, it took about 2.5 hours to get all 100+ rivets set. Care is needed to avoid rivets that should hold until subassemblies are attached. Care is also needed, to ensure rivets go in the “right” way. I did not […]
Several days of scrubbing the ribs had me questioning my commitment to priming the airframe. Yesterday, I completed the scrubbing and mixed up a HUGE batch of primer. About an hour later, viola! I accidentally primed the leading edge ribs at the same time. This is jumping ahead a bit, but I think it will […]