I had set myself the goal of having the wings attached by the end of this Christmas break and fortunately my wife’s Uncle Allen was available for a few mornings to help. His experience and wisdom in all things construction are an absolute blessing in my endeavours.
Before the wings can go on, we need to prepare the struts that will hold these things on (we hope). But first, my wife gave me these Tibetan prayer flags to put in the hangar, blessed by genuine monks.
Ok, there are four struts, a front and a rear on both sides. Each strut has a fitting on each end that attaches to the fuselage or the wing. The fittings bolt into the strut to give us the magic of the wings staying on. The top fittings get drilled after the wings have been set because we don’t know yet where they go inside the strut, but the bottom fittings can (must!) be installed now.
First up, locate the hole position in each fitting and drill out to the AN6 bolt hole they require (3/8″ for those of you not familiar!).
Next, locate the position of the fittings inside the struts and mark and drill some pilot holes for the bolt holes.
It was at this point we decided I needed a drill press so a quick internet search revealed a reasonably priced one at Harbor Freight which I went and fetched. In order to get the bolt locations straight through, you need to have the strut level, and the fitting level. So we came up with this scientific contraption.
It is available to rent for other home builders 🙂
It is important to note that the rear fittings take a smaller bolt than the front ones so don’t get carried away with the drilling. Many holes later I had a set of lower fittings installed into their struts.
If you look closely you can see a washer under the bolt head for the rear fittings. When the bolt was installed we decided there were too many threads showing, so with the FAA’s blessing we put a washer under the head to make sure the thread was fully engaged on the strut.
Here’s the back side.
To round out our day, Allen went above and beyond to get all of the strut attach places on the wing drilled out for the AN6 bolt. Here are a couple of the biggies
In scouring the plans for the location of that hole I noticed that there is supposed to be an A5 rivet on those two items. So Allen was kind enough to put a number 20 hole in there for me to rivet it later. I looked later through the photo guide and sure enough it was in there, don’t know how I missed it.
Here’s the front wing attach bolt hole (which had to be drilled from underneath – don’t tell Cal OSHA)
After he left Teri and I set to tidying up the hangar and making space to get the wings up and installed. As part of this I realised that some rivet holes on the fuselage that I had been holding off on (for no idea why) would be inaccessible with the wing on so I riveted them.
But I couldn’t bring myself to do the end two so at some point the wing will have to come off again, and I’m sure it was going to have to anyway.
Finally we moved things around the hangar to give space for the wings and space to get at them. As part of this we noticed that the plane wasn’t in the middle of the hangar so we moved it a few feet over as well. Now it sits there waiting for wings.
