More wingtip drilling and nutplates

Spent just a little time in the shop drilling holes for nutplates and doing a little countersinking. Installed half a dozen nutplates, waiting for my order from Van's to show up with more.

TIP: Use #4 screws instead of #6... 6's are a bit too big. Cleveland Tools sells a wingtip attach kit with the screws and nutplates in it for $44.

(Time: 1 hrs)

Wingtip nutplate holes...

I enlarged the holes in the left wing/tip from #40 to #27, deburred and dimpled the wing skin holes and then used a #6 nutplage jig that Ray loaned me to drill the holes in the wingtip. Wow.. that nutplate jig is nice! I countersunk the rivet holes for the nutplates and then did a lot of sanding on the 'joggle' to get a good skin/tip fit. Lots more sanding to do....

Holes for nutplates

(Time: 2 hrs)

Wingtip work

With the right wing tip in place, I positioned the tip rib (W-916R?) and clamped it in place. Pulled the tip off and then drilled/countersunk the holes for the rib. I fluted the W-931 rib and set it in place to see how it fit. Decided to go ahead and shoot a coat of primer on all the ribs.

I pulled out the left wing tip and did some serious filing on it to get it to fit and then drilled it in place.

(Time: 3 hrs)

TEX-20 RV Flyin

Builder Buddy Bill and I flew down to Midway Regional in Texas for the TEX-20 RV Flyin. Our 5:00am Saturday morning departure turned into a 6:10 departure on an IFR flight plan in VFR conditions. We were flying a rented Cessna 172RG and had a nice tailwind going down. Flight down took us 3:15 hrs. It was a pleasant trip down. I hand flew most of the way but towards the end we kicked on the auto-pilot. We got vectored through DFW airspace to KJWY and landed around 9:30. As soon as we got out of the plane, Ann Asberry greeted us and started giving us the tour. The first person we ran into was Rosie. (If you don't know who that is.. well.. too bad. :0)) We met Mel Asberry and then bumped into Clay Rossimer who was going to take me up in his RV-9A. He suggested we go soon, cause it was getting hot. No arguments from me. We went up and I flew around a bit and he let me land it over at Lancaster. We hung out for awhile, got some drinks and then headed back. I did a quick walk around the tarmac looking at what I could. Spoke with a lot of people, took some pictures. About lunch time, I ran into Mike Schipper who drove down. Mike and I are email buddies.. it was really good to meet him in person. We talked about our engine choices and what we would do if we had to do it again while eating a good BBQ lunch. After lunch, I headed back out to look around some more. Saw Doug Reeves standing by his plane, so I went over and said hello.. just about the time he got wrangled into giving a youngster from the church group a ride. Mel took Bill for a ride in his RV-6 since Bill has yet to ride in an RV. I'd say about 2:00 the ramp was pretty much empty of RV's. Sat around in the FBO hangar and yacked. Met Alex Dominques who does transition training. There were four RV-9's around, including the TruTrak plane. You can certainly see a pattern for Texas RV's.... taildraggers with sliding canopies. It was really good to see up close a lot of RV's even though I didn't spend as much time looking as I would have liked. (Too much fun yacking with people.)

Our original plan was to fly back Saturday night but we had an open invitation from the Asberry's to come stay at their place, so we opted for that. They have a strip on their little 8 acre place... 1,500ft. Bill had practiced some short field landings and take-offs earlier in the week to make sure we could get down and get back out. He was going to make me do it at first.. soon as I saw that runway.. nope.. its all yours Bill! Plopped it down with room to spare. We had a fantastic evening talking planes, planes and planes. Had a great spaghetti dinner. Next morning we had breakfast and departed about 8:30 or so. (I could go on and on about our stay... let's just say they were very gracious hosts. I can't wait to go back down and take Sandi with me. Mel and Ann are the neatest people... this is why you build RV's.)

A stop for gas at Sherman and then direct back to IXD, letting the auto-pilot fly us home. Topped the tanks, unloaded the plane and got back home around 2:00. Not a bad weekend... even in a rented 172. :-)

More work on right wing tip

I finished drilling the right wingtip to wing. I pulled it off and then mounted the aileron so I can do the necessary trimming. With the aileron mounted and held in position, the tip is aligned within about 1/8"-3/16" with the aileron. I think this is close enough for me. I finished the necessary trimming on the wingtip to clear the aileron. I did not use any measurements from the plans, I just put it in place and marked where it needed to be trimmed. Also, the plans call for a 1/4" gap between the tip and aileron... that sure seems like a HUGE gap. I trimmed mine to 1/8" for now, which seems to be plenty of clearance.

Tasks left for this tip: Sand joggle down for better skin/tip fit, install nutplates, install the two ribs in the tip.

(Time: 1.5 hrs)

PS - Flying to the Texas RV flyin on Saturday. Leaving at 5am from IXD for ~3.5 hr flight down in a 172RG. No laughing please.. :-)

Nutplates and wingtip

Managed to get out into the shop fairly early to start working. I put the wings on a table and installed all of the nutplates on the root end that the gap fairing attaches too. These are simple to install but pretty time consuming.

Nutplates...

Nutplates on the fuel tank.

After procrastinating for a couple of hours, I went back in the shop and pulled out the wingtips. Started playing with the right wing tip first. Did some filing of the edges so it would fit inward. I pushed it down into the tip as far as I could and drilled a #40 hole to hold it in place. After some more fiddling and fussing I started drilling the holes starting at the leading edge and moving back. I didn't get very far.

Tip in place

At this point, my ailerons are not mounted, so I really don't know how well the trailing edge of the tip will align. I've read it is kinda hard to get them to align anyway, so my plan is to split the trailing edge once it's all drilled and make adjuments then.

Engine Status:

(Time: 5 hrs)

Aircraft registration and engine pull...

Pulled the engine off the airframe last night and pulled out all the various parts-n-pieces for the trip down to Tulsa tomorrow.

I also just dropped my aicraft registration packet in the mail. It can take up to 3 months to process that paperwork, so sooner rather than later is better. I had to get a new bill of sale from Van's that included Sandi's name. (This isn't the Airworthiness Application... that will come later when I'm ready to fly.)

Tank angles....

Still not really motivated to work on the project for some reason... but Sandi's harassing me about it, so I better do something! (How often have you heard a builder's wife harassing him for NOT working on the project??)

So, I pulled off the tank attach angles from the fuse and made the 1/4" slot in them. I guess this slot allows the bolt to come off in the event of a crash or something. I really don't understand it..

Also vaccumed out the fuselage and cleaned it up a bit. Put on a coule nuts holding the flap push tube down. Reinstalled and torqued the tank attach angles. Fussed with the tank access covers a bit.. they are ready to install on tanks.

On a side note, I just finished reading Light This Candle, the life and times of Alan Shephard. I'm now half way into "WE" by Charles Lindbergh.

(Time: 2 hrs)

New tank access covers

I remade the tank access covers, hopefully correctly this time. Amazing how fast it went compared to the first time I made them. Didn't do anything else the rest of the weekend.

(Time: 2.5 hrs)

Flares...

Flared the fuel lines that exit the fuselage and created the short run of fuel line from the aux. fuel pump to the gascolator.

(Time: hrs)

Stolen tools....

I arrived at the shop only to find the door wide open.. hmm... that's odd. I thought maybe the owners had been in it. Once I got back to my work area, I noticed my tool box was missing.. along with my digital camera and my cell phone that I left the night before on accident. Bummer! Checked over the plane and it was intact.. not damage, no missing parts. :-)

Looks like a snatch-n-run... they took my craftsman toolbox, camera, cell phone and the building owners portable air compressor. Called out the sheriff and filed the report. There were a lot of other tools laying around they didn't take, which is good.

Not wanting to risk a return visit, I packed up my stuff, took the wings off and brought everything back home... so no work.

Left flap attached

Managed to work in an hour getting the left flap setup and the push rod installed. The down side to the shop I'm in now is there are no lights. So it was dark and I only had one work light which I kept having to move.

Next up will be the ailerons.

(Time: 1 hrs; Total Finish Kit: 259.5 hrs)

Fairings, flaps and fuel tank angle

Sunday... time to work on all the things that need to done on the fuse while wings are attached.

Started off with the gap fairings between wings and fuse. Do what Dan did... cleco the most aft bottom two holes, wrap the fairing around the leading edge and pull as hard as you can to get the holes to line up on the top side, then cleco the aft hole and finally the rest of the holes. I drilled the holes in the wing skin are to #20 as I have a #20 countersink. The rest I drilled to #19. Did this on both sides and then marked a line 3/16" out from the fuse that I'll use to trim.

Wing gap fairing/strip.

Next I tackled the fuel tank attach angles. I made these angles eons ago. I held them in place to get an idea of how much they needed to be bent. Put them in a vice and whacked on them with a hammer. Once bent correctly, I clamped them on and drilled from the inside of the fuse out. (You'll need a long #12 or 3/16") I bolted them on and then drilled the 1/4" hole through both angles.

View from front of angles.

View looking down at the angles.

Time to work on some control surfaces. I hung both flaps with some bolts holding them on. I made an initial cut in the fuselage for the flap push rod and slowly enlarged it. The VA-256 rods that Van's ships your are pre-tapped.. and tool long. You'll want to cut them down to about 5/25" in length. (Trim equal amounts of each side.) I got the right flap going up and down and it isn't rubbing on anything. My initial cut was bit too far forward than it needed to be but it all get hidden when the flap is up.

Side view of flap push tube hole. (I may round things off to make it look better.

View showing side and bottom. (Right is the frong of airplane.)

(Time: 8 hrs)

Moving, mating and more....

It was a big weekend with lots of work. It's Monday morning and I'm a bit sore.

Friday night I loaded up the wings and a bunch of tools and went over to the workshop I was moving into. It's a building a mile down the road our neighbor owns... has lots of room and a concrete floor. I swept up and unloaded tools, tables and wings.

Saturday morning I 'pulled' the fuse to the building. I originally was going to borrow our neighbors trailer but it was conveniently full of stuff. I'm not even going to desribe how I did it or what it looked like going down the road..

Ray showed up about 8:45 and Bill arrive shortly after 9:00 and we went to work. We picked up the left wing..... Ray on the outboard end, Bill and I on the inboard. We wiggled it into place. Bill guided the the rear spar into the rear spar slot on the fuse and also watched the bottom fuse skin. Once it was in far enough, I slid in a drift pin and then a couple of bolts. Wing was attached. Damn.. that took all of 5 minutes. :-) We grabbed the right wing and did the exact same thing. The rear spar on this wing didn't quite line up exactly with the slot like the left wing but it slid in after some guidance.

So within 20 minutes we had both wings slid in place with bolts holding them on. I had temporary clamps on the rear spar just to hold them. We dropped some plumb lines from the leading edge of the wing and snapped a chalk line. We were about 3/8"-1/2" inch off. We tried to sweep the wings back but didn't gain much. I had forgotten to trim the rear spar attach point on the fuselage. There is a note on DWG 38 to trim that area as it will contact the inboard rib and gap fairing. We unbolted the right wing and slid it out enough we could remove some material. Pushed it back in place and re-checked the plumb lines... wow.. the all line up. We checked the measurement from wing-tip to a spot on the tail.. was within an 1/8". We decided that was close enough. Ray didn't think we could do much better than that... and in hindsight, this is the one thing I wish I would have done different... we should have tried getting this measurement closer and it affected the fit of a few things down the road.

Interference area on rear spar.

Tip #1: Trim the rear spar BEFORE attaching the wings. (Bill, I think your attach is different on the RV-7...)
Tip #2: Grease the main spar before attaching wings.. we forgot. Once we remembered, the spar slid in/out easily. (I used the Lubriplate that came with my c-frame dimpler.)
Tip #3: Don't be rushed.
Tip #4: When inserting spar to fuse, wiggle up and down, not side-to-side.
Tip #5: When inserting wing, watch to make sure the bottom wing skin doesn't catch on the side fuse skin gap cover, Bill had to push down on this skin since they contacted each other.

With the wings in line with each other it was time to check the incidence. I had to run back to the house to make the 4 5/64" block to measure with. We measured the left wing.. BAM.. 0 degree's! How the hell did that happen? Ok.. right wing.. BAM!.. 0 degree's! What are the chances that both wings measured dead on? I dunno but they did. I checked the outboard end and had about 1/8" twist.. which I honestly expected because of my custom tanks.

Time to drill the rear spar holes. I ordered some drill cups a while back for this purpose... instructions say to drill a straight hole. Well.. then turned out useless because there was no room. The clamp interfered. So while I drilled, Ray and Bill were my eye-balls for keeping it level. I used a 12" #30 first, then went to a #19 since I had a 12". We stopped there because I didn't have any longer bits in the right size and then clamp would get in the way of the drill with a short bit. We drilled the other wing and Ray headed on home. (He was in a hurry to do some priming on his RV-10 side skins.) Bill and I ran into town and grabbed a 12" 1/4" bit and a 9/64" bit. I already had a 8" 5/16" reamer to use. Back at the shop we enlarged to 1/4" then to 9/64" and then reamed to 5/16". We really should have used on more step between 1/4 and 9/64 as the 9/64 kept grabbing. There you have it! The rear spars were drilled.. the wings I guess could be officially considered attached!

Wing atttached #1

Wings atttached #2

Wings atttached #3

Here I am doing something and Bill is talking to his wife on the cell phone.

Rear spar bolt.

Several months ago I removed the tank access covers to install the low-level fuel warning. I had reinstalled them yet and Ray said to leave them off for now since that would allow the fuel line sticking out the side of the fuse to stick into the tank and we wouldn't have to worry about it while mating the wings. I also removed the fuel vent line. Now that the wings were on, I started looking at this connections. The vent line came straight out to the fitting. I had to trim it down some which required the wing to be unbolted and slide out. FWIW, I left 2 5/8" sticking out the fuselage... this was measured from the rubber grommet out. Then I started looking at the fuel line. The line didn't match up with the fitting. The fitting was about 3" aft. Bill and I stared at it while and decided we would have to put a 90-degree fitting and have a short line run back. It was all really odd as I don't remember Ray's being that way... but we remembered that Dan had to do something like that on his RV-7. So while I was cutting the vent line, I took off a couple of inches on the fuel line as well. I sent Bill on his way and headed back to the house. I called Ray and asked him about his.. nope.. comes straight out and hooks right in. Well shyt... so I grabbed the fuel tank drawing and headed back over to the shop. Turns out I assembled the tank access covers incorrectly. I think I had them right when making them but during final construction must have reversed them or something.... I dunno. Anyway, the fitting is in the wrong place. I have no idea how I managed that. Since Bill put capacitance fuel level indicators and didn't put on the tank access covers, he has the spare parts I need. Then I worried if I had cut too much of the fuel line sticking out the side of the fuselage off! I'd hate to rerun those fuel lines in the fuse. I eyeballed it and I think I have enough.... and I have a little bit of wiggle room on the inside that will allow me to push out another 1/2" or so.

Fuel line misalignment.

I called it quits for the day.. it was time to take our kids to dinner and the Prom. At this point it was about 3:45. So about 7 hours of work...

(Time: 7 hrs)