As I had posted earlier this week in the RV-10 facebook page, I finally got bit of motivation from another RV-10 pilot/builder. He was nice enough to provide me with his wing cradle this past weekend. I was able to swing by his hangar and swap some stories, ask a bunch of questions, and take a look at his plane while he was starting to preform his condition inspection. His advice and experience was quite helpful and allowed me to not stress as much over my questions.
Once I got the cradle home, I had to move a few things around and ended up chopping up the spar shipping crate finally so I would have a little more room. (I’ll be doing more “spring cleaning” in the next few weeks trying to make the garage a bit more functional while I continue to work on the wings.
First order of business once the spars are in the cradle, was to finish up the main spar chapter (install the tie-down bracket and hardware). Then it’s time to deburr and start to make modifications to the wing ribs so I can run wires and my Pitot and AOA lines. I basically made a second hole next to the tooling hole so I can run both the Pitot and AOA lines back to my EIFS. For the wiring, I’m going to follow the plans and just use bushings included in the kit. I’m also installing some Panduit Lightening hole mounts so I can run a conduit to the wingtip. Mostly this is for future use but it’s easy to install now.
The mounting and installation of the parts was pretty straightforward. I smeared a few rivets and had to remove them / re-shoot them. This was stressful, but in the end wasn’t a huge deal and I didn’t mess up any of the holes. Only real “gotcha” was the root wing rib and getting it riveted. There just wasn’t sufficient room to get the rivet gun next to the wing rib, so I had to set the rivets the opposite direction.
Still have some loose ends to tie up (finish up the other Outer Leading edge, and the rear spars), and get the right wing rib together. Soon enough I’ll have to get top wing skin from storage to start getting that together. Having lots of fun, despite some warmer temps.