More from the Mainspar (Jan. 26th, 2004)

Today I installed this mainspar stiffener angle (SNX-W11-08).

Because there were no special installation instructions in the plans I positioned it flush with the sparcap. Then I tightly clamped the angle in place, turned the spar around and drilled it from the other side - I better would have not! All the rivet holes are too close to the inner radius of the angle. Sooo another piece for the scrap pile (and three hours gone).

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Mainspar (Jan. 25th, 2004)

The fuselage cell is complete - so far. All the nitty gritty details like control linkage, gear legs, seat cushions etc. have to wait. Next is completion of the wings. You may ask why that? - because I have to stress-test the construction. If this fails, then it makes no sense to put more work and mony in. For this purpose I have to turn the fuselage upside down, fit wings and tail and then put two tons of cement bags on. Gearlegs and averyting which could fall around would only disturb the procedure.

This small benchtop drillpress is much more convenient for drilling the hundrets of bolt and rivet holes. The handheld airdrill is unsuitable for this job, because the holes should be truely perpendicular. This is the part my life will depend on, so no sloppy work allowed here (and nowhere else too)!

Fitting this type of angles (wing root attach angles) caused me some grief. The complete 'sandwich' of several sheets and plates and one forward angle and one aft angle stack up to about 16mm of thickness altogether - way to much to clamp them together with clecos. Good alignment however is essential to make these 'tight fit' boltholes. Tomorrow I'll buy some cheap M4 bolts. These may fit the AD-5 boltholes nicely (I hope), so I can bolt the gadget together temporarily with this M4's.