Time: 5 Hours
Today I decided to start work on the leading edges since I will need to have them riveted on the main spars before I can rivet the wing top skins. On the left wing Vans’s gives you an access plate on the bottom of the leading edge skin for a stall warner. I’m not going to us it instead I will have a AOA (Angle of Attack) gauge for much better indication of a stall approach. So I needed to fabricate a plate that will fill in this area. I decided to make it removable since it’s there and you never know what you may need to access in the future.
I dimpled the plate for the #6 screws that will hold it in place. I also riveted the matching holes on the trim that it will be screwed to. I also dimpled all the holes for the nutplates as well as the rivet holes for the trim to skin.
I then turned to the rivet holes in the skin while the primer was drying.
I then took the leading edge apart to debur the ribs and dimple them. I started with the outboard rib and worked my to the inboard. If you remember a while back I had to make the splice plate that will attach the inboard of the leading edge to the outboard of the fuel tank by match drilling the skin to splice plate and the underlying rib. The splice plate and rib had no holes so that they could be created in line with the skin. I guess during the drilling I allowed the rib to slide into the skin of the leading edge allowing the holes on the rib flange to be closer to the rib web vs in the center of the flange! So this rib was toast as it really violated the edge distance rules.
So I cleaned up the shop so that I could pull the truck for the night and jumped on the computer to order a new rib after I checked that the right side didn’t have the same problem. I have my recurrent flight training in Tucson next week and will get to work on the new rib when I get home. As always there is plenty of other stuff to do in the mean time!
