Wow- made some great progress today. I was in the garage, aka RV-12 factory for about 7 hours today. Between Friday's 9- hours and today's 7, plus maybe an hour priming parts yesterday, it has a good weekend for the project.
When I started out this morning all I had was a bunch of parts. All drilled, sanded, deburred and primed. I ended up have to add a couple of countersinks for nutplates, the WD-1207 and WS-1208 upper and lower horns.
First task was to assemble the boxspar.[Pardon the fancy table covering. I wanted to minimize scratches during assembly. Thanks' Mrs. Gries]
An important part of the assembly is to ensure alignment inspar ribs, and the center spar caps. Had to look twice to make sure my eyes weren't tricking me.
Next was thedrilling of the counter balance arm. This involves temporarly turning the counterbalance brackets 90 degrees, and aligning the counterbalance arm for drilling. This is probably overkill but I used a level to get everything right.
Next it was time to install 16 nutplates with the countersunk in the forward and aft spar assemblies. That's HS-1202 and HS1203. You've got to be careful with the rivet lengths. Eight nutplates with doublers and the rest without. Some are AN426AD3-4.5 and some are AN426AD3-3.5.
Next it was time to install the various forward and aft ribs. Some of the ribs install at the same time. Examples would be the L/R HS-1205 and HS-1207 and the HS-1204 and HS-1206.
Finally the inboard and outboard hinge bracket assemblies were installed and bolts torqued to 25 inch pounds. Pretty straight forward operation.
Oh buy the way. I only used two of the CR3243 4-4 oversized rivets in the box spar.
Total time on the project to date - 68 hours. May be time to order the wing kit!!
"Maybe time to order the wing kit!!"
ReplyDeleteI'd say yes - Van's packs then ships the wing kits in batches, so you'll have a six or seven week wait to receive it. You'll have the tailcone done by then. There's some great spring building weather coming soon so you don't want to be caught waiting for the kit to show up.