First things first tonight - finish the leading edge skins. The last piece of the outboard leading edge is to point a joint plate and end rib at the inboard end of the skin. This rib has no holes in it (no idea why - probably have to leave a few holes out to hit the 51% rule I guess), so has to be drilled in assembly. As if getting ribs in place on their own wasn't hard enough, this rib not only gets slid into the skin, but also has another strip of aluminum that sandwiches in between it and the skin.
I used a rib as a template and attempted to pre-bend the joint plate at a reasonably close spot so I could then mark it and cut it to length before attempting to slide it into place. In order to get it slid into the skin the correct amount, I also marked a line down the length of it where the skin holes should end up.
While it was indeed tight, it actually ended up being a little easier than I thought it would be. I clecoed the rear flange of the rib to the spar and slid just the bottom end of the joint plate into position. There was no way I was going to "just slide it over the leading edge" of the nose rib without some persuasion from a rubber mallet, so I got things lined up as best as I could at the bottom and drilled one hole to put a cleco in and hold it in place while I wrestled the rest into position. About a thousand taps later, I had the rib where it needed to be (even with the skin edge) and also had the joint plate in place. I drilled all of the holes and clecoed it all together. After that, I still needed to ream all of the leading edge skin holes to the proper size, so I did that and officially finished that portion of the wing. Well, sort of. I still have to figure out what I'm going to do about the holes and access panel that are in the skin for the stall warning horn. It sounds like the newest kits don't typically include these cutouts since the glass panel systems these days all come with AOA capability. I may just button up the access panel and fill the holes. A decision for another day though.
And with that, it's time for another leading edge fight, this time with the fuel tank. I figured I might as well try Van's technique again. I mean, you would think they've figured out the easiest method for all of this. That would be a big fat "no." I put the skin in the cradle and inserted the ribs. Of course one side is very easy to get into position, which gave me a false sense of how this was going to end up. When I moved to the other side, it became apparent immediately that this was going to be even worse than the outboard leading edge skins. I am out of energy for today, so I just hung it up for the night. I'll put together a better system another night. I think the ratchet strap setup is the way to go as long as I can spread the pressure from the strap out along all of the ribs to keep any from bowing.
