Wings

EDIT: Mistake made on this day discovered later. See "Gotcha" in this post from 4/12/2015.

Completed section 14 for the ribs today! That involved first riveting the flap attach brackets together (3@ 16 rivets each), and attaching the aileron torque tube support to rib #1L. Then the fun part began... attaching each rib to the spar, one by one. We had previously developed a different numbering scheme for the ribs because we found Van's numbering scheme quite confusing, especially on the right wing which is not depicted at all in the plans and is only mentioned to be a "mirror image" of the left wing. That's fine, but each wing has a series of part numbers designated R and L, and certain things have to be done to certain ribs to make them all work together properly. To simplify everything, once we got all the ribs in the right location early on, we numbered them 1L-15L, and 1R-15R.

I attached the ribs in a slightly off order to maximize space for the bucking bar around the wing-walk area. I attached rib #3 first, then #2, then #1, and then proceeded with #4-#15 in order (#15 doesn't get riveted yet, only clecoed into place). I snapped in two small grommets for air lines (pitot/AOA), and then a larger 5/8" grommet for wiring. Lastly, a sundry of AN3 bolts needed to be selected for the upper and lower rib attach points (thru rib #12), along with washers and locknuts. These were done last, and then finally torqued to 25 in-lb and dabbed with torque seal.

One of three flap attach brackets. These go on ribs #1, 7, and 11.

The two air lines in front, and the wiring grommet in the stock location. Hopefully I won't regret not running conduit like many have done.

The aileron torque tube support.

Helloooooooooooo!

All riveted and bolted together! (Except #15)

With that, I decided to get a jump start on Section 15-3 (we had already done pg. 2), for the rear spar. This was a short-lived effort, because I basically instantaneously ruined my first part in the wing kit! The first thing the plans have you do is match-drill the W-1007E spar doubler to the rear spar. Instead, I used the similar but longer W-1007D to do this, and in so doing, ruined the piece. Careless mistake. Looked up the part on vansaircraft and it's a whopping $3. Oh well, could have been way worse I suppose. I think what I'll do is cut the D-piece I drilled to match the length of the E-piece, that way I won't have to double-drill through the spar holes to match-drill another fresh piece. Anyone need an extra W-1007E? :-)

Somehow, I managed to clamp the W-1007D (already labeled "I" for inboard, too!) into place for match drilling instead of the W-1007E that was supposed to go there. Oh well, no big deal... at least it's cheap and fixable.

Tomorrow, I believe we'll start on the right wing and hopefully get to the same place we are now on the left side!

Wings

Not really much in the way of "direct" progress on the wings this weekend through today. I did build the wing rack using plans I found online, and the leading edge cradles. Since both Sarah and I are working on the wings in parallel, I thought it might be nice to make four total cradles, so that we can work on the leading edges and tanks all at the same time. I'm thinking we can start on the tanks first, since there are many stages of proseal curing time, during which we can continue on the other parts. Of course, we still need to finish the ribs, rear spar, and top skins before we get to that!! Maybe our excitement is causing us to get a little ahead of ourselves...

We also cleaned out the garage on Saturday, taking two truckloads of crap to the landfill. It's nice to have a little more breathing room in here now, although honestly I think we could still stand to organize things even more. It's going to be a slow process to fully recover from the chaos of this past year.

Oh yeah, one other milestone today... we ordered the fuselage kit!!! A little bird had told me Van's will be increasing their kit prices "soon", so I called them today and just by chance found out they were in the middle of raising their prices right "now". So the person I spoke to was either the world's best salesperson, or just trying to do me a solid, but I squeaked my order in and got it processed before the price hike becomes official (tomorrow?). So, we might have the kit delivered a few weeks prior to needing it, but at least we got it at the cheaper price. Well, I guess I'm using the word "cheap" lightly here. Anyway, it will also be fun to gawk at all the parts that I'm really excited about in the fuse kit while we're finishing the wings.

Otherwise, the only real work we got done was I caught my L ribs up to Sarah's R ribs, they are all deburred, primed, and ready for final installation to the spars... hopefully we'll get to that tomorrow!

The L wing ribs after priming

Wings

Short day today, no pics either.. probably not much more to come this weekend, as we have non-rv10 plans both Saturday and Sunday. Finished priming the R ribs, now just need to prime the L ribs and we can start riveting the ribs to the spars. Hopefully we'll get started on that by early next week!

Wings

The deburring, scuffing, and priming continues. While working on the 30 wing ribs, we started assembling the the W-1029 and W-1013 brackets for the aileron torque tube and aileron hinge, respectively. It's coming together!

I also learned an important lesson tonight... especially for these little multi-part brackets that you can cleco together in less than a minute and start banging away on the rivets, DOUBLE-CHECK THE PLANS AND YOUR ASSEMBLY BEFORE RIVETING. It's really easy to use the wrong rivet or orient a part wrong. Especially when the L and R wing assemblies are mirror images of each other, and the plans only depict the L side. If you don't realize this until you've started riveting, guess what, you have to drill it all out and start over. Happened to us on two of the six brackets we put together tonight-- both my fault. Things like this happen from time to time, for sure, but it's just frustrating to make dumb mistakes like that. Oh well, important thing is we caught our mistakes and everything came out just fine in the end-- just took more time and anguish than it should have.

Lastly, I finally came to a conclusion on how I want to run my wires and pitot/AOA tubing for the wings (for now, at least). I went through more mental gymnastics on this than I think I was prepared for, and sketched this up in a number of ways before drilling anything. Against what many have done, I'm not going to use conduit in the wings, but instead just use the grommets that Van's recommends, with a high-quality wire sleeve. I drilled 5/8" through all ribs in the pre-punched location between the first and second lightening hole, and then two 3/8" holes in the left wing for pitot and AOA, On the right wing, we'll probably do one 3/8" hole part-way through the wing to accomodate trim/AP servo wiring.

Not many pictures from today, but here's what we have:

The first batch of wing ribs primed.

The six brackets mentioned earlier, all riveted together and ready to go!

Wings

Disassembled the ribs from the spars to begin the long and tedious task of prep for final assembly. This included fluting (we hadn't yet fluted the ribs to straighten them-- they weren't too bowed but a few of them definitely needed straightening), deburring the holes already match-drilled, scotch-briting, and priming. We got through all of the small parts, including the aileron attach brackets we made ahead of time in Section 15. Not too many pictures since prep work is about as interesting as watching primer dry... we did shoot this pic though:

One of us is more creative than the other when it comes to laying out parts to prime. See the little guy with a backpack on the right? Sarah has named him Edward.

Unfortunately we had to reposition some of Edward's body parts before actually spraying them, in the spirit of primer efficiency.

One note on primer: The astute observer may notice that we're switching a lot between Rustoleum Self-Etching Primer (gray), Duplicolor Self-Etching Primer (green), and Rustoleum Aluminum Primer (white). Going forward, I think I'll be getting away from the Rustoleum Self-Etching because it goes on too thick. I have one or two cans left and might use some on random parts here and there, but during the tailcone construction I sort of decided on going with Duplicolor for all non-skin parts, and Rustoleum Aluminum primer for the inside of skins. They both seem to adhere pretty well, and one can seems to go farther than the RSE did. I like the white color of the Aluminum primer on the skins too, hopefully it should make future inspections easier by reflecting more light inside enclosed areas. We'll see how it goes.

Wings

Caught the right wing up to the left wing. Now both sides completed through page 14-3 step 3, and 15-2 step 3.

Wings

Left Wing: Completed through page 14-3 step 3. Also started 15-2 steps 1-3.
Right Wing: Completed through page 14-2 step 7.

Using a few quick-clamps and 2x4's, I rigged up a way to have both spars on one table, and we can hang the ribs off the spar as we go. Should look pretty neat as it comes together!

Building the F-1029 Torque Tube Support Bracket. These attach to the inboard-most rib and help transfer movement to the ailerons.

Here is one of the three (per wing) W-1025 Flap Hinge Brackets match-drilled to the rib and clecoed into position. These are some beefy pieces!

Two more Flap Hinge Brackets

All the ribs attached to the left wing... it's a very rewarding experience to see this come together! Of course, soon it will all be torn back down for hours of deburring and priming. But still, it's a cool milestone :-)

Wings

Completed section 13 (almost)! Finished installing all the nutplates into the spar flanges and countersinking all the necessary holes. Fabricated and tapped the tie-down brackets, and installed the nutplates into it. Primed the spar flanges and tie down brackets. Only thing left to do is rivet and bolt them to the spar once the primer is dry!

Dag decided to help out too!

Wings

Left wing: completed page 13-3 steps 4&6. Right wing: completed page 13-3 steps 2-3. We plan to stagger our work slightly to make efficient use of countersinks, drills, squeezers, etc. So far so good!

Wings

Completed page 13-3 steps 2-3 for left wing