10/18/2005
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I made an aileron alignment tool out of some Douglas Fir I had in my scrap pile of lumber. I drew a line down the center and drilled the holes to match the tooling holes and then bolted it to the outside rib. I put in the alignment jig onto the bellcrank and then adjusted the aileron pushrod until the aileron and centerline on the alignment tool were on top of each other.

I then installed the flap. I set the gap between the aileron and flap at exactly 1/4" as per the plans. I also aligned it to be even with the trailing edge of the aileron and then clamped it into place. I used clecos at about every 6 or so holes to hold the skin into position but the clecos interfered with the hinge. I drilled the one one the end next to the aileron even though the nearest cleco bent the hing down somewhat. Then I installed a cleco all the way through and moved on to the next hole. I remove the clecos that were interfering when I had worked my way to about 4 holes away. I was able to keep the same gap between the flap and skin all the way to the end.

Another thing that turned out well (by pure chance) is that the trailing edge radius seems to be exactly the same for both ailerons and flaps.

I then took down all of the plastic walls that made up my shop. It is still kind of warm (upper 80's) but I really need the space. I decided not to try to dimple the bottom skins on anything but my work table so I had to move the wing back to the stand. Since it was really getting cramped, I moved the stand out into the garage and Christine and I moved the wing to it.

Then I started deburring the bottom inside skin. I started to peel some of the plastic off of it and noticed that it was getting hard to do so. I think maybe now is a good time to remove all of the plastic since Vans says that the stuff will stick harder as time passes. I managed to finish not even the holes but the edges as well. I dimpled all of the holes I could reach with my pneumatic squeezer.

email: Luis Luciani  Next | Prev | Index | Home