Last night spent 1 hour with left HS pre-assembly. Got the nose ribs in and the front spar. I was reading on some of the other builder's pages how they had to do a lot of fluting on the nose ribs to get them to work right. Jim Andrews mentions that the new kits come with nose ribs with narrower nose. I can confirm that mine measure about 1 inch. I had to do nothing to get them to fit right. Getting them clecoed in is still a bit of a challenge, but I can imagine it was a major chore when they didn't fit right.

Close up of HS nose rib fit.

I figured out that the HS jig makes a handy way to clamp the skin so that the nose ribs fit. I think I even avoided any dents in the process. There's a couple of minor dings in the right HS from fitting the first nose rib.

As I was putting in the next to last cleco on the front spar, the lights flicker and I hear a couple of pops out in the distance (it was a beautiful evening to work with the garage doors open). Then the lights go out and I hear high voltage arcing from the same location. They came on for a half second shortly after. You could see all of the neighbors houses power up also. But the surge of all those loads at the same time was too much and the breakers tripped for good. Had to finish the last two clecoes with flashlight, and that made a convienent stopping point. The power stayed off for a couple of hours. The entire section of Lakeway was down. The stars were fantastic! Like they used to be when we moved in.