Archive for December, 2005

Fabricated aileron attach brackets

Saturday, December 10th, 2005

The first job I decided to tackle on the wings was the aileron attach brackets:

One is riveted to each tip rib:

And there's another one midway along each wing, in the same location where the aileron pushrod comes through the rear spar:

Even though there was still snow on the ground today, it was tolerably warm outside in the afternoon, at least enough that I was able to prime the bracket parts:

Here's one of the outboard brackets ready to rivet to the wing. Note the mix of flush and universal rivets. Careful plans reading is required here to make sure you follow the rivet callouts exactly.

I'll rivet three of these brackets to the wing tomorrow. Unfortunately, the fourth one is a no-go, because I decided that drilling out a rivet that was only "mostly" okay would be a good idea, and ended up enlarging the hole too much to use with these long rivets. I may try to pick up some 5/32" rivets to repair it, or I might just end up building one new bracket, since the parts aren't very expensive. Note to self: don't try to drill out AD4 rivets unless you really need to! The cure might be worse than the disease.

The other thing I did while I was reading over the wing plans to see what steps have already been completed at the quickbuild shop was to make a note on the inboard stubs of the rear spars, to remind myself that they need to be trimmed per the plans before the wings are installed to the fuselage.

Sorting parts

Sunday, December 4th, 2005

I've been checking off inventory items and sorting through little bags of parts for three days. Here's the contents of Bag #619:

Thrilling, isn't it?