Category Archives: Wings

Left Tip Looks Great

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Time: 6 Hours

I came in the shop and removed the clamps and level to see that the tip stayed in perfect shape. I removed the tip and filled in all the chips and cuts in the aft end from all the cutting I had done on it with epoxy and flox. 

SSince I did all the trimming on the top where the tip met the wing I had a pretty uneven gap between the two surfaces. To fix this my plane was to used epoxy and micro balloons to close that gap. The process was to line the edge of the wing and its hinge with packing tape to act as a release agent. 

I used a putty knife to get the tape tight into the corner as I went. I then put the tip back in place with the hinge pins. Here you can see the gaps I was talking about. I mixed up the epoxy and balloons and applied a liberal amount making sure it was filling the gap. 
I also used it to fill several chips on the tip. 

While I was working on the fiberglass I moved on to the elevator tips that I had skipped a couple of years ago while working on the tail. 


Not hard work just trial and error as you trim and cut to get them to fit right. I will work on securing them in my next shop time. 

Left Wing Tip Problem

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Time: 6 Hours

As Glenn and I were talking and looking at the left wing tip as it was installed we noticed a problem. With my installation I didn’t notice how the trailing edge line looked! I was concerned that the trailing edge matched up with the aileron hence the need to split open that edge so I could make it rise or lower as needed. What I didn’t do was sight down the entire length of the wing. What we found was that the wing tip drooped down almost 3/4″ over the run of the tip!

Thats not good, so I thought maybe there will be the same dip in the right wingtip keeping things symmetrical so I grabbed the right wing tip and installed it. Yep that’s right it’s perfectly straight unlike the terrible left tip! 

Ok so now how do I fix the left side. The intial plan was to split the aft end and see what we can do. That didn’t give us much results. So we started splitting the outboard from aft to front a little at a time to see what we could get. No luck every time we moved or manipulated we ended up getting bulges or stresses. So I cleaned up my work area and called it a night to go home and think. I was deflated on what to do and did a bunch of research to come up with some plan. Well this morning I had no idea what to do and was going to order a new wing tip and start over. That was going to be around $300 with shipping and I was looking forward to that. So one option Glenn and I are talking about was to shorten the top edge that runs along the wing skin, where the hinge is. This would require drilling out all the rivets and chiseling off the hinge and fiberglass. I figured it was worth a shot before buying a new one. So I removed the tip and started drilling. It didn’t take too long to get all of them done and removed the hinge. So I marked a line along the top of the tip inset 3/16″ and removed that material with my orbital sander.  Why 3/16″? It was just a guess on my part and I went with it. I then returned the tip to the wing and put the lower hinge pin in and pushed the top up tight. To my surprise it fit pretty good and the outboard tip matched up to the level meaning it was inline with the aileron! Ok so I removed the tip and grabbed a new section of hinge for the tip side and cut it to size. I put it in place on the top hinge of the wing side. With it I place I returned the tip using the lower hinge pin. I then pushed the top up tight and clamped it in place. I drew a line 3/16″ outboard on the top of the tip, this will be the new rivet line since I moved the top that much inboard.



 I drilled one hole at the aft end of the rivet line and put a clecko in to check the trailing edge alignment.  Wow it looked great! So I drilled the rest of the rivet holes and clecko’ed them. So I then made some shims to keep the trailing edge the right thickness since I split it open. I mixed up some epoxy with flox and buttered the split edges and clamped them in place with the level. 



So I will let that cure before unclamping to see how it turned out. What a new experience working with fiberglass. While the left side was sitting I removed the right tip to finish work on it.  First up was to cut the rib that closes the aft end of the tip. Since I decided to use hinges this rib needed a little modification to get it fit.  


Second was to address the flimsy middle section of the top. From what I have read and Glenn told me is that the flimsy top will flex and move a lot in flight potentially causing paint cracks and just looking terrible in flight. Guys have used rigid foam cutbtonshape and epoxied in place.  For me I decided to follow Jason Beavers advice and use some foam backer rod, this is a foam rope that made to fill concrete gaps before caulking. This rod is just used to create a shape for an overlay of fiberglass to make a stiffening layup. The idea is that after the layup cures it acts as a rigid vertical element to the flat part to give it rigidity. So I figured out where the flexing would occur and cut a couple peices to length. Then I used my hot glue gun to tack the ends in place. 

I then cut some 3″ fiberglass to cover the rod with an inch or two overhang to finish the look. I mixed some epoxy and wet the glass into position.

That was enough fiberglass for one day and I cleaned up my messes and called it a day. 


Left Wing Tip

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Time: 4 Hours

After Sunday breakfast with Glenn I started work on the right wing tip following all the same steps I did on the left side. 

 While that side was curing I installed the left wing tip to see how it looked.

 I think I’m going to really like how these look without the screws! Next up was to trim the aft end of the fiberglass tip so that it was in line with the flap and aileron. Are used my orbital sander to trim to the line and used my Dremel tool to split the aft end to allow me to align the trailing edge up or down so that it will be inline. 

 From here I mixed up some epoxy and flox and smeared it in between the two halves. I used a clamp and tap to hold them into position after I aligned the aft end. 
 One that has cured I will remove the tip and load up the inside with epoxy and flox to strengthen it.  That’s where I called in a day and cleaned up shop. So far my first few experiences with fiberglass have been fun although dusty!

Wing Tips

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Time: 4 Hours

I worked for several hours today working on the wing tip hinge modification. I removed the top and bottom hinge on the left wing and countersunk the fiberglass filler strips. I also used the pneumatic squeezer to dimple all the holes in the top and bottom wing skin. With those tasks done I clecko’ed the hinge halves back into the wing skin and riveted them in place. 

After I had the left wing skin hinges done I grabbed the left wing tip to work on its hinge halves. The idea is to rivet theses just as I did with the wing side with some modifications. The first is that I would use soft rivets, still aluminum solid rivets just a softer version, so that I wouldn’t damage the fiberglass. The second would be to apply a layer of epoxy between the hinge and the inside surface of the wing tip. The third thing would be to drill 1/4″ holes between the river holes on the hinge flange. This would allow me to put a small amount of epoxy/cotton flox into the hole essentially creating a epoxy rivet in between the soft rivets. All this to mate an aluminum hinge to a fiberglass tip. Here’s how it looked after I was done. 


 I will let the left side cure overnight and start working on the right side tomorrow. 

Back to Work

Posted on by — 2 Comments ↓

Time: 8 Hours

The first task I started back at when I finally got back to my project was to work on the fiberglass wing tips. The plans call for these to be held on with screws so that you can remove them as needed in the future. Many pilot house different things in them like antanaes and remove compass heads to keep them from the main structure where they may get interference. The only thing I’m going to have in them is the landing/taxi/nav lights. One down side to using screws is that when you removed them post painting they always seem to crack and chip. This ends up being a eye sore if you have ever seen them repainted with touch up paint. Our Lears have the same issue and they look bad once you remove the screws for anything. One cure for this on the RV’s is to use piano hinge to attach the tips. This isn’t for the purpose of having anything hinge open or closed but for a hidden, clean hinge pin to hold the two parts together. There are many builder and many directions online for just this task. I have read several and discussed with my buddy Glenn on how he did his and came up with my plan. First up was to drill additional holes in the wing skin between the holes that were for the screws as you will need extra support for the hinge. Then I cut my hinges to length for the top and bottom of the tip.   

   I then drew a center line on each wing of the hinge so that I could align them with the row of holes I just drilled. I am using two different sizes of hinge combined together, -3 and -4. The reason is so that the hinge center is off center as you look at the seam between the tip and wing skin toward the wing tip. This ensures that the notches of the hinge are hidden and if there was any gap you would just see solid aluminum of the flange. It would also help prevent moisture from getting inside.   

 The tips have a flange that slides into the wing in the normal configuration. In the hinge method this is removed and used as a spacer between the skin and the hinge flange to keep everything even. So the next steps are pretty easy. First measure the space between the two lines drawn on the hinge flanges, one for the wing side and the other for the tip side. Transfer that measurement into the tip and mark the holes for the tip even with the wing side holes.  

  

  

 Second clamp the hinge in place so that the line you drew, on the wing side of the hinge, is lined up with the holes you drilled through the wing and tip.  

    
   
Then you match drill the holes from the tip to the wing side. After that you drill the tip and tip side of the flange at the same time using the marks you just made.  

   The flange on the left of the next photo will be cut off to use as the spacer. I will sand the edge up to the lip to create a tight seal between it and the wing skin.  
 After I had all the holes drilled I grabbed the Dremel and cut the flanges off. With those cuts I separated the hinges and clecko’ed them to their respective parts, using the removed flange as a spacer on the wing side.  

    
   Based on the advice of some builders I planned each of the hinges to have a eyelet start on the aft end of the wing side on both the top and bottom. The reasoning is that you can insert the hung pin just enough on that eyelet on the wings and have it just sitting there ready to go. Then when you grab the tip to attach it you can hold it in place with one hand and use the other to insert the already started pin making this a one person job.  
    
 I am real happy with how the left tip turned out and how the hinge looks. I will work on the hinge pin and how I deal with those later, now on to the right side tip. I just repeated the entire process on the right wing as I did on the left side. In the process where I split the hinge and clecko’ed the pieces to the wing skin and tip I realized I made an error on the top hinge. Somehow I got the hinge alignment off and it wasn’t squared up with the aft end of the top skin of the wing. A couple of options was to just cut the hinge overhang off and make it flush. The downside to that would be that there would be just about a 1/3 of an eyelet remaining on the wing side hinge. The other option was to just redo the top hinge, that’s what I did since I had a lot of extra hinge left over. This presented with a new challenge since I have already cut the fiberglass. What I did was thrilled that he inch to the wing skin first and clecko’ed into position.  Hi then attach the wingtip using the bottom hinge in it’s  hinge pin. I was then able to use the holes in the fiberglass top to match drill the hinge that was underneath.  Everything turned out very nice even though I had to go at this one a little backwards.  

  For now they are on, I still have a lot of work to finish this modification up.