Finish Kit Update October 2010 Updates
October 30, 2010
Wings Day is Finally Here!..... - 12.0 hrs

Well its finally time for the wings. Got to the airport at 7am and started getting things ready to take the fuse over to Kerby's hangar. Kerby has a hangar just down the taxiway from me and offered to let me use it for the weekend to do the install. Last night Kerby pushed his Swift back in the corner to give me room up front and Harley Dave helped me transport the wings to Kerbys. We left the wings laying on 2 tables on the appropriate sides.

Once I got the engine cowled up I hooked up the towbar and pulled it down to Kerby's. We pushed in in place and I pulled my tool cart down there and some chairs and the usual beer chest. We had two type of folks on hand. We had the technical specialists Jim Kiloh a 7A builder and pilot and Jon Baker a 6A builder and pilot and a 4 and Kitfox builder. Then we had our heavy lifters, Harley Dave, Joe Gillen, Jim Carlile and a few other drop by folks occasionally.

We started by stabbin the first wing and using Jim's old temp bolts. Once we got both wings on we dropped plumb bobs from the front edge of the wing at the tip and the root at the first rivet line at the fuselage. We strung a sting on the plumb bob line and then used the 3inch block method to check for incidence. Once we got the wings on we also found the rear spar tab had to be trimmed so this took several attempts before we got to the measurements from the wing tips to the rear of the fuselage. Also had to drill the bottom skin to accept the nutplate screws.

On the final time when both wings fit perfect I drilled the magic hole with a #30 and then 5/16th. We removed one last time to debur the holes and dimple the bottom fuse skin. Touch up primer on the rear spar parts from all the trim work then it was time for the final install. Again this took much longer than I thought because of some issues with wire and pitot plumbing but finall got both wings in place and the rear spar bolt installed.

Then the hard part started. The dreaded close tollerance bolts. The real issue is the bottom bolts. This issue alone makes you want to build a tail dragger because the way the gear weldment is setup you cannot get a wrence in place and there is just no room to work a wratchet between the floor spars. Poor Jim worked like hell on the right side and we finally just had to call it a night.

I want to thank all my team for the help. Tech team and heavy lifters :) Great fun!

This website was built to document my work in compliance with the FAA requirements needed to certify my aircraft.
My experiences and comments are by no means to be considered as instructions on how to build any aircraft.