After the tanks were finished, I got to work installing the outboard leading edges on the main spar. The pre-punched hole that I enlarged for the tiedown brackets was not perfectly aligned so I decided to open up the tiedown bracket hole a little bigger and allow the eye bolt to screw a little deeper into the wing. That worked out well. Before I started riveting on the leading edge, I did the final torque of the tiedown bracket bolts and put some torque seal on them. These would be a major trick to get to later. With everything checked and double checked, I proceeded to rivet on the leading edge assemblies.
First the rib to main spar rivets are set. Some of these are a big challenge as they must be bucked blind with your arm stuck all the way in the wing. However, I found that a couple of ribs worth could be squeezed! What a pleasant surprise. Overall, most of these rivets are much easier to set than on an RV7 where most of them are right up against a main rib I think. Anyway, solid rivets were used. Tanya did the shooting and I did the blind bucking. It worked out with minimal frustration and we got better and faster as we went along as usual. That was the difficult part of this operation. Finally, I squeezed all of the flush skin to spar flange rivets. Those were a total breeze.
The results are quite satisfying! Two completely assembled, for the last time, leading edges of the wings. The tanks are on and everything fits (ok, I still have to install all of the screws to hold the tank on). This is super cool stuff!
We aren’t far at all from being able to remove the wings from the jigs and start on ailerons and flaps. The next up todo list is something like this:
- install Gretz pitot mast in the bottom skin.
- deburr all holes in the main skins.
- dimple all main skin holes. This will be relatively easy with the DRDT-2
- prime J-stringers
- rivet on the top main skins!
