Tag: Leading Edge

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False ribs in

There was a delay of a few weeks in construction progress. I had a horrible respiratory thing for a couple of weeks, and didn’t want to pass that on to anyone. We’ve got a rental house we’d been prepping for rent, a wedding, and a short amount of time given to clear a bunch of stuff out of the hangar, including my Vespa which I’ve been doing some work on. So, things sat for six weeks.

I did get over and glued in all of the false ribs. This actually went pretty easy, maybe easier than doing it the “other ” way of gluing them in before the false spars. I was able to just mark up the main and false spars to make sure the false ribs were aligned, then glue and pin them in place.

Next up: Leading edge plywood.

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Bottom geodetic and false spars

Yesterday I got the rest of the compression member gussets glued in, then cut and glued in all but two of the bottom geodetic braces. Those two I couldn’t get in because of a clamp holding a gusset in place. I also got about a quarter or so of the geodetic intersections glued and clamped before running out of epoxy.

Today I finished up the geodetic members, and had enough glue left to install the false spars on the front of the ribs. I think I may have actually used all of the spring clamps I had over there… in fact I know I did, because today I took over another dozen I’d gotten for Christmas a couple years back, that had been sitting in a gift bag in the basement. I think there were a couple left today, but certainly less than a dozen.

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Wing work thru 2/20

Top and bottom leading edge plywood has been scalloped. That wasn’t as big a chore as I thought it would be. We used a thin stainless scale to establish a curve between each pair of ribs, marked along it with a pencil, and cut the wood with a utility knife. Some cleanup with sandpaper and Bob’s your uncle.

I’ve made a few iterations of the bearing block. Today I’ll print a couple more test pieces and I think I’ll be done. They fit great, the aileron is very well located, all in all I think it’s a lot more precise than a piece of plywood and a chunk of PVC pipe.

I’ve been preparing some of the wing attachment fittings. I have one or two of each part drilled with 1/8 pilot holes; I’ll use those to match drill the rest, then enlarge the holes for the AN4 bolts. The biggest question was hot wo round off the ends. For that I drilled a 1/8 hole exactly 1/2 inch from the disk on my disc/belt sander. Now I can use the tail end of a drill bit as a pivot pin and put a nice radius on the end of the fitting. I’m glad I kept my gray Scotch-Brite wheel on the bench polisher; it makes quick work of cleaning up the ends of the AL bars.

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Closing out 2023

You think you’re about ready to perform some major step, then you step back and realize you’re not as close as you thought… I thought I was about ready to cut out the aileron, but I still had to get the bottom geodetic braces in as well as several of the plywood stiffening strips that keep the aileron bay and aileron from distorting when the fabric gets shrunk around it. Today I did that, I also got the leading edge plywood wrapped around the rest of the way and glued and clamped in place, and added the last of the wingtip reinforcements along with the gussets for all of those.

I started to shoot primer on the torque tube, but the can stopped spraying about halfway through. Super frustrating, as it’s a full can, It’s been in a cabinet in the garage for a while, so I suspect there was a chunk of unmixed solid that lodged in the valve or something. The spray tip is clear, the can is pressurized, but it refuses to spray. Bummer. I found a can of self-etch primer in another cabinet at home, so hopefully that works. I may end up with a torque tube that’s half gray and half white… oh well.

I’ve been cleaning up the Airpath compass while I wait for the new gaskets and diaphragm from Spruce. This one has a light and I didn’t want to use the incandescent bulb, and I’d already broken one of the wires anyway… so that path was blocked. I had ordered some LED bulbs from Amazon – they are commonly known as type 74 LED bulbs. The spec sheet showed they are about 0.7″ long and 0.23″ diameter. Those arrived today, and they do fit inside the bulb socket. I soldered the wires onto the new LED assembly “backwards”, or with the wires running along the body of the light so the tip goes in first and the connector end faces outward. This puts one of the three chip LEDs directly over the little red window that illuminates the compass. I had to remove about 1mm of the tail end of the lamp assembly so the little cover would close, but with that done it’s near perfect. I’ll get more pictures as soon as the paint I used to touch up the worn spots on the lamp cover is dry. The gaskets are supposed to be here on Tuesday, and I’ve got a can of mineral spirits I can use to fill it… not being willing to spend the extra money on UPS shipping for a pint or so of “compass fluid”, which from what I can tell is basically… mineral spirits.

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Lower left wing, Day 5

After a couple days’ hiatus for Thanksgiving, I went over yesterday to resume work on the wing. We cut the notches in the nose ribs and got them glued in place, and I cut and glued the corner blocking for the four compression struts. I still need to cut and glue in the gussets for those. We took a look at some of the aileron pieces to figure out how all of that goes together. I’m waiting on a response from Millard Metals on my aileron torque tube stock; I don’t think we can do much until I have that. I think the next step will be to get the wingtip bow figured out, and wrap the leading edge with plywood. Then I could also start cutting and installing the bushings for all of the attachment bolts.