1.8 Hours -
I started the morning by working on my leading edge/fuel tank cradle. Making the cutouts with my band saw was relatively simple, as was assembling the pieces, but I still hate working with wood! To pad the stand, I used some foam pipe insulation. Unfortunately, I may need to redo this. Even though the foam is thin, it may be too thick for the stand. At least it will be a simple fix to either replace the foam with a thinner material or remove the foam, expand the cutouts, and replace the foam. I’m just going to set it aside for now.
The leading edge cradle parts are ready for assembly.
I went a little overboard padding the cradle. I may have to use thinner padding or make the cutouts a bit larger.
Next, I removed the aft spar from the left wing and deburred the holes that are used for attaching the ribs.
Finally, I removed several ribs from the left wing so that I could drill holes in them for routing the pitot and AOA tubing. I’m not exactly sure where I’m going to place my pitot tube, so I drilled holes in all the ribs starting with the root rib and ending with the first rib outboard the tie-down bracket (I’m using the Dynon pitot/AOA with Safeair1 tubing. Right now, I think I’ll place the pitot tube near the stock location, but this could change.). For the tubing holes, I simply expanded the top and bottom tooling holes on the forward portion of the rib. My step drill made quick work of expanding the holes to the necessary 3/8” that will allow the snap bushings to fit.
I enlarged the tooling holes in ribs to 3/8" for the pitot/AOA tubing. The rib on the left is drilled, the one on the right is not.
I also spent a little time trying to clean and re-organize the garage. The 15 foot box that the spars came in was really starting to get in my way, so I finally found storage places for the longerons and other angle pieces that were still in the box. With the parts out of the way, I was able to break down the box (there’s a lot of staples holding the boxes together). I kept the long planks that made-up the sides of the box, but at least I no longer have to step over the box to get to my workbench. Hopefully, I’ll be able to cannibalize the planks when it comes time to store the wings in a rolling cradle.
I finally broke down the spar box in order to make some room in the garage.
