Left wing skin done
Tanya and I continued shooting rivets on the bottom wing skins. We finished the left wing. It is all closed up, and we did finally get the quick efficient process worked out. Poor Tanya is being forced to work quickly and accurately because the bucker quickly gets tired holding the bucking bar up over the head at full arm extension and applying pressure to the tail of the rivet. “When I say shoot, you better be ready to pull the trigger.” :). Yep, we’re still married, and got it all figured out
The sequence worked out great: Shoot all of the rear spar rivets, then about three rivets forward on all of the ribs, repeating a few rivets across the whole length of the wing a few times until it isn’t reasonable to peel the skin back to stick your arm in there (about 12 remaining on each rib?). Then cleco the rest of the forward edge down and reach in from the access holes and ends to close it all up. This works on the RV9 wing, but might not work on the wider RV7 wing. I’m guessing that on the RV7, you wouldn’t be able to reach the rear spar from the forward edge unless you had a super long arm. Oh, well, that is somebody else’s problem.
I also got the outside air temperature probe installed with a snap bushing in the bottom of the right wing skin. A little touch of proseal on the inside and it will be golden.
