Apr 15th, 2012

Managed to get some stuff done this week. Working on finishing up the right aileron.

Basically the procedure is to rivet the stiffeners to the skins, then match drill the nose ribs to the counterbalance (a very hefty piece of stainless water pipe) and temporarily rivet the ribs and counterbalance together with a couple of pop rivets.

Then you put the whole thing together (along with a couple of minor details like a doubler plate and outboard ribs), put on the nose skin (*VERY* tight fit) and the top and bottom skins, match drill the whole thing, take it all apart, deburr and dimple everything (spar gets machine countersunk), then start assembling.

Simple :)

Match drilled the skins to the spars.

From Ailerons and Flaps

Apr 8th, 2012

sic semper tyrannis. (placeholder til i check the log and fill this out...)

Apr 1st, 2012

After finishing the left aileron last weekend, this week has been focused on getting all the other wing surfaces ready. Right aileron and the left and right flaps.

With all the on again off again weather (i.e. no painting) my current best workflow is to prep all the metal parts I can including all the drilling, deburring and dimpling, fitting, any fabrication, etc., and get them ready to prime. Once a good painting day comes along, I prime everything I possibly can.

With that in mind, I started off the week finishing up the prep work on the right aileron. I haven't match drilled the spar yet, but have everything up to prime stage.

Started working on the left and right flaps. The flaps have 8 ribs per flap, the nose skin is a two piece affair, with single skins top and bottom.


Flap ribs

From Ailerons and Flaps

The hinge points are a sandwich of two nose ribs, two fairly light hinge pieces separated by a very hefty center piece. The center piece leaves enough clearance for the two hinge points to straddle the flap attach point on the rear spar of the wing.

Nose ribs are top left. The two large pieces on the right are the arms that attach to the inboard end of the flap (actually under the fuselage). The flap actuator pushrod attaches to the outboard end of the arm and is used to move the flaps in flight.

From Ailerons and Flaps

The light outer pieces are on the left - the hefty center pieces are on the right

From Ailerons and Flaps

Here's the assembly attached to one of the flap spars

From Ailerons and Flaps

Each flap has 3 attach points and is about 6 feet long total (over 1/2 of the wing span).

Here's one of the flaps clecoed together (minus the nose skins) hanging on the wing assembly to see how it all fit. The wing is upside down at this point.

From Ailerons and Flaps