Left Wing

	21 Feb 03	Brand new anodized wing spar. I really hate to take the countersink to it. This is one part you really don't want to mess up.....
	22 Feb 03	Step one. Trying to figure out the best way to c/s all these plate nut holes. Started with a .125" thick alum. bar and drilled the pilot for the countersink to #30. Then drilled the #40 tab holes. I did this parallel and at a 45-degree due to the funky lay out of the spar holes. If you don't use this backing pilot, your c/s holes are going to be very out of round...
	22 Feb 03	Step two is to cleco the pilot to the spar.
	22 Feb 03	Step three is to clamp the pilot to the spar in addition to the clecos.
	22 Feb 03	Step four is to remove the clecos, since you can't use a countersink  cage with the clecos installed. Then countersink to appropriate depth. Use a piece of .032 alum, dimpled for a #8 screw, to test depth.
	23 Feb 03	Repeat as necessary for all applicable holes. The masking tape keeps alum. shavings out of the web/cap gap. Ready for a shot of primer and installation of platenuts.
	24 Feb 03	There are one heck of a lot of platenuts! Here they are in all their glory doing the priming thing.
	26 Feb 03	Left spar with all the platenuts installed. Ouch! I believe there's 74 of these on this spar and another 74 on the right. That's a lot of stinkin' counter sinkin' going on!
	16 Mar 03	Found this handy 1" boring bit with a 1/4" pilot to cut those holes in the wing tie-down stand-offs. I also cut the AEX extrusions for the tie-downs a little short 7 5/32 instead of 7 15/32 so the new ones got ordered! In the mean time, I've been working the prep for the rear spars.
	20 Mar 03	This is the other project that has just arrived. Needless to say, the RV is going to slow a bit for the foreseeable future! One things for sure though, Van's definitely has a better manual...
	18 April 03	This is the left rear spar after riveting the reinforcing plates in position. Ready to start prepping all those ribs.
	23 April 03	A whole pile of ribs.... I'm tackling the prep one part at a time. First deburr all the edges. Then we'll deburr the lightning holes, then flange to 90-degrees, and finally crimp as necessary. Plan is to do all the rib parts at once. With the new baby project, about 1/2 hour a night is about all the RV gets right now....
	3 May 03	After about 10 hours doing nothing by de-burring, and flanging, the end is near for this operation. After this operation, the fluting began. This is a pretty long dull process, but it has to be done. I did to all at once so all ribs, including nose and tank ribs are ready. The photo illustrates the flanging tool as seen in 21 Years of the RVator.
	4 May 03	Main ribs get cleco'd to front and rear spars. Keep in mind that not all the "L" identified ribs go on the left spar and not all the "R" identified ribs go on the right. Some flanges face inboard, and some outboard. Got to pay attention to the plans here.... For 20 minutes work, this is a lot of visual progress.
	23 May 03	Managed to make a little progress here. All the ribs have been primed after the alumapreping and alodining. The hole for the wiring run was also drilled with a unibit prior to priming.
	25 May 03	Finally getting to rivet again. It's been a long time since I did this and it took a little to get back into the swing of things. Good thing is that I only drilled out two rivets with nasty smiles. Per advice, ribs were riveted to the forward spar first.
	26 May 03	View looking down the wing from the butt end. The wiring run holes are pretty visible here. This location is out of the way and shouldn't present any future problems. The plan is to use grommets instead of conduit and run all required wires during wing assembly.
	31 May 03	Finally got this hung in the stand. Haven't been able to get the top skins cleco'd on yet but here's the bottom skins cleco'd. I found that if you level the main spar and jack up the lower spar until the fishing line aligns with the holes (per manual) it gets you in the ballpark. I cleco'd the bottom skins on then worked from the root end out along the main spar edge first. If the holes didn't align exactly, adjust the center jack to align. Hope that made sense...Also visible are leveling points just inboard of the wheels on the wing stand. These work great and allow you to level the main spar in all dimensions. Since the stand is also a little flexible, it can be used to add or subtract any washout to get the 0 washout. The leveling points are actually 3/8 carriage bolts, so with the very small footprint, they really anchor the stand to the floor and prevent any movement.
	8 June 03	Built the cradle for the leading edge and tank. Really was fairly easy. Note the old towel cut and stapled to the cradle for padding. So far it works fine.
	8 June 03	Putting together the leading edge. After getting the ribs right, it finally went together OK.
	9 June 03	And here it is on the wing with splice strip in place. This was kind of a trick but not a big issue. I didn't drill the ribs to the spare until the the whole assembly was cleco'd so I had to drill the rib/spar holes from the bottom. Not a big deal though.
	29 June 03	Here's one of those things I wanted to start before the tank. Here is the re-enforcement for the Gretz heated pitot tube going in. I placed it just to the outside of the location specified by the manual. So far, not a very difficult install.
	11 July 03	Over the last several weeks, it's been somewhat consumed with the brain numbing drill, de-vinyl, de-burr, and dimple operations....and I'm still not done yet! Oh, one thing not to forget, are the forward-most rivets at the rib-to-main spar intersection. If there's time, you can countersink and rivet these.
	11 July 03	Got the top skins back on after some drilling, de-burring, and dimpling. I still have a ways to go to finish everything but, hey, I'm pacing myself.  No need to burn out on this task yet!
	13 July 03	There are a lot of holes in this wing. The lower inner skin has been dimpled but it's left off for work on the tank at this time.  On to the Tanks.
	3 Aug 03	Had to take some time off for a quick trip to Oshkosh 03. Good show and great weather this year.  Here's a bunch of misc. wing parts in the priming phase. We've got the parts for the outboard leading edge as well as the tank Z-brackets.
	4 Aug 03	Got the left LE cleco'd together. Now it's off to Orlando for a work tech conference....
	9 Aug 03	This turned out OK. Here's the left LE ready for install on the spar. Only took about three hours to rivet this all together. No other help and it appears everything turned out good.
	17 Aug 03	This is a good feeling. No clecos here! The left leading edge is complete and attached to the spar. I started the day before and succeeded in riveting the center 4 ribs to the spar using LP4-3 blind rivets. The most and inboard and outboard waited a day while I procured some help. You can get to these rivets but its tricky. The skin/spar rivets were a breeze...next step is to complete top skins.
	23 Aug 03	Whoo-who! Visual progress strikes again! Local RV-6 builder/ owner, Ed Cole came over and brought his mongo back-riveting bucking bar and and extended rivet set. After about 3 hours, we'd gotten through almost all but the skin/rear spar rivets with only a handful that we needed to drill out. At left is the leading edge/ skin interface and you can see that this is really tight. These pre-punched kits are very cool. I tried, and it's tough, getting a piece of paper to slide in here so I may have to bring back the feeler gauge from my hanger and see what the gap really is.
	24 Aug 03	All finished up. I had a couple rivets to drill out and Carolina helped buck a couple. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the way this turned out. Now back to the tanks....
	25 Oct 03	Finally back to the wings after finishing the left tank. That sure took a while. Spent a couple hours this week getting the aileron hinge brackets fitted, drilled, primed and assembled. Here's the inboard bracket riveted to the spar. Note: ensure that you follow the rivet call-outs in the plans. There are a couple AN426 rivets on the lower inboard side of the brackets.
	26 Oct 03	Got the aileron and flap gap fairings/ braces riveted into place today. Pretty straight forward with no major problems here. On the flap brace, there is a callout in plans on the flap page to trim the brace on the inboard end, otherwise, you don't figure this out until you get there...
	31 Oct 03	I spent the week trying to get the tank fit to an acceptable level. The edge butting the LE was slightly bent down when screwed in resulting in a bump at the tank. After playing with this for a while, I thought that I might have too much Pro Seal under the outboard tank rib. Not the case. I figured out, after a good hard look, that for some reason, the inboard rib of the LE was slightly undersize and had a small dip. Hummmm, so the solution was to install a couple shims under the top, aft most 6 rivets. Seemed to workout well. Not perfect, but after some primer and sanding, the finish paint will look OK.
	1 Nov 03	This year is really going by fast! Along with the tank fitting, I've also fitted the aileron bell-crank and torqued this down. I'm installing the Gretz Aero heated pitot in the bay outside of the bell-crank. Since I don't have the tube yet, and I had a really nice 1/4" AL tube from a previous project, I installed the tube with bulkhead fittings at both ends. Talk about a trick to install!. I used the plastic grommets provided by Van's. Now figure out how to flare both ends, but have the applicable hardware on both ends the tube in place first, all grommets installed, and the tube cut to the right length. Actually worked out well. BTW, I'm using rubber grommets for the wiring as well, not conduit.
	6 Nov 03	Kind of a slow week on the RV. Still trying to get the annual conditional inspection done on the Boredom Fighter as well. I did manage to get the terminal blocks installed today. I'm going with grommets instead of conduit. I've installed terminal blocks at the root, near the heated pitot, and at the tip. This is the root and shows the five wires + the strobe bundle. I wanted a nice neat terminus for the wiring so here it is.... Just for interest, I did talk to Warren Gretz this week to see when the new pitot tube will be out. He indicated he's several weeks out, but I did ask him about wiring. He said to make sure and install two extra 22 AWG wires. Apparently there will be a couple sensors for the tube.
	12 Nov 03	Another view of the Bell-crank area. Note the terminal block for the pitot heat's three wires.
	15 Nov 03	Spent some time this week making up the short aileron push-rods. Fairly simple to make but had some trouble riveting the thread ends into the tubes. Otherwise, this and the rod for the right wing are done. Just have to make up the large rods now but there's no hurry.
	16 Nov 03	Finally got back to finish up the skins for the lower surface which included the beveling of the overlap joint between the skins. Also finished cutting out the hole for the pitot mast and then dimpled the outter lower skin. These are ready for priming and riveting. I'm now just waiting on a tech inspection before riveting the lower skins. In the mean time, there's ailerons to be built.
	22 Nov 03	Been plugging away at this somewhat slowly lately. Between finishing the edges of the aileron stiffeners, I did get the large aileron pushrod ends drilled. These are now ready for priming. I'm waiting a a large batch of parts for priming, as well as a warm day!
	28 Nov 03	Gary Sobek paid a visit today for a tech counselor visit as I really wanted another set of eyes to take a look before I close up this wing. Everything in good shape. Anyone familiar with the EAA Chapter 1000 Project Police will note the obligatory "point".
	4 Jan04	I've been working the ailerons and did get those finished up over teh Christmas break. Lots of good progress.  While waiting on some additional help with the wing skins, I finished up some misc. stuff in the wing. Here's the pitot tube end of the pitot line. It will eventually hook up with a Gretz tubs and mast.      Also finished the long aileron push tubes and installed for fitting check.
	10 Jan 04	Spent a goodly part of the day getting most of the inboard skin riveted on. Down to about 20 rivets. Mark Russell, local RV-8 builder lent a hand for the tough rivets.
	17 Jan 04	Continuing to rivet a little at a time on the lower skins. I'm also taking time to work the flaps at the same time so this is going a little slow.
	24 Jan 04	Nice to see all the clecos removed from the lower skin finally! RV-8/6/4 builder Don Farrand paid a visit and helped out with the rest of the skinning. For the most part, except for the access panel nut-plates and the flaps, this wing is pretty much done.
	28 FEB4 04	So much for the plans. Earlier I had missed a step and didn't counter-sink the flap brace before installing the lower skin. However I did dimple. Oops! This made life a bit harder down the road. I was able to dimple the lower skin with the flap brace and it came out well. The issue was the hinge. I figured I needed to counter-sink the hinge and Van's said I didn't need to put a backing strip on it. This works. Well....The hinge isn't thick enough to prevent the hole from enlarging during counter-sinking, so....Oops rivets it is. Just enlarged holes to a #30 and used Oops rivets. I don't think this hinge is ever coming off..
		Here's flap alignment after installing hinge pins. Gap is slightly over 1/4" but that's adjustable with the aileron. Way cool! Left flap attached.
		Looks like a complete wing here. Woo Hoooo! Left wing about done. Just one little thing to do....
		Attached nut plates and finished off access panels in lower wing. Except for final assembly of pitot tube and heat and completing tips. This wing is done! For this wing, I'll have 127 hours in the wing, about 17 in the aileron, and 15 in the flap and an additional 47 in the fuel tank for a total of about 206 hours.
	11 Jul 04	Finally got around to finishing off the wires at the tip end. An adel clamp holds the nav light, landing light and the strobe cables.