Summer is here, temps are now anywhere from 105 and up so it is a tad, perhaps even a mite, warm in the aviation workspace. Not much has happened for a while thanks to waiting for the new wing parts and a bunch of weddings, parties etc. And the heat, did I mention the heat?
Anyway, the wing parts came and there are pictures on my camera which I can’t find so perhaps they will come in a later post. Getting the old root rib out was not too hard except it was a two person job for the last couple of rivets. Once it was out, I drilled the new rib in the right place only to notice that the plans now call for A6 rivets and Zenith hadn’t sent me any of those. Short delay while they put a handful in the mail.
These A6 rivets are pretty meaty, and they turned out to be too meaty for my rivet gun which broke the mandrel too early in the pulling process and I ended up with the situation in this picture.
The rivet gun was toast (and useless anyway) so I ordered a new one from Zenith, it came last week and I was able to put the second A6 rivet in no trouble at all. But I still can’t get the other one out. It is possible that I don’t need to as looking at the other side it is pretty tight.
It is the top rivet of the two. And I know it is hard to see, had to use the camera on my pos Droid Incredible (that’s a rant for another blog).
There was still one thing to do before the bottom skin is ready to rivet, and that is to assemble the Front Strut Fitting. First off, I used the pre-drilled holes in the bottom skin and rib to locate, and drill, pilot holes in the Strut Angle.
After enlarging the holes to their final size I clamped the Front Strut Fitting Doubler to the Front Strut and drilled pilot holes through the pre-drilled holes. My really long drill bit was great for this.
I removed the angle and the doubler so that I could enlarge the holes and rivet them together before putting the whole thing back on the skin.
It was somewhere in this process that I realised I have drilled the holes in the nose skin over the ribs too large, I made them A5 rather than A4. No biggie, but annoying to make any mistake.
So, once I get that rivet sorted out one way or another, I can rivet the bottom skin, nose skin and trailing edge to the skeleton and flip her over to work on the other side. Still hopeful I can finish the wing before the summer is over.