The left flap fit great with the fuselage. The right one, not so much. I had to do quite a bit of adjustments to get the right flap to come up in trail and line up with the aileron. I also got the ailerons in place. Still need to install the push tubes. The length of the flap pushrods called out in the plans were correct for me. Also, I did add one additional washer to the flap rod end bearing to space it further inboard.
Tonight I got the lower wing intersection fairings drilled. It is still very weird going all the way out to the hangar to work on the project. Why didn’t I get more done? Hangar talk… (Thanks Jim :).
This evening I did a bunch of rechecking of the wing alignment (square, sweep, incidence), then marked and drilled the rear spar attach bolt holes. For edge distance, I ended up with a target square about 1/8″x1/8″. Not a lot of room for error here, but I didn’t have to do any additional trimming either. I started with a #30 bit and worked my way up to just under 5/16″. I used some drill guide inserts for general squareness checks at #30, 3/16″, 1/4″, and 5/16″. I didn’t drill all the way up to 5/16″. The bolts measured .310″ and I have a .3110″ reamer that I used for the final hole. The holes are a perfect fit with that reamer. 5/16″ would be just a bit to big.
For those not “in the know”, these are very critical holes to be drilled, with very specific tolerances, that are dependent on a lot of previous construction coming together correctly. Definitely a flight safety concern if they aren’t right.
The holes are drilled and alignments rechecked again. Everything is spot on. The wings are square, don’t have any sweep, and both are straight without any twist. I’m very happy.
I did my first weekday commute to the hangar to build this evening. The drive was about 38min. at 6:30pm. I got to work stretching a line and hanging plumb bobs from the leading edge of the wings. I’m liking the taught line instead of a chalk line. Line adjustments can be made to the line and not the airplane. Anyway, I was able to level the airplane fore-aft, and left-right just by adjusting the air pressure in the tires. My hangar floor must be sloped just right. I did all measurements and alignment except for the angle of incidence. I got things setup to do the incidence alignment next time. Everything is looking good so far (plenty of meat on the rear spar for hole edge distance, whew).
We got both wings on with temporary hardware for their first fitting. Very cool stuff.
