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.
