1.5 Hours -
The tie-down bracket parts have been sitting in the garage on a piece of cardboard since I primed them almost a week ago. Tonight, I finally had time to get some airplane work done, and, thanks to hurricane Alex, the garage was a chilly 80 degrees!
The first step was to rivet the tie-down brackets together. Each tie-down consists of a bracket, two spacers, and two platenuts. All of these are held together using a few AN426AD3-7 rivets.
Forward view of the finished tie-down assembly.
Aft view of the finished tie-down assembly. Um...what happened to my lightening hole on the left?
Once the assemblies were riveted together, it was time to see if everything still fit the spar correctly. For some reason, I’m still surprised when everything goes back together the way it was supposed to. I was even more surprised this time, since the tie-downs are almost completely fabricated from scratch.
Finally, I bolted the tie-downs to the main spars. Each tie-down bracket is held in place by 8 bolts. The bolts on the top and bottom only hold the tie-down to the spar, while the middle 4 bolts also attach the W-823PP bellcrank brackets to aft side of the spars.
The tie-downs are now bolted to the spar.
The bolts for the tie-down also attach the bellcrank brackets.
Once all the bolts were tightened up, I torqued them appropriately and applied some torque seal to remind myself that they are done. Next up…the rear spars.
Torqued and torque sealed!
#1 by Andrew on July 5, 2010 - 09:50
Hey Ethan.
I’ve been watching your progress closely…my wing kit arrives in August.
I thought I read somewhere that the bellcrank brackets have to come off at some point so you can actually get the bolt through the two holes. Is that true? Maybe that’s only if you get the skins on before final bellcrank bolt installation.
#2 by Ethan Jacoby on July 5, 2010 - 10:34
Hi Andrew,
Your question is a good one, and I can only tell you that I’m not sure of the correct answer. I’ve seen build sites, where the bellcrank brackets had to be removed and others where they managed to leave them in. I decided just to put them in since taking them back out, if necessary, won’t be a huge issue. The only problem I can see is if there is some interference with the skin due to the length of the bolt. However, it seems strange to me that this would be a problem since, once flying, you would want to be able to service the bellcranks without having to remove a skin. Anyway, only one way to find out for sure…build on!
Have fun with your wing kit. I miss the detailed instructions that the tail had…I find myself staring at the wing plans, with a dumb look on my face, much more than I did when I was working on the emp.
Ethan
#3 by Andrew on July 5, 2010 - 09:54
Here’s another comment, just so I can click the “Notify me of new posts via email” checkbox.
Thanks for the nice site, Ethan.