Van's RV-9A in Aurora

The Big Picture

The Big Picture
Flying! 8/28/2011

Sunday, November 9, 2008

5.5 hrs
Started this morning by stripping the inner plastic from the tank skin and clecoing the ribs in place. Granger helped with this, it's definitely a two person job.

Couldn't resist placing the tank skin on the spar for a photo op!


After a bike ride, used the belt sander to final shape all of the tank stiffeners. Then edge deburred all of them on the scotchbrite wheel.


Then clecoed the stiffeners to tank and match drilled. I had just ordered a 100 clecoes, but now I'm down to the last few. They're all in use, and I'll have to scavenge some from the preassembled wing to finish the tank. I think I have 500. I might just get by with the extras that the Gunny gave to me.



Next, went to work on the tank attach brackets. Found the drill guides that came with the kit, so the time spent yesterday carefully making one was mostly wasted. Mostly, except for gaining a good understanding of the geometry.


Spent some time getting the drill press setup to drill the first holes in the tank brackets. Was able to accurately drill to within a 200th or so, I think. I had it set up so that the drill guide was not even necessary, but ended up using it as a check for all but the last two brackets. Only used one of the drill guides. BTW, I don't think the DGs are perfect. They are accurate from one set of edges, but not necessarily perfectly centered. Be sure to measure carefully and decide which two edges to use as a reference, and mark them.



Then deburred the holes. Next up was marking the center lines on the brackets. I puzzled about the best way to do this. Ended up making a set of shims from the material in the trim bundle. That along with leftover bar from the very first empennage angle cut, gave the perfect depth to nest two tank brackets so that the edge of one was exactly the right place to mark the center line with a sharpie.