Flaps – Part 1

I decided to put the fuselage work off to the side as the next steps will start to take up significant space in my garage. Instead, I am focusing on finishing up the last few items on the Wings as I will need some significant workbench space to complete them.

Before I jump to the flaps, I decided to drill the aileron torque tube endcaps just to knock them off my list. Next on my hit-list are the flaps. I went ahead and began by sorting and marking all of the ribs and components for both sets of Ribs. I then deburred and modified the components based on the plans in the manual.

With everything sorted, I then began to create the different assemblies for both right and left flaps, drilling and deburring as necessary. Once all the sub-components were ready, I then focused on building out one flap at a time due to space constraints.

Assembling and final drilling the flaps was pretty straight-forward with no real surprises. The only gotcha I ran into was I did not own a uni-bit that could drill a 1″ hole to reduce the weight of the FL-1008 Spacer (Page 22-3 Step 3). A quick search of Amazon got one shipped in a few days.

With all the components prepped, I marked the locations of all the parts, then disassembled to prepare for primer. I ended up doing 3 different primer sessions as tried to work around my family schedule, weather, and sanity. Ended up forgetting the spar, only to have to do that by itself, then realized that I only sprayed one of the nose skins. More head slapping than anything else.

With the parts primed, I being to dimple and assemble the components. I start with the hinge brackets and rib assemblies. Then I move on to skins and spar. I had not deburred the side of the skin that wasn’t primed, or some of the edge, so that needed a little attention. Other than that the instructions are straightforward if not time consuming.

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