Flaps

Lots of good progress on the flaps today! Assembled both L and R flap assemblies, and finished all match/final drilling tasks. In order to keep the assemblies straight, I decided to go ahead and bolt them to the wings, and use the row of clecoes along the top of the spar to rest against the top wing skin. This row will be what makes the flaps "appear" straight, because the rivet line in this location will be right along the straight edge of the wing top skin... so what better way to ensure straightness than to put everything against the line to which it will be judged? This also helped during Page 22-5 step 3, where we had to match-drill between each pair of hinge brackets. The plans call out to use some washers as spacers to get the distance right, whereas in our case the brackets were actually bolted to the wings themselves and in the exact orientation they will be after final assembly.

Anyway, not a whole ton of pics today other than the flap assemblies after they came back off the wings after the drilling session:

L flap - outboard side

L flap - inboard side

R flap - outboard side

R flap - inboard side

After these photos were taken, we tore down the flaps back to their individual pieces for the always-anticipated task of deburring, dimpling, scuffing and priming. We were going to continue, but since it was so nice out we instead opted to have some friends over for an impromptu grill-out. Summer is coming! (and so is the fuselage kit...)