Saturday morning is breakfast call for several members in our club.   This past Saturday was very special as our machinist buddies Leland Bradshaw and Dale Beck had completed our tail wheel assembly.  What a beautiful job!!!!  The first picture shows the tail wheel in the retracted position.  The second picture shows the tail wheel in the down and locked position. 

Also contacted Precision Cut Kits this week and they are sending us the wood that we were shorted.  Rick is in Texas this week for work so that leaves Greg & myself to work tonight.

We got a wing tube from our sponsoring hobby shop and that was the first business of the night.  The outer tube fit right thru ribs 14, 13 & 11.  Ribs 12 & 10 had to be sanded a little to push outer tube thru.  Next  we installed the rearmost spar at the hinge line.  Here is where we find the first mistake on the plans.  The notch in rib 3 is 1/4' farther forward than it should be.  We compared our rib 4 to the plans rib templates and it was right on.  So this mistake is on Don Smith plans, we simply enlarged the cutout in the spar and moved on.  Picture 3 shows this clearly if I have confused you. 

To this point we have glued nothing on the wing yet, but even so, the wing panel is surprisingly rigid and strong.  So now time to start gluing.   We chose to leave wing assembled and started using CA glue.   Our plan is to Ca every thing framed up so far then use wood glues to install shear webs and other structure.  Remember the entire inner panels of the wing are all hardwood and plywood.  The only balsa here is the wing sheeting.  We are allowing rib 1 to "float" until we couple with the starboard side inner panel.

We glued ribs 2, 3 & 4 with all associated dihedral braces and spars.   With this done Greg wanted to get home early tonight to see what is going to happen with the War.  So the night ended after 1-1/2 hours or 3
man-hours.

--
Gary Himes

Week 18  -  26 Mar 2003

Tonight we cut all of the 1/16" aircraft plywood shear webs for the front spar and center spar.  We glued all the ribs and 1/16" shear webs in place.  In past writings we were thinking that all shear webs would be glued in place with carpenters wood glue.  Well......tonight we decided to use Ca Glue for the entire wing.  OH...the rib #1 is still floating!  We are firm about not gluing until we attach the starboard side wing center section.

Next we installed the top rear 3/32 sheeting on the wing.  We felt this was necessary to keep from breaking the thin trailing edge part of all the ribs.  Without the sheeting they seemed fairly fragile.  Before finishing for the night we installed the leading edge on ribs 3 thru 14.

The write up tonight seems short, however we worked 9 man-hours.  It takes time to install the shear webs, there is no gaps around the shear webs.  The webs were cut tight to the adjacent ribs.  In looking at the pics the wing panel don't  look that  big.  Keep in mind that we are building on a 3 ft X 9 ft steel door.  That will put the size in perspective for you! -- Gary Himes