Ailerons

The shop is a bit of a mess at the moment.  I moved the left wing off of the stands and onto the storage cart, and moved the right wing spar to the workbench.  Yesterday I drilled out the rear  spar/rib rivets on the right wing in preparation for getting the new rear spar this weekend.  Removing the old spar was a non-event and didn't take long at all.  As soon as I have the new rear spar riveted onto the right wing, I'll get the wing mounted on the stands so I have my table space back.

I started on the ailerons today.  I decided to build both the right and left at the same time just for efficiency.  I still need to go to the store and get some thick MDF to create a super flat surface to build the ailerons and flaps, but it was nice to get rolling on something different than plain old ribs and skins for a while.  First I put the end ribs (that attach to the counterbalance tube) and doublers in place on each end of the spar and match drilled them.

The next step took a little head scratching to figure out what the instructions meant (the instructions are getting less and less detailed now, just assuming you'll be able to follow the drawings at this point).  Basically, in order to drill the counterbalance tubes to the end ribs, you have to ensure that the end ribs are held in the correct lateral position.  This is done by flipping the leading edge skin over and clecoing it to the bottom of the ribs and spar.  Easy enough to do, but it just wasn't obvious what to do based on the instructions.  Next up will be drilling the counterbalance tubes and starting the skins and stiffeners.