Here's
what you get out of the box.
January 4, 2003 6 hours
I had left the bottom skins off the wings just in case something came up that I wanted to put inside the wings. There wasn't. I see no reason not to close the wings up while you're into it the first time. Just put some form of conduit to run the wire and be done with it.
(Just a little update note: The plans call for laying the wings flat on a table to install the bottom skins. We didn't do that with either of the wings. We worked on the bottom skins with the wings in the wing stand. It worked out great for us both when Chris was helping me with the right wing and when I did the left wing by myself.)
Anyway, Chris was home so I had some help so we riveted the bottom skins on the right wing. We didn't get to the left wing and I've ordered the servo for the Digitrak autopilot. I certain that it could be installed with the skin on so we may go ahead and rivet the other skins while Chris is here this week. We'll see how our schedules line up.
We also set the flap on the right wing. We aligned the top of the flap level with the aileron, put about a quarter inch distance between the flap and aileron, clamped the hinge in place and drilled the flap hinge. Sunday, I slipped away for a few minutes and riveted the hinge to the rear wing spar.
Installed the Trutrak servo into the left wing.
Here's
what you get out of the box.
This
is before the install.
Here's
the finished product. The install is straight forward. But there is
no hardware with the kit. I don't think it would be any problem to install
into a completed wing (unless it's getting the wire bundle ran).
I
took this shot after installing the bottom skins. You can see that it
would be quite easy to install this with the skins on.
Saturday Jan 11, 2003 8.5 hours
I riveted the bottom skins on the left wing today. Did this one solo. (Chris left to go back to Ames last night. I should have lied and told him that we'd go flying and maybe he'd stayed around one more day. ) Anyway, got the skins on.
Sunday Jan 12, 2003 2 hours
Set the left flap and then drilled and riveted the hinge for the left flap. After getting this flap in place, the flap looked like it had a slight twist to it. I remember that I wondered about this flap when I built it. I decided to try to straighten the flap. I drilled out all the rivets on the spar / hinge to skin. I clamped everything down to the table and riveted it back together. Seemed to help straighten the flap.
I spent entirely too much time fitting the fiberglass wing tips. I'm always afraid that I will trim too much off or cut something to short so it takes lots of cut/try the fit/cut again. On the wing tips, the solution is simple as I learned after fussing with the first tip.
1) Find the smallest lip available on the wing tip by measuring in different spots around the wing. (on mine it was about 6 tenths of an inch).
2) Mark and trim the lip of the fiberglass to this distance all the way around the fiberglass tip.
3) You'll need to cut out some more around the flap but I don't have a good way to tell you to do this except put the fiberglass tip in place and measure / mark. (I set a 1/4 inch gap between the fiberglass and the end of the flap.)
4) Duct tape the fiberglass tip in place and drill the holes and cleco as you go. (I plan on using some #6 screws so I've ordered some screws and platenuts.)
Worked on the position lights and strobe lights in the wing tips. I drilled the holes for the lights and the platenuts that will hold these things in place
Cut the Plexiglas wing tip cover. Again, what a pain to try to get this thing to fit perfectly.
Feb 6, 2003 1.5 hours
Worked some more on the Plexiglas tip covers.
Not
a very representative picture but I attached all the platenuts to the wing tips
to hold them in place. The option is using pop-rivets but there will be
antenna's and lights in these tips so I'll use screws and platenuts.