Week 21  -  17 Apr 2003

We didn't work Wed this week, as it was my youngest daughter's 16th birthday.  We talked it over and agreed it was more important to spend the night with my family on the sweet 16 night than build on an airplane.  So we postponed the building one night.

After tonight's work was done and pictures were taken, Greg commented that he thought we were doing extremely well.  We have been working together now for five months and we still have smiles on our faces and nobody's neck is in the hands of  our buddies.

Well down to the report.  At the end of the night wing rib 1 is still floating.  First thing done was to separate the port outboard panel from the inboard panel, while leaving the outboard panel pinned to the table.  Greg took the inboard panel and installed filler blocks between bottom center spar and dihedral brace between ribs 2 & 3 and ribs 3 & 4.  Next he added the shear webs to the same area.

Rick & Gary took the outboard section and sanded the rear top spar flush to the wing ribs.  Next they sheeted the entire top section.  Now we lift off table and fish out the t-pins used to hold panel down.  Next we installed the front sheet only, to the bottom  of  the outboard port panel.  In our continuing theory of leaving decisions regarding servos etc for latter we will not do any more sheeting to the bottom of  this panel for now.

Greg & Rick now work on the inboard panel on the center (rear?) spar.  It also needs sanded down  flush to the wing ribs.  Gary takes the outboard panel and razor planes the leading edge down flush with the sheeting both top & bottom and sands both ends flush to the inner and outer most ribs.

We all then sheet the inboard panel, on the top from the rear to near the front spar, then sand sheeting flush with the outer most rib.  We will not do any more sheeting on the inboard panel until we get the starboard panels built and the nacelle structures figured out.

We fit the inboard and outboard panels backed together.  The fit is perfect so we take pictures and call it a night.

Next week we will start building the starboard inboard section to the existing port inboard panel.  Some thing I started doing  few weeks ago, was to make a list of what needs to be done during the next build session.  This seems to help us make the most our of our building time.  The list is relatively easy for me do since it is in my house.  Although I don't build on the plane without the others, it is hard not to think about what needs done.  -- Gary Himes

Week 22  -23 April 2003

First thing done was to weigh the wing assembly.  The weight was 4-1/2 lbs as pictured in the last report.

Since rib 1 is still floating, we used a scrap piece of lumber to hold rib 1 in the proper location, and trimmed/sanded the spars and sheeting flush to rib 1.  The front and rear spars were pinned to the table and ribs 4 thru 14 were placed on the spars.  Ribs 1 thru 3 had to have the nose cut off as we did on the port side.  A plywood doubler was glued in place between the two number 2 ribs.

Ribs 1 thru 3 were installed to the existing port side assembly dihedral brace.  Now the port side inner panel  was blocked to the proper height and put in place to the and the top front & rear spar were installed.

It sounds like an easy step to line up the port side to the starboard side.  In reality  this took a lot of struggling, cussing,  thinking,  cussing, figuring and still more cussing till we got every thing lined up as it should be.  There is some serious stress on the dihedral braces to get everything lined up as it should be.  We  triangulated and checked everything.  It all looks perfect, but we did not glue anything.  We took pictures and weighted everything to prevent warping, then called it a night.

Next week Rick is going to bring his laser level to allow us to make a few more checks.  If we are still happy we will start gluing everything together!  --  Gary Himes

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