Wings

I decided to build both wings simultaniously, and if your shop size will fit, do it also. It saves some time, because you will forget how you managed to do the things on your first wing when you're at the second one, believe me. There are still some things to drill or to align, where you have to scratch your head a lot before you finally find a way to do that. 4 month later you will not know how it worked out the first time. In fact I did'nt do everything on every rib for both sides together, but when I finished a major step on the left wing, I turned to the other one and did the same step. I did the following:

1.: Level both spars to the jigs.

2.: Drill all main ribs to one wing, matchdrill the leading edge ribs to the same wing and assemble and drill the rear spar to that wing.

3.: Repeat that for the other side.

4.: Fit and drill the top main and leading edge skin to one wing, fit the tank, then to the same with the second wing and so on.

This worked good, I have never been too far away in mind, so it was easy to repeat all the steps on both wings. Beside that, it will be very frustating if you have one wing done and start with the other at zero. At that point you know how much work will come, but your mind will tell you that you're not building a new part, because you've done all that before, I mean, there is no finish line you're heading for, because you know how it will look. Priming is another timesaver if you build both wings, simply because you only have to prime all pieces for both wings at one time.

There are some other things to speed up the process as Sam Buchanan told us on his homepage (look at it, you will find the link on Van's homepage!): Hit the shop door running and you can't get good results when the shop is in a state of chaos. Build all components 'mentally' at work or elsewhere, so you know exactely where to start when you fire up the compressor, staring at pieces of aluminium is not effective shoptime, searching for tools also is'nt. Sam, you're right!

I have the prebuilt phlogiston spars, so I had no work with them at this stage, but later..... Here the spar is leveled in the jig, so you can straighten all main ribs, drill out the lightening holes (Günther did that luckily), fit the ribs to the main spar, cut and drill the reinforcing angles to most of the ribs, and finally drill the ribs to the spar. Here you see the innermost rib clecoed to the main spar and a plumb bob hanging down. This one shows where to drill it to the rear spar. Alignment of main and rear spar is done with another pair of bobs going right through both spars at positions called out in the manual. Any mistake here will show once the skins are riveted on, so do it exactely. Asking why I know that?....

Here you see the reinforcing angles between the main ribs and main spar, they're rivited to the ribs and bolted and riveted to the spar, a lot of them together with the leading edge ribs, so you have to matchdrill the main ribs and the leading edge ribs. A good metod is shown on the next image.

You have to know that all tooling holes in all ribs of the wing are in line, so you simply have to draw a line on your workbench and line up the tooling holes of the main and LE ribs. To be sure the skin will run smoothly I used some strips of aluminium to simulate the skin and clamped them to the ribs, as you can see. the holes in the main ribs are already there, so you drill right though into the nose ribs and they align. (There is one rivet going through the rib, the spar and the other rib later)

Here is a closer shot. As you see, I had drilled holes into the bench and secured the ribs with rivets through the tooling holes, this helps because there are a lot of rib-pairs to drill. With these ribs you are really starting a mass production while straightening, fluting, drilling, deburring, dimpling and priming, so it's worth the extra affort when you have a lot of similar pieces.

Scuffing all ribs with scotchbrite, a neverending and dumb work.

After priming the skeleton was clecoed together. There are some doublers and bars to be riveted on the rear spar, but you have seen that at the horizontal stabilizer. But there is one important think to take care off, and thats not pointed out clearly in the plans: You have to rivet the aileron gap seal and the flapbrace to the rear spar later, so figure out where it will go and use flush head rivets for attaching the ribs at places, where you have to rivet these things, otherwise you have to drill holes in the brace and seal to get a place for the rivet heads.

You see 4 ribs here, the 3 on left with flanges facing to the left and the other one facing right. The rest of the ribs also face right, thats outwards on the wing. If you plan to rivet the top skins first, remember NOT to rivet the 3 innermost ribs to the spars, you have to pull them out when both skins are on and rivet one after the other.

There are many ways to rivet on the skins, the manual says to start with the bottom main skin and rivet the top skins at last. For practical reasons this is logical, because the top flange of the rear spar faces backwards, so you are able to rivet that row from the outside. I decided to rivet the top side first, because you show that side to the world and I think you will get better results if the bucker can reach and SEE all rivets. The disadvantage is that you have to rivet the rear spar to skin rivetline blind when you rivet the bottom skins, but it works. If you don't rivet the 3 innermost ribs as mentioned above, you can avoid blind rivets and take AN's instead.

There is an easy way to line up the LE ribs: Pull a steel wire through all the lightening holes and put a washer and close fitting tube on every side of each rib, square the ribs and secure the plastic tube with a cable strap. The leading edge skin will be wrapped around these ribs and you don't want the ribs to move when you drill through the skin.

But at first you have to measure out and predrill the rivet holes for the top main skins, if you prefer the skinning sequence I did: Top main, leading edge, fit tanks, bottom main. Doing so, you will achive truely straight buttjoints between main and LE skin, because you simply use the skin as it is delivered, without filing. (Jurassic kit, he?? If you plan to start, don't worry, today these skins are predrilled)

I have done it this way: Predrill the row where the skin is riveted to the main spar (take care not to drill holes where you can't set a rivet, watch closely where the ribs and stiffeners are and avoid these places to drill holes!!) Then clamp or tape the skin to the main spar, drill through the predrilled holes into the mainspar, starting at center of sheet, go outwards to both ends (one left, one right, one left..) clecoe as you go and then pull the skin flat down on the ribs all the way down to the rear spar. Now you can mark the positions of all ribs from behind. Take off the skin, draw square lines inbetween the markings and lay out the rivet pattern. (I fabicated a strip of allumium with the correct spacing for the main and LE ribs, so you can trace it to all rivetlines and get evenly spaced rows.) Predrill these holes and hang the skin back on the skeleton. Now you can drill all the way down to the rear spar and watch the centerline on the ribs through the predrilled holes. This procedure works for all skins and the risk of missing a rib is zero. The picture shows the backside of a main skin marked with contours of all ribs and rivet holes predrilled.

This is how it looks after drilling to the skeleton. Repeat this for the inboard top main skin and you are ready to fit the leading edge skin.

Here you need assitance. If someone pushes the skin down to the ribs on the top side, you are able to peel back the skin from below and mark the rib contours from behind. There is no need to repeat this for the bottom side, because the ribs have to be square to the spar, so you just have to draw the lines square to the skin over to the bottom side. Now you can predrill all holes except the row where the skin will be riveted to the main spar on the bottom side. Leave these out for safety, maybe you have to trim off a little skin to end up in line with the main spar. Drill that row after the skin is clecoed to the LE ribs.

Use little pieces of thick aluminium and cleco them to the main skin to spar line, they hold down the LE skin.

Now you can strap down the skin to the ribs, using some wood to press the skin to the ribs. Start drilling at the buttjoint at the top main skin and work up around the nose down to the bottom side, clecoing every hole, left to right and back, row after row.

This is how it looks after drilling. (some straps and clecoes removed already).

With the top main and leading edge skin clecoed on, it's time to fit the tanks. My tanks are assambled by Evan Johnson, he builds them and they are ready to go, no messy pro-seal here. Of course you have to fit them to your wings, so the tank skin is oversized and you have to file it down to fit your main skins, but thats no problem. You can't go per manual here, because normally you fit the LE skin and tank skin at once, here you have the tank as a given part and must fit the LE skin to it, this will be a little more work for you, but I think it's much better than these pro-seal parties. Visit Evans website, if you want to let Evan do the job. It's fine craftmanship and it's worth the price. If you you order your wings, Van's will ship the nec. pieces to Evan and he sends the tanks back to Vans, so they ship them to you as part of the kit.

It's hard to see, but here is the problem with the tanks: In fact, it is a problem with the spar.. .

There are two rows of screws, attaching the tank to the spar. One line ofanchor nuts is riveted to the spar channel and the other one to a U-channel that's riveted on top of the spar. This U-channel is part of the Phlogiston spar and on my spar it was riveted on out of the spars centerline. When I fitted the tank there was a gap between the tank skins overhang on one side as a too close fit on the other side, 1/5 of an inch.....the tank was pulled out of CL because of the poor fitting of the U-channel, and this phenomenum occured on both wings. To top this, the joint plate was'nt evenly out of CL, no, inner side a little, outside a lot. So what to do? There is no possibility to reshape the U-channel, it is riveted to the spar and it would weaken the whole spar if you try to drill out these huge rivets. So I had to shim the whole buttjoint on one side and rebent the tank overhang on the other side to make it fit. The problems is maybe hard to understand if you did'nt built one of these wings, but I was extremely disappointed by this poor craftmanship. They must have jigs to drill these spars, and I really don't understand how things like this happen. I'm not the only one with this problem, so watch your spars and measure twice before you get into this trouble. The spars were built some 15 years ago, maybe there is no problem any more....

This is the #*%'#! U-channel, here you see the anchor nuts for the upper row already installed and the holes for the bottom row predrilled. There are some things on RV's where you can see how patient the builder has been in details, like the fit of the trim tab and all those little things you can do fast or accurate, and the tank-fit is definately one of those things, so I hope I never meet that guy at Phlogiston that fabricated my spars. The fix took 50 hours and you will detect it, of course. '''''####''''

Here you see the shim screwed to the spar. Of course it will be riveted together with the main skin. This was only for alingnment, I had to backdrill the holes because the holes in the spar were already there.

This strip must be riveted together with the LE skin, this is where the tank butts against the LE and is attached with screws. I had to shim this, too, to achive a smooth transition to the already shimmed bottom line......a lot of fun.

But it payed off! The transition from leading edge skin to tank skin. The tank skin is slightly thicker than the LE skin, but it's hard to see after assembly. I don't know how often I put the tank on and off and on and off again, but at last I was really good ;o)

There are some holes you can't dimple, so you have to countersink them. This will happen everywhere, it's the same with the ailerons, flaps and so on. NEVER, NEVER countersink these holes without a support for the pilot, clamped securely under the predrilled hole, or you will get eggshaped or/and starshaped holes. This is very important, try it with some scratch and you will see what I mean.

The nutplates near the root of the wing are very close to the reinforcing bars of the spar, so I decided to take these 90degree nutplates instead, the ordinary ones will be hard to rivet here.

Once the tank fits the wing, it is time to rivet the LE skin to the ribs. That's done by simply taking off the whole assembly in one piece. Before that you have to deburr, dimple, prime and reassemble, but we can ommit these 15 hours ;o)

So you put the LE in a cradle and rivet the ribs to the skin, trying not bounce around with that bucking bar and put some additional dings on that shiny surface. In my opinion this is one of the easier things to rivet because you have perfect access, no problems here.

A look inside: Top side done, bottom side is next.

Now you take the riveted nose back to the wing and rivet and bolt it on. You reach through the lightening holes in the spar to insert the bolts, these go right through the spar and the main ribs. The row of rivets along the spar can be riveted with a hand rivet squeezer.

Slip on the tank and it looks like a wing, but only the top side. Now you can fit and drill the bottom main skins.

Here you have to build an inspection cover to get access to the aileron bellcrank assembly. This is fun! Of course you can't take the piece you've cutted out, it is too small, so you have to fabricate a piece that fits inside the cutout with nearly zero tolerance...

...cut out and rivet in a rear-support, install some nutplates....

...and it looks like this!

And finally this. I love these things: A clear task, some hours of work and done.

All skins are fitted, now its time to rivet on the top main skins. Here you need a good bucker...

This is a big day, this side really looks like a wing, no cleco left and you hear the sound of that big Lycoming and...you got the picture....

...but, the other side: Hmmm

You can't close the wing now, because there are no flaps and ailerons by now, and you have to fit them and drill and rivet all the attachments for these before you can rivet the bottoms skins, so jump to the aileron/flap section...