The Wing kit is the second major kit. You can order a Quickbuild or
regular kit. The Quickbuild is nearly completely built when it arrives,
with only a few of the final construction steps remaining. It also takes
7-9 months from order to delivery and costs about $3000 more.
I decided to order the regular wing kit and build it myself, and I ordered
the Quickbuild fuselage kit instead. I hope I'll be just finishing the
wing when the fuselage arrives in September of 2002.
I started working on the wing in May of 2002, when I had just a few steps
remaining on the Empennage kit.
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Here's a photo
of the left wing in the stand with the ribs temporarily installed. The
right wing spar is on the table. There's actually a lot of work to do even
before this point, such as assembling the
reinforcement plates to the rear spar, and fluting (flattening) and deburring
the wing ribs. This took nearly 2 weeks.
The next step is fitting the wing skins, and pre-drilling the hundreds and
hundreds of rivet holes.
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| This photo shows
the top main skins temporarily attached to the ribs with clecos. The blue
color is protective film on the aluminum that protects it from scratches.
It will be removed later. |
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| This is a photo
of the left wing with the bottom skins fitted, along with the leading edge skins
(left half) and fuel tank (right half) of the wing. The fuel tanks are
removable, sealed areas of the wing. There isn't a separate liner or
"tank" inside the wing skin at all. |
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| Building the fuel tanks is one of the more unpleasant jobs during
construction. The sealant smells bad, and is unbelievably sticky... oozing
and sticking to everything as you try to rivet the skins to the ribs with
sealant in between every part. |
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(June 1, 02) This is the fuel tank during pre-assembly and drilling, before
any riveting has been started. A baffle will enclose the tank and pipes,
fittings, and a fuel level sending unit will be installed before it is
completely closed up.
All the rib flanges are covered in sealant before riveting them in place so
there aren't any leaks through the rivet holes.
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| (June 23, 02) 22 days and 40 hours of work later .... and the left tank
is finally complete. I can't believe I still have to build another
one. Hopefully it will go faster. |
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| I like to have a couple of assemblies going together so I can switch to
another section if I need riveting help, or I need a tool or part. I need help to finish riveting the inboard ribs to the spar and to rivet the
outboard leading edge to the spar before I can continue with the wing skins.
So, I decided to
begin working on the AILERONS! (they attach to the back of the wing and make the
airplane turn) |
| First, you match drill the
stiffeners to the aileron skins. |
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| A little further along with the
assembly;. I need some bags of lead shot to hold this thing down
flat while I drill the trailing edge rivet holes. |
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| Back to the wing...Rivets inserted
and taped into position... ready to go! |
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| I spent 5 hours installing the
landing light. This involves cutting the leading edge skin,
grinding and polishing the edges, cutting and fitting the Plexiglass,
fitting the interior brackets, etc..etc..etc... |
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| I made all of the aileron
and flap attach brackets. The primary job is smoothing and polishing
all of the edges, assembling the pieces, and match-drilling the holes. |
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