The Tip Ribs have a hinge pin installed on their outside face and a bent strip is installed between the rib and the spar for extra strength. The first task is to drill out and assemble the bent strips to the tip rib, starting with marking the location of the rivet holes. I drilled...
Constructing the elevator is the usual assemble, deburr, rivet procedure with the extra twists of building an electric trim on the elevator and installing a servo mechanism. Onward then….. First task of the day was to identify all the parts and mark their top sides and locations. In most cases this is easy: the...
All that remained at this point was to fold the top skin over and rivet into the pre-drilled holes. I used the ratchet straps again to bring the skin over so that it wouldn’t bend or crease and cleco’d the skin in place starting at the back and working forwards. Here’s a picture of...
The stabiliser assembly had been teasing me for a couple of weeks sat on the bench waiting for the skin but a couple of busy weekends left me unable or unwilling to get into the garage. We start with the bottom skin this time because of the protrusions that would make us unable to...
This weekend saw us attend two weddings so there wasn’t really any opportunity to work on the plane until the Sunday and then let’s just say I wasn’t in the best physical shape to be working with power tools. I did fix a problem with a previous step. As you can maybe see in...
Having deburred the holes yesterday, the first task was to prime the areas where metal touches metal. Used a lot of primer, here. It took a while to put things back together, starting with just the front spar, attaching the doublers and the ribs. Once clecoed in place I riveted everything with A4 rivets...
Two and a half hours of filing and deburring, no way to make that sound sexy or fun. Can’t wait to do the wings!