Over the last few days I've finished up the initial pile of nutplates on both spars. There wasn't much to describe with that since it was the same day by day. I hit a stalling point yesterday because the next thing to do was to start working on some access plates, which were buried somewhere in the big crate under the wing cradle I got from someone last summer. In order to get moving with the wing build, I really needed to tackle that crate. Eventually I'll clean out that entire garage bay and move my car there so I have the open stall next to my "shop." For now, I have to juggle things back and forth though.
So today I spent most of the day pulling parts out of the crate, getting rid of packing paper, organizing things, building a new wing cradle, etc.
The first thing I noticed when going through parts was that the ID on the wing spars doesn't match the ID on the center section (the portion that the spar is sandwiched between when going through the fuselage. The spar is 1935, whereas the center section is 1943. I believe these pieces get match drilled at the factory to make sure they line up correctly, so I'm checking with Van's to see if this is a problem. It's possible I'm just misinterpreting things.
There are a few things that the original purchaser of the kit bought that I probably won't use, so I'll either sell or give them away to another builder. The glass panels these days can be set up with AOA systems, so there's not much of a reason to install an old school stall warning vein.
I jumped in and started wading through paper in the big crate. Virtually every part is either taped up or wrapped in paper, so I learned very quickly to shake out every single piece of paper after I almost threw away some small parts with what I thought were just wads of paper. I sorted out the small parts (pretty much anything that wasn't a skin) and put those all together to make it a little easier to find things as I build. I ran into a problem with the skins though. I was thinking I could just put them underneath my benches like I did with the skins of the tail feathers, but the wing skins are way too long for that. So I need a place to store the skins, as well as to store the wings once they are finished.
I had originally planned on using the wing cradle I got from an RV4 builder this past summer, but after looking at the plans, it won't work very well as-is. The wing is apparently shorter and fatter on the 4, so the cradle would take a significant amount of rework to fit the RV9 wing. Instead of doing that, I decided to just use the crate that the wing came in. It's close to the right length and would be able to double as storage in the meantime.
I broke down the wing cradle to use some of the wood and wheels from it. The big wing crate already had a couple of 2x4s stapled to the bottom, so I attached the wheels to them. This isn't as stable as putting the wheels at the end, but I think it'll work okay. If it ends up being too unstable I'll move them to the ends of the crate.
I took the plywood top of the crate, cut it up, and doubled it up for the ends. The 2x4s attached to them were already stapled to the plywood, so I just left them in place and used them to stabilize everything. I used a leading edge rib as a template and cut out a pattern on one end (I trimmed these a little bigger than needed and will line them with carpet). The spar itself will rest on the other end, so it doesn't need the same treatment. All of the skins and parts have plenty of room in the crate still. Even when the wings are in the cradle, I think there will still be room to store parts. That'll be needed once I receive the fuselage kit and have to consolidate space again.
The crate, and now wing cradle, went right back to the same place it was before. It's still taking up the same space as it was before, but now I have access to the parts I need and the old cradle is out of the way. Tomorrow I may actually be able to get some real work done.
