I finalized the wing ribs today. I decided that I would just rivet all 8 holes of the 13th and 14th rib. I looked through the instructions and didn’t see any reason that there should only be 4 of the 8 holes riveted, so I just finished them all. Hopefully that doesn’t come back to bite me later lol.
I finally got some chance to sit down and work on the plane. I’ve been researching a few items and looking on how to tackle some things. I first got the pitot static system tubing ordered. I also got an ELT (who knows why LOL. It probably won’t be installed until another year or so.) I did find a 3d printed fitting to hold the 5/8″ wiring conduit from Van’s as well as the two pitot static tubes that will need to return from the Garmin AOA/Pitot tube. I had a friend at church print them (Thanks Nathan Dobie!) and I am going to install them soon, I just need to get the washers in so that I can rivet them to the lightening holes in the ribs.
I went ahead and riveted almost all of the ribs on the left side wing today. I got the flange and the web riveted to the ribs from #12 all the way down to #1. I still need to see how they want me to attach ribs 13 & 14. It states that there are four rivets to attach it but I have 6 holes…. And no bolts go through those ribs, so I need to figure out if that’s a possible misprint and they meant 6 or if I need to only rivet a few holes for something down the road. It doesn’t specify which holes so I’m leaning towards a misprint but I want to know for sure so I’ll probably see if Van’s is open tomorrow to see if they can provide me with an answer. I also went ahead and widened the holes for the originally wiring location just in case I need to use them in the future.
I got a bit of time today to get the inboard ribs completely riveted together. I now need to go down the line and rivet/bolt each rib into place on the spar web.
I got a bit of time tonight to work on the plane so I got the four W-1011 ribs rivetted to the flap hinge brackets and ribs together. I only had to redo one rivet as I wasn’t paying attention and the rib backed away from the bracket and left a bit of a gap. All in all it all went together pretty smoothly.
I finally got some time last night to get the ribs and other components primed. I got it all put back together again so that I can start riveting soon. With Fall break and trying to finalize my MBA it might be slow go for the next couple of weeks but I’ll keep working on it at least a little bit each night.
It’s been a long time over the past couple of weeks as I have been working on studying for my MBA and I’ve also started my commercial pilot training. I passed my CAX exam this past Friday. But over the past few weeks I’ve been spending some time here and there to deburr all of the rest of the ribs that were left. We’re all good and will soon be doing priming and riveting.
It took quite a while but I got it all done tonight while listening to an audio book for my MBA class. Next to do the right wing.
I got the W-1025B flap hinge ribs in today so I got them cut, deburred and then drilled all of the holes into the W-1011 ribs to match it. I also got four of the ribs completely deburred and ready for primer. The deburring will take most of the time over this weekend so I don’t think I’ll be doing any priming this weekend.
I had a bit of spare time tonight so I decided to finish the match drilling for the main spar and the ribs. Went pretty smoothly since all of them were already final sized it seems like. I just had to drill the #12 holes since they didn’t exist. Cailey joined me and I had to teach her a bit about how you hold the drill perpendicular to the surface you are drilling into. She’ll get the hang of it someday but she’s learning.
I’m waiting on my shipment of parts from Van’s to come in, which should be tomorrow. So I decided with a little bit of time I had yesterday to deburr the remaining brackets for the flaps. Not much work, but at least it is out of the way so when the parts come in tomorrow I can put them all together and match drill those ribs. I had mistakenly ordered just one of the W-1025B components when I needed three. So I used the one pair I had on the inboard ribs and ordered two more for the additional ribs that needed them. I also ordered the eyelets for the wings since I’ll need those down the line as well as the ELT mount for the empennage and the lower fairing doubler for the rear light on the rudder.
