Ailerons

Ailerons

	24 Nov 03	Finally got started on the ailerons by cutting the aileron stiffeners. Man, there's a lot of these things. Anyway, got all these cut and edges smoothed. Now on to the rest of the work.
	28 Nov 03	Over the last couple days, I finished smoothing all 32 of those aileron stiffeners as well as drilled the stiffeners to the skins.
	3 Dec 03	Took a couple nights but got the vinyl removed from the skins. It takes a while but over the course of the project I may spend 10 hours taking the coating off. To me, it's worth it to protect the metal. So far, there's no sign of corrosion under the coatings either.
	4 Dec 03	Back to a little more mind challenging activity. Here's the fitting of the aileron push rod brackets. The re-enforcement plates were also fabricated.
	6 Dec 03	Looks like a little rain this weekend, so it's back to drilling. I had hoped to be able to do some priming in the next day but this isn't looking good. Oh well. Here's the aileron nose assembly going together for fitting and drilling.
	13 Dec 03	Got the aileron nose skins smoothed and de-burred. Then it's time to countersink the counter-weights. Here's one of the counter-weights clamped down for the counter-sinking. Worked well.
	13 Dec 03	After the countersinking, time to dimple the nose skin. This process worked fairly well and produced the appropriate dimples in the nose skin. If the weather would cooperate, I might get some priming done, but it just doesn't look good. May have to start work on flaps...And no, I didn't use the BFH in the photo for dimpling. I have another BFM that's used for that process.
	20 Dec 03	Well not all that exciting, but it's progress none-the-less. Yesterday was spent cleaning, aluma-prepping-and alodining all the aileron parts as well as the left wing lower skins. This was lots of work but at least they look good.
	31 Dec 03	Finally back to the project after spending 6 days in Seattle. After priming all the parts prior to heading north, everything was ready to go. Here's the spars for the left ailerons getting the re-enforcement plates riveted on. Accomplished the stiffener riveting on both ailerons as well. All rivets were put in place with tape over the machined head, then I just went down the rows using the back-rivet set. Left aileron all together for final drilling. I did all priming, then did the drilling, deburring and dimpling. Finally, used some left-over epoxy primer to do a little touch-up.
	1 Jan 04	After watching a little of the Rose Parade (cool fly-by but the USAF!), it was time for more progress. Nose ribs getting the rivet treatment here. In retrospect, I missed the pop rivets for the counterweight to nose ribs for this rib. I noted that Dan Checkoway had also missed these. Oops. After finishing, I noticed that there just wasn't anyway to put a blind rivet per the plans. If necessary, I'll put a small screw and a nut where the rivet should have gone. I used a couple 4" c-clamps to make a pivot for the aileron while I riveted the top skins in place. In the down position, it's easy to insert a bunch of rivets and clecos. In the up position, it's easy to reach in with a bucking bar with the left hand and rivet with the right. Not a problem to do without help. Finished up the top rivets per plans, then started on the bottom. I used a couple boards, clamped at the T/E to make sure there wasn't any twist. Worked for this aileron.
	2 Jan 04	Left aileron is complete. Started on the right aileron as well. Got the entire frame assembled, drilled, de-burred, dimpled as necessary and the top rivets complete. This time I made sure to blind rivet the counterweight per plans. Worked much better.
	3 Jan 04	Finished up all the riveting on the right aileron and attached the hinge brackets. Right aileron is complete. Now on to the flaps! I used the flight control bending brake to hold the flap and ensure no twist and this seemed to work very well.