Well the right tank construction finished on Feb 21, and the access cover was installed on April 17. But the repair made this weekend worked like a charm, the tank leak check device (balloon) was fully inflated and the tank acting as a barometer. Woo Hoo!
For what it's worth, I used no proseal on the cork gasket on this tank, just gooped up the head of the screws and installed them. Works fine.
I will have to remove the access cover from the other tank to resolve the BNC connector leak. Fixing the leak should be easy (lot's of proseal easily reached). But I did use proseal on the left tank gasket, and removing the cover and scraping the gasket and proseal off is going to be a major pain-in-the-butt.
Enough tank talk. Finished edge deburring all the flap ribs. Next up are the skins, and then fabricating the attach angles ( that I messed up on try #1).
And finally, checked the proseal on the aileron trailing edges. Decided it was set up well enough. So carefully removed the clecoes and the weights, and gingerly started riveting. I don't think I could pry the trailing edge apart if I wanted too, without the rivets. The aileron looks quite servicable, not perfect. But its flat and it will work. I've decided that perfect is for the people who already have two built, and at least one flying.
Decided to go with -3.5 rivets for the trailing edge. The plans call out -3's. Maybe this means I did something wrong, but the 3's were just too short. Just for grins I just looked up the rivets on the empenage plans. Sure enough, 3.5's. I think the wing plans are wrong. In fact, I think I'll email Van's right now.
