Category Archives: Wings

Wing Flashing’s

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Time: 8 Hours

The wings have two Flashing’s, forward and aft, that cover up the open space between the wings and fuselage. They will be held onto the wings with screws and have a rubber seal on the edge the meets up with the fuselage to make a tight seal. The aft one isn’t too bad after you remove enough material so that you can access the holes in the wing through the holes in the flashing. I removed just enough of the inboard edge to get the flashing to fit without touching the fuselage. The forward flashing was a little more work as you have to bend it around the wing to get it to fit nice and tight. Once you get that fit just right you match for all the holes that are in the flashing through undrilled skin of the fuel tank flange.  

    
   With The flashings in place I used my compass with a fine tipped blue sharpie to draw a line 3/16″ away from the fuselage onto the flashing’s. I will remove this material to allow for the rubber seal that will get placed on there later. 
   Before I moved onto the left-wing I wanted to finish up the instrument panel not plates as they were sitting on my bench taking up space.  
    
    
 Now I just need to paint this its final color and I can screw it into position. Now I just need the avionics to add to the panel! I moved on to the left wings flashing’s repeating the steps I did on the right wing.  

    
 From here I removed both sides and trimmed up to the 3/16″ line I made to make room for the gap seal. I then reinstalled the flashing’s so that I could work on the flap fairing’s. You have to manipulate these a little to get a good fit with the top of the flap and the curved portion of the fuselage. Once I had a good fit with the right one I taped/clamped it into position so that I could match drill the forward top holes through the fuselage into this fairing.  

 I drilled each end and then worked down the line.   

  Once I had that line done I worked my way aft on the top and bottom making sure everything was fitting tight.  

 I repeated these steps on the left side and was pretty happy with the results.  

   That’s where I stopped for the day, good progress and feels good to have the major work done on these flashing’s and fairing’s. I still need to fine tune the areas where the flashing’s and fairing’s meet. Then I will clean up all the edges and enlarge the holes to a #19 for #8 screws that will hold them in place when I’m done. Looks more like an RV-8 every day! 

  

Aileron and Flap Rigging

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Time: 8 Hours

This weekends task was to finish up the fuel connection lines from the fuselage to the wing tanks and rig both the ailerons and flaps. The fuel lines consist of a connection for the vent line and a connection for the fuel feed. Since I had used flop tubes, for inverted flight, I had a little bit different fuel feed line vs the standard pick ups. The lines have to travel through the hole that was drilled in the tank attach brackets. They will also have a union in the line where the standard ones don’t. The vent lines just have to clear the brackets staying below the skin level so they will be hidden under the flashing that will get put there. I made the lines and their connections minus the end that goes on the fuel line that comes out of the fuselage. That will get cut and flared after the wings are removed to make room.  

    
   Once I had the fuel lines done I moved on to the big task of rigging the ailerons and flaps. First up is to attach the ailerons to the wings and set the neutral point. I used a digital level which has a magnet and stuck it to my control stick to get perfect neutral stick. 

 With the stick in neutral I adjusted both of the ailerons so that they were in their neutral position. This is done by aligning three tooling holes in the outboard rib and the aileron tip. When all three line up the aileron is in neutral position.  

  Once I had both ailerons on and adjusted to be in the neutral position I had to make adjustments back at the control stick to return it to the neutral position. This is done by adjusting the rod ends on the two pushrods the connect to the control stick.  Once the ailerons have been adjusted you can move on to the flaps to line them up.  Before doing this I put in the aileron judgment tool the Vans gives you to hold neutral position. This is a jig that has a hole in it for the aileron rod bolt to go through and a flat surface to sit against the wing spar. When installed the bell crank is in its neutral position but also holds the ailerons from moving.  With the jig in place I know that ailerons will not move and I can adjust the flaps to match them. The flaps need to line up with the ailerons so that as you look down the wing in neutral position the ailerons and flaps trailing edge is lined up in a perfect line. To do this with the flaps you just adjust the pushrod either up or down to get the flaps to line up with the ailerons. Before you can do this you need to enlarge the hole in which the pushrod it goes up-and-down through.  
   You need to open this whole up as when the pushrod goes up-and-down it’s geometry changes moving the pushrod forward and aft as it moves. Once you have this whole opened in the pushrod no longer hits the skin you just adjust its length to align the flaps trailing edge with the ailerons in there up position.  
 With the flaps adjusted both left and right I removed the aileron jig to check their travel in the up and down position and compare to the degrees that vans specifies.   
 All the measurements were dead on and perfect!  One thing I did find with my flaps was that I did not bend the rears are flange enough when I built the wings. This caused the wings skin to curl up just a little at the aft end of the top skin. Vans knows that this is an issue for builders and describes how to correct this with a 2 x 4 jig. I took a 2 x 4 and cut a slot in it and drilled out the center in order to bend the flange without bending the skin as I do that. 

 The idea is that the slot would allow the 2 x 4 to slide over the skin at the very tip I opened up the slot a little to slide over the rivet heads on the rear spar flange then I could use the 2 x 4 to slowly bend the flange down in turn lowering the skin. 

   This worked out well and I will do a little more tweaking on it to get it perfect. What is fun is that I can make the flaps go up and down using a 9 V battery with it’s flat motor. Kind of fun to see things working like they should!

Rear Wing Spar

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Time: 4 Hours

Once I had the wings initially attached I set out to make their final adjustments. Even though the wings are securely attached at the main spar they still have a little bit of play since the rear spar is not drilled yet. This allows you to make adjustments before drilling and finalize their position. There are three adjustments that need to be done. First is the sweep forward and aft with regards to the wing tip and fuselage. To measure this you run four plum bobs along the wings. Then you run a taught string along the floor so that all four of the plum bob’s a line on that string. You can make adjustments forward and aft to get them to line up. The plans allow for up to 1/2″ in the difference. My wings were wishing 1/8″ and I tweeted them a little to tighten them up a little more.   

 The second measurement is to make the wings square with the fuselage. To do this you make a measurement from the tip of the leading edge on the vertical stabilizer to the seam on the wing top skins at the wing tip. Again you get a 1/2″ play in the two sides and I had less then a 1/16″. The final and most critical measurement is the angle of incidence. Every wing has some angle of attack built in to it with reference to a level fuselage. Van’s tells you that with a level fuselage you can run a level from the leading edge of the main spar flange to the aft edge of the rear spar flange and there should be exactly 2 51/64″ space between the aft end of the level and the wing skin. The easiest Way to do this is to make a spacer that you can place at the aft and underneath the level. My buddy Glenn had saved his spacer from his first airplane so I borrowed it to make my adjustments.  

  With the spacer and my 4 foot level and my digital level I worked my way along each wing at several different points checking the measurement. I had to make some small adjustments on both sides to get them just perfect.   

  

 With all three of those adjustments perfect I clamped the rears are in place. I then took the day off and came back at it the next day and re-did each of the measurements to doublecheck and triple check that they were perfect. After confirming that all the measurements remain the same I prepared to drill the rear spar to do this I used my drill cup and a #30 drill bit. The drill cup made sure that I drilled square to the surface. From there I stepped up using two readers and two drill bits to get the final size of 5/16″. 

   Now the wings are all set in their final position, hopefully the plane will fly straight and won’t have a heavy wing. Now that I have the wing secured in its position I can start to work on all the extra wing attach chores like rigging the ailerons, flaps and other items. 
  

SuperBowl Wings

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Time: 2 Hours

So it’s SuperBowl Sunday and I don’t have a team in the battle this year or since 1985, thanks Bears! I had my usual breakfast with Glenn and headed to the shop to tidy up some wiring stuff. Really all I had planned to do was finish the four wires that came off the intercom wiring harness that I made yesterday. Three were for the Skyview system to give unmuted audio alerts through your headset for things like warnings. The fourth was for a dimming feature for the intercom panel so when the Skyview dims so do it. Once that was done I just set out to really clean my work space from all the wiring. During this process I decided to move the fuselage for the eventual addition of the wings. I needed to place it so that I had room to work all the way around but also didn’t get in Glenn’s way for his shop work. With those requirements I came up with the location and we swung the fuselage around.  

  


As we are sitting and talking about the planes and future pancake fly-in’s Glenn says let’s put them on! I say heck yeah and grabbed the tools needed. Glenn had some temporary bolts that he ground the threads off so they wouldn’t damage the wing spars. My girl, Tricia, wanted to be here for the wing mating so I called her to come to the shop. While we waited for her I taped up the wiring at the wing root and removed the pitot and angle of attack tubes from the left wing so they wouldn’t be in the way.  I also filed a chamfer on the spar doubler to allow the spar to slide in a little easier. I sprayed a little silicone spray on the mating surfaces to help as well. Once they arrived my son Chandler helped Glenn and I to lift the wings and carry them to the fuselage. Chandler helped me align the wing root and Glenn manned the wingtip to make the required adjustments to help the wing spar slide into place keeping the bottom skin in place as well as the rear spar. Once in place I inserted the four main bolts in place. We repeated the whole process for the opposite wing. That’s all it takes and you can stand on the wings! This is a huge milestone for me and I was grinning from ear to ear. Thanks to my girl for taking photos for me. The wings are not on permanently but now I can drill the rear spar, adjust the ailerons and flaps and make the lower alumina flap fairings along with other important tasks. I will also get to work with the fiberglass wing tips, a new skill to be learned for me. For now I’m going to continue grinning and watch the SuperBowl!  

   
   
    
    
    
    
    
    
     

 So there it is! What a big deal for me to mate these two parts that have such a big amount of time between build times. I finished the wings over a year ago and now they are finally in place. Lots of work to do but days like these really drive me to work hard to achieve the end goal. 

 

 

Left Wing Done!

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Time: 5 Hours

I got in the Hangar around 10am so I wouldn’t bug my neighbors with all the riveting I was planning on doing. My task for today was to rivet the outboard bottom skin on the left wing. The process was the same as I documented yesterday on the right wing. I took a few less breaks today and had the knowledge of yesterday’s session to help speed up today. I was able to move along fairly quickly today as I knew just where to put my arms for the difficult rivets compared to yesterday when I had to sit and think a little on how the heck I would get a particular rivet. Once I finished the skin rivets I turned my attention to the pitot mast. It has 5 rivets and I also needed to use some ProSeal to seal up the gap where it goes through the skin. I mixed up the ProSeal and made a bead along the pitot mast and the flange it is welded to.

20140607-171619-62179265.jpgI carefully slid the mast into position without getting ProSeal everywhere and checko’ed it in place. Before I did all of this I had placed the mast into position so I could figure what length rivets I would need as the plan call outs would now be wrong as they don’t take into account this mast. Riveting the mast just tool a few minutes and I was done.

20140607-171902-62342764.jpgI then removed the flap so I could get all the remaining hinge rivets.

20140607-172105-62465250.jpgUnlike yesterday and the one ding, today I had 3 small dings and I was beating myself up a little for those. They are all in spots where the bucking bar was difficult to get a perfect hold and I wasn’t able to hold it as still as I liked. When I pulled the trigger the bar jumped a little and twisted causing the corner to hit the skin slightly. These all made a “tent” as I call it, the dent is pushing outward rather than inward as a normal dent would be. I’m assured that a good paint/body guy will make these disappear. These things really bug my OCD as I can’t do a “do over” and they happen so fast. It’s like hearing the rivet gun go bam bam bam bam dink and you just know by the sound that you slipped. Ok enough of that I will get over it and these are the bottoms and no one will ever see them!

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20140607-172800-62880013.jpgI removed the blue film and cleaned all the surfaces up and placed the access hole plates into position.

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20140607-172919-62959000.jpgHere is where the will reside for the next year or so until they are ready for the fuselage.

20140607-173056-63056885.jpgSo that’s it the wings are done!! Now I can work on cleaning up the Hangar this summer and restocking my supplies for the fuselage. I’m creating a list for items to shop for at OshKosh and hopefully will get some bargains.