There will be a blog post about this later but last weekend Teri and I visited Wayne and his wife in Osoyoos, Canada to see his 750 build and to enjoy their hospitality and the great scenery in the area. Anyway, more of that later…. but the trip did inspire me to want to get the flaperons joined.
An unseasonably cool September weekend allowed me to spend a little time in the hangar. Yesterday I was able to vinyl wrap one of the two remaining wing struts. Unfortunately I’m out of white vinyl so have had to order some more. And today, almost 5 years to the very day that the flaperons were put aside, I got them off the wall to join them together and attach them to the wings.
First up I drilled 3/16″ holes in all the attach brackets on the flaperons, and enlarged the flaperon arms holes to 1/4″ (there’s a bushing that goes inside).
Next I attached the splice plate to the outboard flaperons. Note that in this picture I drew and drilled a nice rivet line only for it to be in no mans land, hence the extra hole.
The plans call for the inboard flaperon to be offset 15-17mm at the tip from the outboard. To do this I trial fit with duct tape the splice against the outboard one until I got within tolerances.
Once I had the position marked I cut the inboard splice to size and riveted in place.
With that done I trial installed them onto the flaperon arms. With just one person it was hard to hold them up and get all the bushings and washers in place so I settled with enough hardware to keep them in place. Of course without being secured to the control arm, they just fall straight and dangle. So for this picture I had to hold them up.
For Wayne’s install, he had to enlarge the control rod hole for better travel so I took a couple of pictures of where mine will be located. Here is at the full up position
and full down
I’d say I may have to do the same. Here’s a closeup of the splice.
I then repeated the same exercise for the pilot side wing
and again with the control arm at the very top
and at the bottom
Probably needs a little less widening but likely still some.
Finally here is a long shot with both flaps hanging down from the arms.
It took 3.5 hours to do but I’m pretty excited that I could do it, and I’m pretty sure that without being able to study what Wayne has done I’d still be scratching my head. I picked up quite a few tips and suggestions from my trip up north, but more about that soon.