Finished Ailerons

A productive weekend leaves me feeling good again.
- Finished the ailerons
- Ran Conduit in the wings
- Finshed the Flap Gap Fairings
- Hung the wing skins in place
- Started the Flaps section

It felt good to finish up another section of the plans and to do it so quickly when compared to the tanks. The Flap Fairings have been patiently waiting to be completed for a while and I crossed those off the to-do list. Conduit needed to be ran and I finished that as well. I cut the little tabs off the 22(?) flap ribs, sanded and deburred them as well, while grilling outside. I hung the skins in place, placed the ribs back on the shelf, then cleaned the shop and put my tools away to be prepped and ready to start the next section after Memorial Day weekend.

Friday May 17 - 1.25hrs - Riveting Ailerons
Saturday May 18 - 4.25hrs
             2.0hrs - Riveting Ailerons, proseal trailing edges
             2.25hrs - Run Conduit
Sunday May 19 - 3.25hrs
             1.75hrs - Finished Ailerons
             0.75hrs - Finished Flap Gap Fairings
             0.75hrs - Cut Flap Ribs

Finished Ailerons Total Time = 25.5hrs

I was able to use the squeezer for all but the last rivet and instead of fighting to get a solid rivet installed there (and possibly bending the edge of the aileron) I just popped a blind in and moved on. I used an MK-319 rivet instead of the the AD3 rivet that is called out. The blind rivet is weaker than the solid, but in this case the material will fail long before either rivet would, so it doesn't matter.

I used an extension on the unibit to drill through the wing walk ribs. I then sanded the holes down with a dremel to clean up the hole.

I ran all the conduit through the wings. I just enlarged the standard hole that you create in the plans. Somewhere Van's aircraft has posted that enlarging this hole to 3/4" is acceptable to run their conduit through the wings. I still went with their conduit even though the corrugated edges make it difficult to pull through the holes and I've heard it's difficult to pull wires through, for three reasons:

1. It sretches, help during flexing of the wings.

2. It's made of Nylon which has a temperature range of -40 to 185 degrees F.

3. It's cheap.

 

 



A look at the finished ailerons.

Wing bottom skins hung in place.

 

Aileron Work

After completing many small little jobs around the house, including the garden (yay!), and spending a great deal of time trying to diagnose the problem with the car.....well, long story short, I went to buy the parts on Friday and they are not in stock (every project I do I have to order something; why is that?). Parts on order allowed me to get a little work done on the ailerons.

It's been easy work these last few days, nothing frustrating. I didn't build a stand for the ailerons as I never saw a need. It was simple enough to work on my flat table top. I did screw up on cutting the extruded trailing edge to the correct lengh. It still boggles my mind how I could have messed that up since I marked the parts when they were clecoed together. But, it's still long enough to be used on the flaps so I just swapped the parts out and continued on.

Saturday May 11 - 3.75hrs - deburring, dimpling, countersinking
Sunday May 12 - 3.0hrs - riveting
Tuesday May 14 - 1.5hrs - riveting

Total Aileron Hours = 20.5

Nice and straight.

 

 

I also had a chance to fly my friend's new-to-them 1963 C182 that is in mint condition! A beautiful vintage airplane.

 

 

Finished the garden. 8'x4' bed built from cedar. Includes, but not limited to: tomatoes, squash, zucchini, onions, strawberries, peas, beans, jalapeno, peppers. My next "other" project is going to be building a small, automated irrigation system.

Started Ailerons

I started building the Ailerons this past weekend. I stayed dry in the shop as it rained almost the entire weekend. I small break in the weather on Saturday night allowed me to sit outside and cut all the small stiffening angles while smoking a large slab of beef on the grill. A nice evening out on the back back patio, propping my feet up, cutting the 32 small angles out, and throwing extra wood on the fire to keep the smoke rolling....as if building an airplane wasn't enjoyable already.

The ailerons are a welcome change from the drudgery of the fuel tanks. Cleco, drill, deburr, rivet...no mess. It's nice. The ailerons require an extra check here and there to be sure the correct parts are in there correct places. The skins aren't exactly the same and you need to be sure you're using the correct side up, etc. I clearly marked the skins and all the parts to reduce the confusion. When I first clecoed all the parts together, as the instructions state, on a flat table, the aileron was out of alignment, kinda wavy. I set that one aside and worked on the second. This time I clecoed the trailing edge first and then the nose skin and everything lined up perfectly. Sometimes the methodology in the instructions are not the best. I disassembled the first aileron and re-clecoed in the same manner and it completely straightened out. Drilled both parts and called it a night.

Saturday 4.5hrs
Sunday 4.5hrs
Monday 1.25hrs
All hours to ailerons.

Placing the stainless steel tube counterweight into the leading edge of the ailerons.

Wrapping the leading edge skin around the assembly was somewhat difficult work. A little grunting and a shove got the holes lined up.

My deburr helper, until....

 

 

....deburr helper number two got fussy!

Backriveting the stiffening angles onto the aileron skins.

Visiting Daddy in the shop to check on the progress of her airplane.

Ailerons clecoed and drilled. Ready for deburr and dimpling.