Time: 8 Hours
With the wings removed I can finish up the work on the holes drilled for the flashing that closes up the wing/fuselage gap. The holes were drilled with the wings in place but you don’t have enough access to finish the work that is required. All these holes will eventually have a acres in them to hold the flashing in place but allow easy removal for work. All of the holes will get a nutplate for a #8 screw. The flashing holes will be dimpled for flush screws so all the underlying skins on the wing will either be dimpled or countersunk depending on the area. The fuel tank edge can be dimpled as well as the bottom wing skin. The top has to be countersunk since it has three layers due to the extra wing walk material that beefs up the area to walk on. I started with the fuel tanks working on both wings.
I used one winged nutplates for the two spots where the fuel tanks reach the wing spar. You could remove the fuel tank and have access to rivet a normal two winged nutplates. With the one winged nutplates I could rivet them without removing the tanks. Thanks again to Glenn for having his wings here so that I could eyeball them when I was scratching my head on how to rivet the normal ones. Once I had all the tank ones done I moved to the single nutplate that falls on the wing spar flange. I countersunk the rivet holes for the nutplate and grabbed my rivet gun and bucking bar and set those rivets. With the nutplate in position I countersunk the screw hole with a #30 bit. This bit head will fit inside the nutplate screw hole and keep it aligned.
From here I worked my way up the bottom skins which just needed nutplate rivet holes drilled and dimpled as well as the #8 holes dimpled.
All the holes on the top skin will be treated like the wing spar flange and had the nutplate riveted in place and the. The screw hole countersunk.
With all these holes done I can put the wingtips back on and store the wings for later work, landing/taxi light wiring and install, and out of the way.
During a break I ordered and ran to pick up a couple boxes of screws from McMaster Carr. I wanted to get some black 8-32 torx screws 1/2″ long for my instrument panel. I thought these would look cool vs the gold colored ones that I already had.
I though these looked so cool I ordered a box of black 8-32 phillips flush screws for my armrests and side panels from MicroFasteners.com as they carry 100° head screws in black and stainless.
My girl and the kids got me a Aircraft Spruce gift card for Father’s Day so I used that yesterday and ordered the Dynon autopilot control head that sits next to the intercom on my panel. I wanted this now so that I could test my trim buttons on the grips as well as the trim motors like the one I just installed for the roll trim. That should be here by the weekend for me to install. Thanks T, Drake, Chandler, Ellie and Cody.
