Brackets in place

What I thought would be an hour’s worth of work this morning turned into 3-1/2 hours, but I’m feeling good about the end result. I went over to tighten up the bolts on the wing root brackets and install the brackets on the outer portion of the wing, for the N struts and landing wires.

Snugging up the bolts at the wing root went fine. They’re not torqued to spec, I’ll torque all of the bolts during the initial assembly and mark them all with Torque-Seal or some other witness marking paint. With those done, I moved on to the other brackets. I found that with the very slight variations in hole locations, some of the brackets needed a hole adjusted slightly to get everything lined up properly. It was also a real bear getting the bushings back into their holes after varnishing. Let’s just say there’s no play there… they’re fitted nice and tight.

In the end, I got all of them installed and everything lines up the way it should. I need to find one more AN4-16A bolt, but I think I may have one at the hangar. Next step, I think, will be to cut and fit the cover plates for the brackets where the fabric will be glued down where the brackets come through.

Storage during the build

As I approach the end of building two wings, I’m faced with the prospect of needing to store large assemblies for a while. Stu’s shop is large and climate controlled, but it’s also Stu’s shop, not mine. There isn’t room to store everything until it’s time to move the plane to the airport and start assembly. I’ll need to store these wings while I build the upper two, and then will need to store all four while I build the tail and fuselage.

Fortunately, I do have a hangar. I will need to build a rack to store these wings without damage, then figure out how I’m going to cover them to keep dripping water and dust off of them for a year or two (or three). I had toyed with the idea of covering them with fabric, and I am not yet ruling that out. It might at least provide some protection for the geodetic bracing. There are several valid arguments against it, though. Either way I’ll need a rack, and I’ll need to figure out exactly how I’m going to transport the wings to the airport. Fortunately, it’s only a couple of miles.