Scott & Tanya Card RV9A build log (N4822C)

I got the wing tip ribs riveted in after cleaning up all of the epoxy along the edges of the tips. Next up, antennas and attachment hardware.

I’m making real progress with the wing tips. I soldered the regulator boards to the nav light boards after marking the cutouts. That was great fun (simple) with a good soldering iron. I did a lot of trimming of the tip attach flanges with the cutoff wheel in the angle grinder, then used a palm sander with 60 grit to cleanup the edges. Both wing tips have had the attach holes drilled. Part of the trick to getting that right was to stuff the inside of the tip to apply a little outward pressure. I held the tip in place and Tanya drilled the holes. I decided that, if done correctly (carefully), it is best to start drilling at the aft edge in order to lock the trailing edge in alignment with the aileron.
Then I got to work on the tip ribs. I’m not quite sure why they aren’t pre-punched. After preparing the ribs (mark, drill, deburr), I clecoed the tips back on and carefully fit the inboard rib into the tip adjacent to the aileron. I clamped and taped the rib in place, drilling only one attach hole that I could get to with an angle drill just for security, double checked aileron alignment, and removed the tip to drill the rib to the tip. A nice angle drill sure came in handy when dealing with these tip ribs.
With all of that done, I mixed up some epoxy and epoxied in the ribs and backing strips along the attach flange. Clothes pins are my friend. After the epoxy is cured, I’ll redrill all of the holes, countersink, and proceed.

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

Working on wing tips. I got my TruTrak autopilot controller back form TruTrak with the operating software updated from v.2.20 to v2.24. Ready for that to be reinstalled.

With all the progress that we made this past weekend, I couldn’t resist leaving “real work” just after lunch on Tuesday to get back to the garage to put in some more time. I got the bottom wing access panels done and nutplates installed on the right wing. I then moved on to the wing tips. Ah, more fiberglass. I started by putting the ailerons back on and aligning them. I’m working on the right wing tip first (one at a time). I held it up to the wing to see what needed to be trimmed. I did get out the plans just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. Nope, pretty straight forward. I made some edge trim cuts and did a little sanding. Next up is to drill some attachment holes. I think a helper is going to be key to that operation. The trick is to try to get it drilled in place with the trailing edge of the tip to somewhat match the aileron. I hear that this is sometimes a futile effort, but I’ll do my best.

 

  

  

  

  

 

It seemed that Tanya was in the mood to get the other wing closed up. So after work, we had a quick dinner and went straight to the garage and pounded rivets for a little over two hours. It was smooth progress and we got the bottom skin of the second wing all riveted on. Wow, I never imagined that riveting on the bottom wing skins would go quite that fast and “easy”. Serious progress indeed.