1 July 06 - Getting the Wings Attached

This is a long weekend (sort of, I don't have Monday off, but Tuesday is free and clear), and it needs a nice-size project that we can knock out over the whole weekendish period of time. Let's attach the wings! This has been on the "gotta do this sometime" list for awhile, but originally we weren't planning on doing it this soon. This is a good sized project, though, will provide a motivational shot in the arm, and because we'll get it done now, is probably more satisfying than starting the canopy.

In any case, we've got a pile of things that have to be done before we actually put the wings on, so that's going to take up most of today - actually slapping the wings in there shouldn't take that long, really.

This is just for reference - sort of a "before" picture of how the shop looks before we start moving lots of stuff around.	The first project of the day is to attach these babies - the inside part was already done, so it's pretty much just finding the parts (actually the most challenging part), and then bolting them on (still more challenging than you'd expect - the head of the bolt is between two channels). Note about this below:
These tank bolt attach mounts are supposed to be bent 5 degrees, however, we decided not to do that at this point. The idea here is that you can pull these brackets off fairly easily, so if they do not fit, you can make sure they fit exactly without having to guess. Update from a few hours later: looks like it doesn't have to be bent at all, at least on ours. Also, the steel in the bracket is just a bit flexible, so it could just be bolted on there and everything would be fine. However, this one seems to be in the perfect place anyway.
Here's the second project, which is slightly more involved: trimming the wing spar. This has been measured as shown in the plans, and now has to be trimmed. If you do not trim this enough, then you end up with slightly forward-swept wings.	After a bit of work with a dremel, file, and scotchbrite, here's the result.
The last chore is to reorganize the shop so this will actually fit - for this, we've got dollies for the main wheels and have taken the stops out of the nosegear, so the nosegear can spin all the way around.	Having it on dollies allows us to push the whole fuselage any which way, which is what is happening here.
There it is with the wings on - the wings clear the walls by about 6" per side, so it's a bit awkward to get around now.	For the FAA - yes, I actually was involved in this process here.

Well, now we'll be trying to get all the wings-to-fuselage sort of things done so we can get the wings back off. There are two motivations for this, actually: (a) when the wings are off, then we'll actually be able to walk around the shop again, and (b) when the wings come off, we should be able to move them to the hangar, which will give us a lot more room in the shop.

Some of the things on that list are to

• Attach the wing root fairings,
• Work on the bottom skin attach points (a bunch of nutplates, actually),
• Work with the flaps - hook the pushrods up to the motor, get the flaps on, and actually move them up and down.

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