The instructions suggest using a band saw to cut the corners from the brackets but I didn’t have one available so I borrowed a hacksaw from my brother in law. I set to the first bracket and immediately found a problem – with no vise I have no way to keep the piece steady...
Each nose rib has a hinge bracket attached which is made out of the small l-angles that had holes previously marked and drilled. The bracket attaches to both the spar and the nose rib so to find the correct position, each bracket was alinged with the top of the spar and clamped into place...
At the end of the previous day I had been concerned that the “natural fit” of the ribs to the spars did not mesh with the statement in the photo manual of how the flanges should face. So, I started the day with an examination of this and could not work out why some...
We started off our Flaperons build with removing the component parts from the crate and moving them to the garage. They posed for a picture. As with the slats, the flaperons come in four pieces, two per side. Identifying which skin is which, and which spars go with which skin, looked a bit complicated...
Started the day with…. yep, you guessed it deburring and priming on the pilot-side outboard slat. After re-assembly the skin was riveted to the spar and now all four slats pieces are complete, bar the tips. While waiting for the primer to dry I had gone back to hacking away at the tips to...
Another build day, another deburring session. I took the assembled slat apart, deburred holes and edges and applied primer. Again, while waiting for the primer to dry I had another go at the tips. I got them pretty close this time but still a little too large to get inside the ends. With the...
Made good progress today. Started out in typical fashion with hole deburring and priming of the second slat: the pilot side inboard slat. While waiting for the primer to dry I had a go at cutting out the tips from the fibreglass mould. I had contacted Zenith to ask the best method and they...
With a bit more confidence we tackled folding over the skin onto the left inboard slat ribs. With this slat the two end ribs lined up almost exactly with the pre-drilled holes but the middle rib was quite tricky to locate where the holes were. A couple of times I thought we were close...
If you’ve read the last few days you know what is coming up. Disassembled the components, deburred all the holes and applied primer to both slats. I then re-assembled everything and riveted. At one point we had quite the slat factory going on…. one complete, two awaiting the top skin being attached and one...