Initial Wing Fitting

The day for the wing fitting finally arrived!  Dad and I reorganized the garage and maneuvered the fuselage around to the middle to give enough room to put both wings on at the same time.  We strategically placed a few storage bins and blankets underneath each wing and tail to help take some of the weight while we were trying to insert them into the fuselage.

Before we worked on inserting the wing spars to the spar carry through we did our best to level the fuselage.  I was a little nervous about how the wing spar would fit into the fuselage.  There have been a lot of stories online of people who didn't quite get the space correct for the spar carry through area and had to do a lot of unriveting in order to get the spars in.  I was extremely happy to find that the spars slid right in with very little coaxing!  Dad lifted and wiggled the ends of the wings while I guided the spars into position and inserted the temporary bolts.  The rear spar attach gave us a little trouble at first, but we found that we just had to get the fore/aft angle of the wing right to get the rear spar to slide into place.

With the wings in place, the next step was to take a number of measurements to ensure that the positions were equal and within spec.  We measured from the wingtip to the center of the tail - the initial measurement was about 3/16" different from side to side.  A few small taps of the wingtip moved the left wing back enough that the measurements between both sides were almost dead on.  If I remember right, the final difference was less than 1/16".

I don't have a picture of it, but the next job was to check the forward sweep of the wings.  We dropped a plumb bob down from the leading edge at each wingtip and pull a string line between them.  Then we moved each plumb bob to the inside leading edge to see where they landed on the string line.  There was a difference of about 1/4" on the left and a little less than that on the right.  A little tweaking and we got the line to be right on.  With that done, we checked the wingtip to center tail measurement again to be sure it was still good, which it was.

I have to admit, it was pretty cool to finally see the plane with wings!

Surprise surprise, one more measurement!  Following the instructions, we created a block out of a piece of aluminum angle and added some wood and tape to it until we hit the exact size called for.  Then we placed that block on the rear spar line and put a level between it and the front spar.  It needs to be level, and it was right on the money.

With all of the measurements accounted for, it was time to drill the rear spar attach point to lock everything in place.  The edge distance on this part is very tight - to allow for the correct edge distance there is really only one center point that will work.  I used a block of wood as a drill guide to ensure I got the hole perpendicular.

Next up was the front fuel tank attach brackets.  We bent the brackets a couple of degrees (easier said than done) so they would match the angle of the fuselage and still set against the fuel tank bracket.  Similar to the rear spar, these brackets have a pretty small window for edge distance. I drew a little box that gave me the 1/2" edge distance and drilled the bolt hole.

I completely neglected to get pictures of the next couple of tasks, mostly because I was laying on my back under the wings to fit and drill the wing root fairings.  After that, with Perry's help we started fitting the flaps.  We put the flaps on and eyeballed where the pushrod would go through the fuselage to the flap control arm.  I can't say that I loved drilling a big hole in a perfectly good fuselage!  I got the final oblong hole where it seemed correct, even though we didn't set the final length of the pushrods.  I'm waiting on some replacement pushrod bearings before I do that.  I don't love Van's design that doesn't allow for a way to trap the bearing if it were to ever fail.  I ordered some normal pushrod bearings and bolts, and I'll set the flap movement down the road when I final install the wings and control surfaces.