Van's RV-9A in Aurora

The Big Picture

The Big Picture
Flying! 8/28/2011

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

3.0 hrs
Took a long time to get the leading edge fit to the spar properly. The first task was to finish triming the #3 rib to clear the spar rivets. This went pretty fast.
Started clecoing the ribs down and the bottom of the leading edge skin. This all went without a hitch. But the top skin was OK at the tip, but off by half a rivet, leaving a gap between the skins, at the inboard end.

Took it off and fussed with it a while. Had to reset the inboard rib, since it wasn't as completely set into the skin as the others. All that didn't really fix the problem. Ended up setting the assembly in place, and tilting the nose toward me while standing on the top side of the wing.


Then I was able to get clecos in to the skin-spar joint. This left the back with a gap, but this was easy to leverage into place. I think what gave is the spar flanges on the top side of the spar. They compressed a little with this operation, but I was able to cleco them flat.
Then finally able to cleco it all together (after getting mostly done with the clecos, and having to remove them all about 4 times).



Then it was on to the inboard rib and 919 doubler strip. Fabbed the strip from the supplied .032 material. Deburred it, marked the line for the rivet holes, and pre-bent using a dowel and the table saw fence rails. Had to trim about a 32nd off of the rib web to clear the spar doubler, otherwise there was no room to get the doubler and the rib into the skin.
Then the rib and doubler fit in, nice and snug, requiring a few taps from the rubber hammer to set properly.