I did most of this documentation on the Pitot and Wing Pages so I will spare you the re-run. But as you can see from the picture, the leading edge is riveted now.
February 12, 2007
Today was pretty cool. My Infinity Stick Grips and Relay Deck arrived from J.D at Infinity Aerospace. I know others before me have sad this but J.D. is one of the best people I have ever dealt with. I came home to find Jenni sitting on the chair playing with the right side stick grip. Here is a picture of the grips:
and a picture of the relay deck
Jenni and I finished up riveting the leading edge and I took the drastic step of cutting a large hole in a perfectly good airplane part. There were only two rivets that needed replacing both were my fault. Jenni shot some great rivets today.
Here is a picture of the Landing Light template after the leading edge was complete but before I cut a huge hole in the middle of it.
Here is one of the two rivets that needed replacing. When we screw one up, we usually mark it and just move on. Then when we replace it, we just cross out the arrows.
Next I measured, measured, then measured some more. Taped, moved, taped, moved, taped moved and finally got the template to where I wanted it to be on the leading edge. I then just used a sharpie and marked the inside line of the cutout. It didn't really matter how far in it went, It only matters how far out I go when cutting this out.
I decided against any drilling or snipping with the cutters and just used my Dremmel with a cutoff wheel, actually it was 3 cutoff wheels. Those worked really well.
Here is the first rough cut.
The next picture is after some initial grinding
And a little more grinding
It got too late to keep grinding on this. The leading edge makes a nice sound chamber and will magnify sounds really well. I will have to finish up on this tomorrow.
February 13, 2007
Tonight I made a lot of solo progress and finished shaping and smoothing the cutout for the landing light. I also drilled the holes for the attach plates and drilled the holes in the ribs for the platenuts. Once I finished with that, I deburred the holes and installed the 4 platenuts that will hold the actual mount in the wing.
Here is a picture of the finished hole with the template back on for drilling the attach plates.
Here is a shot from the inside (yes all of that is dust from the grinding)
Here is a shot of the platenuts installed. I cannot wait to get this landing light done because after that I will be putting the leading edge on the spar for the last time and I will be able to rivet on the top skin.
February 14, 2007
I took some time out of the day to install the landing light. Here is a shot of my 30 minutes out in the shop with the inside of the leading edge after installing the light. I made the conduit out of that spiral stuff with the slit in the middle. I attached it with a Adel clamp and put enough slack in the conduit so the lamp could be pulled out the front.
Here is the Landing Light from the front.
February 17-18, 2007
I talked Jenni into helping with the biggie! We took a day and a half to rivet on the leading edge and rivet the wing skins on to the wing ribs. Talk about accomplishments! This one was the one that allowed us to remove this monstrosity. Once we were done, Jenni actually commented that I better get to work on the other wing because the shop looks too empty and she needed to see something in the wing stand ASAP!
In this picture, you can see where we decided to just mark the rivets we did not like and replaced them later.
In this picture you can see the leading edge riveted onto the main spar and I installed the tie-down ring just for looks.
Here is the wing in the stand right after we riveted the skins on. I then built the cradle and we brought the wing into the house.
You can see that we often use the vinyl for taking notes as we go along. Those are rivet sizes.
