With all of the kit inventoried and stored mostly out of the way, I can begin working through the first section of the Wing Kit. Starting with the Main Spars, I have to add on an extension piece and prep it for priming. Nothing that I haven’t done before. One of the decisions I made for the wing kit was that I was going to work on both wings at the same time vs completely finishing off one wing, then starting all over again on the other one. Watching Jason Ellis and his youtube channel I think this is going to be the better way to go. The only issue I may run into is not having enough space to work on two different wings at the same time. I may end up working on both, then getting one wing complete to the point where it can sit in the wing cradle, then get the second wing to the same point. One of those things I’ll honestly figure out as I go along.
Speaking of the wing cradle, I’m actually lucky enough that my local EAA chapter has one that I’m going to be able to use, I just need to go pick it up and figure out where I’m going to store it. At this point I’m just putting off getting it until I need it to avoid having to trip over it since I fully expect to break down the spar shipping box once I transition to the cradle.
Back to the build itself, I finished up Page 13-2 – steps 1-3 except for priming. With temps that weekend in the 20’s, there really was no way for me to prime anything unless I built a paint booth. (I did save part of the larger wing shipping box to use as a paint booth / spray box). Dragged my feet a little and lucky enough the weather the next weekend was in the high 40’s and nice enough that I went ahead and shot primer on the the spar extensions and some of the left-over Empennage parts. Currently the only item I still need to prime from the Empennage kit is the pushrod tube itself.
With the parts primed, I waited 24 hours for the primer to cure (Akzo), then started riveting the extension on. Off camera I riveted a few test pieces to make sure I didn’t make a silly mistake on the spar. I only mangled one of the 72 rivets between both the spar extensions. Not terrible, and was able to drill out the old rivet without expanding the hole. All things considered I was quite happy with myself and a great start to this kit. I also was happy that the spars fit into the shipping crate with the extensions on them. That was helpful since I’m using the crates to hold the spare that I’m not currently working on.
Next steps were to cut the J-channel for the spar stiffeners and get them ready for match drilling. For the Left spar I was using a digital caliper to set the 1/16″ gap from the top of the J-channel to the spar itself. While that worked fine, I think for the Right spare I’m going to draw a line on the J-stiffeners at the 1/16 distance to help me better visualize and keep everything perfect. Also makes it easier to adjust since I don’t have to try to balance three things with two hands!
That’s about it for now, I’m hoping to get more time to work on the wings in the next week or so. This weekend I’m scheduled to take my kids up to NY to visit my family. Currently looks like I’ll be able to fly up in the 172, but final weather check will happen tomorrow. This will be the first XC with just me and the kids so hope to have a few photos in my next update. Worst case we’ll end up driving.