Mar 11, 2023     Leading edge part 7? Sure, why not. - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

Sanded the filler from last time I worked on the wing.

Sanded, sanded, sanded. Then mixed up some filler and put it in a few of the remaining low spots.

  Mar 05, 2023     Leading Edge part 6 - (2 hours) Category: Wings

Sanded. Sanded. And sanded some more. Got the leading edge to final shape.

Mixed up some filler for some low spots in the skin.

  Feb 19, 2023     Leading Edge part 5 - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Removed straps from leading edge.

Planed leading edge to approximate shape.
Started sanding leading edge to proper shape.

  Feb 12, 2023     Leading Edge part 4 - (.5 hour)       Category: Wings

Epoxied second layer of LE to tip. A lot of it will be planed away. All part of the fun.

  Feb 11, 2023     Leading edge part 3 - (1.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Not a lot to show, but enjoyed the morning of planing the first layer of leading edge to rough shape. Created a nice box of wood shavings that would make great fire starter. Offered the wood to a friend who enjoys campfires but she's too cool for a box of wood. Not too many people get offered genuine Dalotel materials. Her loss. ;-)

Epoxied the second layer of leading edge to the inboard section.

  Feb 05, 2023     Leading edge part 2 - (.5 hour)       Category: Wings

Trimmed first layer of outboard section of leading edge to rough fit. Epoxied and clamped into place.

  Feb 04, 2023     Leading edge - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Removed clamps and staples and such from last effort.

Prepared the front of the wing for leading edge. This meant planing and sanding the stringers and skins to sit flush.

Trimmed first layer of inboard section of leading edge to rough fit. Epoxied and clamped into place.

  Jan 08, 2023     wing tip and misc pieces part 2 - (1.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Removed clamps, staples, and screws from last work. Carved wingtip skin to rough shape and then sanded to near final shape.

Epoxied remaining skins (less final wheel well area) in place.

  Jan 07, 2023     Wing tip and misc pieces - (3 hours)       Category: Wings

Removed clamps from last work. Fitted wing tip skin. Epoxied into place. Clamped, screwed, and stapled to hold into place.

Cut out pieces for wheel well skins and door skins.

Removed stub rib in the wheel well. Exactly like the RH wing where I learnt that the stub rib needed to be set at an angle to clear the wheel, the landing gear, and support the gear door. Cleaned up that area for original stub rib to be epoxied in. Thank goodness for Dremel tools.

Added skin doubler for small section of skin outside wheel well.

  Jan 02, 2023     left wings skin part 7 - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Removed clamps and staples from previous section. Located and cut hole for pitot tube. Pitot tube is a 2-1/2 foot long tube that is welded to a mounting plate. About 6-8" of the tube protrudes out into the airflow under the wing. The rest of the tube runs inside the wing from the main spar to behind the rear spar. From there it is connected to a tube running parallel to the rear spar. It takes a little bit of convoluting and twisting to get the pitot tube in place with the back end through the slot in the rear spar.

Fitted the final outboard piece of underside skin. Cut it to clear the access panel for the outboard aileron mount.

  Dec 30, 2022     Left wings skin part 6 - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

Epoxied and clamped the outer skin in place.

  Dec 28, 2022     Left wings skin part 5 - (1 hour) Category: Wings

Removed clamps and staples from second skin section.

Cut, sanded, and epoxied doubler into place for next section of skin.

  Dec 18, 2022     Left wings skin part 4 - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

Moving to the second skin section. Fitted, and epoxied into place.

  Dec 11, 2022     Left wings skins part 3 - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

Removed staples and clamps from root skin.

Cut to size and prepped doubler to second section of skin.

Epoxied and clamped doubler into place.

  Dec 04, 2022     Left wing skins part 2 - (1.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Fitted first wing skin and cut out inboard aileron hinge access.

Spread epoxy over the entire inside skin and spread thickened epoxy over the ribs and spars. Once the skin is pressed onto the ribs and spars the epoxy forms a real nice bond.

Stapled and clamped skin to wing.

  Nov 13, 2022     Left wing skins - (2.5 hours)       Category: Wings

After a 4 month break, I started up on the wing again. I started out slow to re-familiarize myself with the project. This involved trimming the nose piece off the ribs to sit flush with the additional stringers I'd added. As a reminder, the original design had a 1 cm x 1 cm stringer running along the very front of the ribs. The wing skins a supposed to wrap around the leading edge, enclosing this stringer. I decided a simpler and stronger way to build the wing was to build the leading edge out of solid basswood carved to the leading edge shape. This simplifies construction immensely, and provides a stronger structure. I copied how the DR-107 (and possibly others) leading edge is built. After chopping the nose off of each rib, I trimmed and then sanded the rib flush to the new stringers.

I then proceeded to fit the wing skins. The root panel required locating and trimming for the access panel for the landing gear mechanism. The outer skins were rough cut to size and are ready for gluing when their time comes.

  Jul 19, 2022     Wing skins and Landing Gear door - (10 hours)       Category: Wings

It's been a month since I've updated my build log but I've nibbled at the project a bit over the month.

Got the RH wing fully sanded and ready for covering. Worked on the landing gear door. Stiffened the door by putting a frame around the perimeter and an inner skin on the frame.

Fabricated some brackets that the gear door links will mount to. These links will connect the gear door to the gear leg. When the gear retracts, the door will follow. Currently the brackets are only taped in place and drilled out to match a piece of clothes hanger wire. I've got a plan for those links but that's for another day, or month.

  Jun 05, 2022     Leading edge shaping part 2 - (3 hours)       Category: Wings

Did some more planing and eventually some initial sanding on the leading edge. Used a 3' long sanding block that I'd fabricated from a previous project. This provides a terrific ability to shape the leading edge into a continuous and smooth curve.

Epoxied the last small sheets into the missing spots on the underside of the wing.

  Jun 04, 2022     Leading edge shaping - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Started shaping the leading edge. Using the hand plane to turn solid wood into shavings is so satisfying. Leading edge is starting to take shape.

  Jun 01, 2022     Leading edge part 4 - (0.5 hour)       Category: Wings

Epoxied on front layer of inboard leading edge.

  May 30, 2022     Leading edge part 3 - (0.5 hour)       Category: Wings

Epoxied on front layer of outboard leading edge.

  May 29, 2022     Leading edge part 2 - (1.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Cleaned and mounted fixed point for brake line. Removed tarnish and 40 years of surface oxidation.

Epoxied leading edge to outer section of wing.

  May 27, 2022     Leading edge - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Did some more prep for epoxying the leading edge to the wing. Planed and sanded where necessary. Epoxied the first layer of leading edge on the inboard section.

  May 01, 2022     Filling and sanding - (1 hour) Category: Wings

Filled and sanded some low spots and remaining holes from the sheeting process.

  Apr 26, 2022     New (old) stub rib #3 - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

Cleaned up and sanded original stub rib #3 and epoxied it into place.

Applied micro balloon filler to the small gaps and cleco holes on skin joints and screw holes from tip skin.

  Apr 24, 2022     Wingtip sheeting and wheel well. - (3.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Removed staples, clamps, and screws from tip. Carved and sanded tip to shape. Final sanding to be done still.
Trimmed edges at outboard end of aileron bay to allow installation of aileron.
Lowered landing gear into wing to plan skinning for that area. Realized something that I'd feared for quite a while. The stub rib on station 3 wasn't in the right position. I had built it and glued it perpendicular to the front of the wing spar. Fortunately the original sections were still around and with the gear and skins in place, and comparing the gear door size and shape with a 5-view drawing of the plane, it was much more obvious how these pieces were originally installed. This is an example of where the plane was not built to the plans. So with the help of my dremel tool, I surgically removed the stub rib that I'd installed so long ago and prepped the area for the original piece.

  Apr 22, 2022     Tip sheet on RH underside - (2.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Removed clamps, clecos, and staples from third sheet. Gave the skin a brief sanding to remove some of the epoxy that had dripped or squeezed through some of the clamped or clecoed areas.
Cut away the rib noses. Since I'd changed the design to have a solid leading edge compared to the much more challenging sheeted leading edge, the rib noses are not required. Additionally, I trimmed the skins back to flush with the stringers that the leading edge will be glued to.
Trimmed a sheet of 1/16" mahogany ply for the tip. Cut a slot for the steel bar that's been used as the outboard end of the rotisserie. The original may not have had the slot, but the rotisserie is so useful I'm going to keep that capability until after covered and painted. I'll have to apply a small fabric patch once completed but that's fine.
Epoxied in some doublers for the access panels and epoxied the tip sheet into place. Used coarse wood screws to hold the skin to the tip bow until the epoxy cures.

  Apr 20, 2022     Third sheet on RH underside - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Removed clamp, staples, and clecos from second sheet.
Did final trimming of third sheet including cutting access hole for outboard aileron hinge pin. Epoxied third sheet and secured it as per previous two sheets.

  Apr 19, 2022     Second sheet on RH underside - (1.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Prepped and epoxied second sheet to underside of RH wing. Used clecos to clamp the sheet to the doubler that had been epoxied to the first sheet. Most of the clecos will be reusable after removal. The thickened epoxy might ruin a few of them. A few clecos sacrificed for the good of the wing skins is worth it.

  Apr 16, 2022     First sheet on RH underside - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Installed a conduit from root rib to wing mounted retract gearbox. This conduit will carry the wires to the limit switches that mount on the backside of the gearbox.

Epoxied first sheet of ply to underside.

  Apr 12, 2022     Underside skins - (1.5 hours)       Category: Wings

With the RH wing in the rotisserie, I was able to lay out the underside skins and do the rough cut for the outline of the skins. This helps establish actual layout and positioning of the skins. Unlike the upper surfaces where I scarfed the skin joints, I'm going to join the underside skins with a butt joint and a doubler. This will simplify construction and will add very little to the overall weight.

Installed aileron to locate edges around aileron bay. Marked for final cut.

  Apr 10, 2022     Trial fitting of underside skins - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

I needed to refresh and make some reasonable progress on the project so I moved the fuselage out of the shop and the wings cradle into the shop.

The wings are ready for closing up so skinning the underside would be a great way to make some noticeable progress. It took a bit to get back into the wings and plan the steps.
Used some masking tape to identify approximate location of cutout for gear legs.
Marked and then cut out the innermost skin for the cutout for the tie down loop.
Laid out the rest of the skins to test fit and confirm plan of attack.

  Dec 07, 2021     Removed original covering off LH aileron - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

I'm jumping around a bit on the project, but for good reason. I just scheduled my "Pre-Cover" inspection with MD-RA for tomorrow. This is the inspection and review of the airframe, materials, my workmanship and of course paperwork which is all part of the process for an "amateur built" aircraft in Canada. In Canada we use the term amateur built instead of "Experimental" like the U.S. does. Although this plane flew previously and was intended to become a factory built, or certified aircraft, it never became that. This has allowed me to restore it as an amateur built but it requires inspections by an MD-RA inspector at various stages of the build or restoration. The MD-RA inspector is a dedicated volunteer with aircraft structural and power plant experience and training who represents Transport Canada. Often the inspector is someone who has built a few of their own amateur built aircraft themselves. Ideally, the inspector has experience on the type of structure you're building or restoring. Check out MD-RA.com for more details.

Since my inspector will be doing the Pre-Cover inspection, he'll expect to see all the airframe pieces without any covering on it. Although the ailerons were structurally sound after the accident, they still need to be inspected prior to recovering, so off with the old covering. The RH aileron had already been stripped of its covering prior to my starting the project.

Upon removing the covering, I discovered evidence that the aileron servo tabs were added to the plane later in its life. The fabric was cut away from that area and there is some scorching on the aluminum where some additional welding was done for the servo tabs. The patchwork around the servo tab was hardly noticeable from the outside, but it became more so, once the fabric was opened up.

Looking at some of the vintage photos supports that theory. See attached photo. This was a picture of the plane early in its life. I know this was early in the plane's life because the photo shows the plane with the original, individual exhaust stacks sticking out of the bottom of the cowl cheeks. Later, the exhaust was collected on each side and became a pair of exhaust stacks out the bottom of the cowl in front of the firewall. The attached photo shows the individual exhaust stacks and a continuous trailing edge on the aileron. Additionally, there isn't the linkage between the aileron hinge and the servo tab. The servo tabs were obviously added at some point, and then enlarged with a strip of aluminum bolted to them. Unfortunately the log books don't mention any of these changes. In fact, the log book entries were extremely poor. They only have a date and a time flown. They don't mention the pilot, the location, or anything they did during the flight.

  Oct 11, 2020     LH Landing Gear gearbox - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

Installed retract gearbox and landing gear upper assembly into LH wing. Mounted wings into wing rack for winter storage.

  Oct 08, 2020     Painting and varnishing - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Applied a second, touch-up coat to the wheel well area. Varnished the interior of the rest of the wing. Although some of the original pieces were coated in a thin paint, I coated them as well. There's a lot of surface area on the inside of a wing. It took almost a complete litre of varnish for the area.

  Oct 06, 2020     Sanding and painting - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

A little more sanding and cleanup and then painted the wheel well area.

  Oct 04, 2020     Sanding and cleanup - (2.5 hours) Category: Wings

Sanded the skins and cleaned up some of the glue joints. Rough trimmed skin on leading edge. Will final trim that once the lower skin is added.

Cleaned up some glue joints. Connected pitot tube within the wing. Nothing worth taking pictures of.

  Oct 01, 2020     Sanding and filling - (1.5 hours) Category: Wings

Sanded the scarf joint filler from last day. Sanded glue drips and runs from sheeting on underside of wing. Planed and sanded the leading edge stringers for prep for sheeting underside. Applied another layer of filler to the remaining low spots on the scarf joints.

  Sep 28, 2020     Sheeting cleanup - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Removed clamps and clecos from sheets. Rough cut edges with jig saw then trimmed with plane and finally block sanded. Mounted aileron and marked the edges as required. Trimmed the aileron bay to final lines. Block sanded scarf joints. Mixed up some epoxy and flox to fill the cleco drill holes and a batch of epoxy and micro balloons to fill in any gaps or low spots between scarf joints.

  Sep 27, 2020     Last of the sheeting - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

Glued sheets 3 and 4 to wing.

  Sep 26, 2020     Sheeting - (2.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Glued sheet 2 in place. Prepped sheets 3 and 4 by rough cutting the outline and planing and sanding the scarf joints.

  Sep 25, 2020     Prepped Sheet 2 - (1.5 hours) Category: Wings

Prepped sheet 2 by cutting to size and scarfing edges. Removed staples and clamps from sheets 1 and 1+.

  Sep 23, 2020     Leading edge stringer and sheeting - (3 hours)       Category: Wings

Notched noses of ribs and added leading edge stringer for underside skin. Added shear web plates to upper and lower stringers.

Flipped wing and planed and sanded the upper stringer. Measured, cut and prepped the skin for sheet 1+. Epoxied sheet 1+ into place.

  Sep 19, 2020     Stringer and sheeting - (3.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Notched noses of ribs and added leading edge stringer for topside skin.

Installed aileron to check clearance for top skin and discovered that pitot tube needed to be moved slightly. Per the design, the pitot tube runs in the gap between the rear spar and the front of the aileron. As it passes through the rib inboard of the aileron, it also has to clear the aileron on one side and the inboard aileron hinge on the other. To provide more clearance I had to pull the pitot tube and elongate the hole in the rib that it passes through. After a bit of trial and error, I was able to provide another 1/8" clearance and still fit through the appropriate hole in the aileron hinge.

Measured and prepped upper skin sheet number 1. This meant scarfing the outboard edge where sheet number 2 will mate with it. Epoxied, clamped, and stapled into place.

  Sep 13, 2020     Left wing - (4 hours)       Category: Wings

Mounted LH wing in the wing rotisserie. Notched the spar cap strips and pried them off. These are the pieces that Dalotel originally used to support the skin structure. These pieces aren't necessary with the skin sheets and arrangement of skinning that I'm doing. Going from photos of the original build and from what Ray mentioned, Dalotel used pieces of ply approximately 2' x 2' to skin the wing. I'm using just over 4' x 4' so there are a lot less joints and requires a lot less underlying support (and filler). Following the removal of the cap strips, I chiselled and sanded the remnants away.

Removed the landing gear retract gear and mount. This allowed me to paint the spar in the area that they are mounted. It's easier to do without the top skin on yet. Looking at the LH wing, I realized that the gear retract spring mount was originally painted so I painted the one on the RH wing as well.

Finished the nut plates for the rear spar connector plates. Screwed them in place.

Did some more trimming and sanding to the wingtip bow. Had to mix up a bit of epoxy and flox to fill a couple of low spots. This will allow the top skin to rest nicely on the wingtip bow maintaining the curvature of the upper skin all the way to the tip.

  Sep 12, 2020     Wheel well, retracts, and such - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Removed the retract gearbox and landing gear mount so that I could paint around those items. I should have done it prior to starting painting but I didn't. Doing so allowed me to go back and clean up a few areas. Additionally, I was able to finish mounting the landing gear mount as the last of the AN5 bolts arrived yesterday. After touching up the paint I remounted the gearbox and mounting plate.

Assembled the wing rack that I'd built last month and moved the wing from the rotisserie to the wing rack. Now I can roll the RH wing to another area and mount the LH wing on the rotisserie and start sheeting it.

  Sep 10, 2020     Painted wheel well - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

Picked up some paint from Home Depot. Fortunately, they had a litre of Dalotel wheel well grey. Painted the interior of the wheel well with it.

  Sep 08, 2020     Varnished interior - (1.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Varnished interior of wing. Wheel well area will be painted a flat grey to match original.

  Sep 01, 2020     Retract Gear Access Panel - (0.5 hour)       Category: Wings

Added framing for access panel for retract gearbox and associated limit switches.

  Aug 29, 2020     Another round of sanding and filling - (1.5 hours) Category: Wings

Sanded high spots and filled low spots. Flipped wing over and touched up a few spots with more epoxy and flox.

  Aug 22, 2020     Sanding and filling - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

Sanded the filler that I'd applied. Have a few low spots left so another layer of filler.

  Aug 19, 2020     Clean up this sheet - (1.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Removed the clamps and clecos from the final sheet. Trimmed the skin flush with the tip. Installed the aileron and cut out the aileron bay with clearance for full deflection.

Sanded the glue joints where there were some high spots. Also found some low spots that required a bit of lightweight fill. A few ounces worth.

  Aug 18, 2020     Last of the top sheet - (0.5 hour)       Category: Wings

Epoxied the outboard sheeting on.

  Aug 17, 2020     Sheeting again - (2 hours) Category: Wings

Cut out and prepped the last of the sheeting for the topside of the RH wing. This required a couple of shorter scarf joints to make the final reaches. I chose to epoxy these joints together while on my workbench rather than on the wing. They've only added a few inches in each direction so the sheet will still be manageable to epoxy to the wing. No pics today. Nothing really exciting to show.

  Aug 14, 2020     Added sheet 2 - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

More glue, more clamps, more progress.

  Aug 13, 2020     Sheeting again - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

Epoxied sheet 1+ in place today. This required a lot of clamps and staples to hold it in place and get the ply to conform to the curve of the ribs near the leading edge.

  Aug 12, 2020     Sheeting time - (4 hours)       Category: Wings

Did some final prep before sheeting. Installed a few fittings and bolts that won't be easily accessible once the wing is sheeted. Masked off the landing gear retract gearbox to ensure I don't slop epoxy on it.

Laid out the sheeting and marked up the cuts and scarfs as required for the first few sheets.

The first sheet that went on is from the centre of the spar back to the trailing edge, from the root outwards towards the aileron. Fortunately these sheets are 50" x 50" rather than 48" x 48". The distance from the inboard edge of the root rib to the aileron bay is about 1 mm short of 50". This means one sheet can fill that entire space with about 1 mm to spare. It would be a real annoyance to have to scarf a joint for only 2" of sheeting to reach the aileron.

I had been messing around for the last few weeks trying to make a router jig to make the wing skins scarf joints. The skin is 2.5 mm thick so the scarf joints need to be 1.5 inches wide. Ideally, I would have used a router bit that was 1.5" diameter. I spent a lot of time trying to find a 1.5" router bit with a 1/4" shank. Had I found such a critter, I would have been able to secure a simple wedge mounted to my router that matched the slope of the scarf (15:1 or 3.8 degrees). I could have then run the router against a simple fence and made the scarf joint. Unfortunately it seems that no one makes bit larger than about 3/4" diameter for a 1/4" shank. If I had a router with a 1/2" shank there were lots of bits to choose from.

Since I only had a 3/4" bit, I tried to make a framed jig to run the router over the end of the skin and create a nice scarf joint. Unfortunately I couldn't get the jig to be stiff enough over the necessary span of 60". There ended up being too much flex in the jig and a router can do an amazing amount of cutting (or damage) in an instant. It doesn't take much flexing of the jig to ruin a 2.5 mm thick sheet. In the end, I decided I'll make my scarf joints by hand planing and sanding. The nice thing about scarfing plywood is the lines you get with each layer of ply. The lines act like elevation lines on a topographical map. The goal is to get them straight and evenly spaced.

I've numbered the sheets from 1 through 4 from the root to the tip. The wing section inboard of the aileron bay requires one and a half sheets to span the chord, so I've called those sheets Sheets 1 and 1+. Sheet 1 is the full sheet from the centre of the spar to the trailing edge. Sheet 1+ is the half sheet from the centre of the spar to the leading edge. Sheets 2 and 3 run from the leading edge to the aileron bay. Sheet 4 runs from the leading edge to the trailing edge outboard of the aileron.

I glued sheet 1 on place and then scarfed the necessary edge for sheets 1+ and both edges of sheet 2.

  Aug 10, 2020     Some more sanding. - (1.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Almost done sanding prior to sheeting. One more short session left to remove some remaining high spots.

All the ribs are now flat relative to one another. This was challenging as the wing changes from root to tip. The wing has a swept leading edge and straight trailing edge meanwhile the centre of the spar transitions from about 35 or 40%% of the chord at the root to about 25% of the chord at the tip. This plays with your mind as you're trying to align the sanding pad properly in relation to the ribs. And lastly, the airfoil changes from root to tip. All of these factors play into a wing profile that changes throughout the entire structure. The goal is to build a wing will turn out smooth with minimum filler ;-)

  Aug 09, 2020     Wing cradle - (1.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Had my son Brodie help me build a wing cradle using some 2x4's and scrap plywood from the crate that the wing skins came in. The cradle will allow me to store the wings elsewhere while working on the fuselage.

In Canada there are some specific steps that need to be done when building an amateur built aircraft. The process is done through the MD-RA which stands for Minister's Delegates - Recreational Aviation. Essentially the MD-RA is a group of dedicated and trained volunteers who are delegated by Transport Canada to inspect amateur built aircraft in Canada. After each inspection, the MD-RA inspector fills in a substantial amount of paperwork that gets submitted to the government. To build an aircraft in Canada, there are key milestones for inspection. Check out MD-RA.com for full details.

I had my initial inspection, the Major Portion inspection to ensure that the project fulfills the 51% or more requirement to qualify as an Amateur Built. My next inspection will be the Pre-Cover inspection. This will be done to ensure that the quality of the workmanship and the materials in the construction are of aviation quality. This means that I can only sheet the wings on one side until after that inspection. The inspector will need to see inside the wings before he can approve them.

To save the inspector from coming out twice for the Pre-Cover, I'll only sheet the topsides of the wings and I'll work on the fuselage to the point of covering.

  Aug 08, 2020     Sanding and wing prep - (2 hours) Category: Wings

Picked up another section of basswood for the wing leading edge. Spent two hours planing and sanding the RH wing for prep for sheeting. No pics, unless you want to see the wood shavings blowing across the yard.

  Jul 20, 2020     Leading edges and skin support - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Having picked up some bass wood last week, I was able to cut and plane to thickness some pieces for the leading edges and for skin support. This support is for the skin joint at the root section of the spar. I don't know how Dalotel originally joined the skins, but this support was shown in the drawings so I will take advantage of it to allow me to have a butt joint rather than a scarf joint in this area.

  Jul 04, 2020     Leading edge stringers - (1 hour) Category: Wings

Did some preliminary planing to contour the new stringers. Cut out and added some sections of 1/16" ply for shear webbing for these stringers. This webbings glued halfway between each pair of ribs. They are to stiffen the stringers, preventing any bowing outwards of the stringers as the skins are glued on.

  Jul 03, 2020     Added upper forward stringer - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

Flipped the wing, notched the ribs, and glued in a new stringer.

Here you can see what I considered the biggest deterrent from changing the leading edge construction. It was the “forward subspar” that is already built ahead of the landing gear bay. This is the section of stringers and shear webbing running from the root rib to rib number 6. Had those stringers been located farther forward, it would have been an obvious choice to continue them to the tip rib and cap the nose with some solid wood. Unfortunately those stringers don't even run parallel to the leading edge. I decided to leave those stringers and webbing in place since the ribs in the wheel well area were already glued into place and the structure was secure. My new stringers merge with the "forward subspar" between ribs 5 and 6. The subspar required some trimming for this merge. See attached picture. The merge is somewhat hidden by the spring clamps that are there.

  Jul 02, 2020     Added lower forward stringer - (.5 hour)       Category: Wings

Cleaned up the notches that I'd made yesterday. The notches were messed up a bit with glue and wood when I'd added the short stiffeners to each rib yesterday. Glued stringer into these notches, against the stiffeners.

  Jul 01, 2020     Leading edge and misc - (3 hours)       Category: Wings

It doesn't seem that I got much done but I did spend quite a bit of time on the project today. First of all I planed the rearspar cap strips that I had glued the day prior. It's always fun and satisfying turning solid wood into shavings.

I added an additional stiffener for the tip rib on the bottom edge. This will provide gluing area for the underside skin where it angles upward from the bottom of the tip rib to the tip bow.

While at it, I laid out the skins again considering the best approach to sheet the wing. I've considered this a few times and I believe I've settled on the best plan. This requires a slight change to the original design, but then again, the plane wasn't built exactly as originally designed, and as an amateur built, I can make changes as I see fit. The biggest change is to the leading edge. On the original, the outboard 2/3rds of the wing uses a light (1 cm x 1cm) stringer along the extreme leading edge. The skins were steamed and formed to wrap around the leading edge. This wouldn't be so bad at the root section of the wing, but at the tip, the ribs are thin and the leading edge profile is sharp. The skin would have to wrap around something less than a 1" radius at the tip. I just don't have the tools or skills to do that in my shop with this 2.5 mm Finnish Birch. Additionally, that layout would require an awkward and wasteful use of the sheeting. I've decided to build the leading edge in a different manner. I'm going to run 1/2" square stringers, top and bottom, 1.5" back from the leading edge. I'll notch the ribs to allow the stringers to sit into the ribs. Once the stringers are in place, I will remove the section of ribs forward of the stringer. The stringers will provide a significant gluing area for the skins and once the wing is closed up, I will glue a leading edge cap onto the front edge of the stringers and skins. I will then shape the cap to provide the leading edge profile. This is similar to how my 1-Design was built. I'm making some slight variations to the 1-Design arrangement to better suit the Dalotel but it will provide a stronger leading edge and a much easier construction than the original design. I will use a router to remove some of the material on the backside of the leading edge cap, but that's a ways down the road. Although this design will be a little bit heavier than the original, my plans for arranging the sheeting on the wing will allow me to remove the cap strips that are on the main spar, so the weight gained will be offset by the weight lost. I think it will be a wash. The net effect will be an additional pound or two to each wing. From what Ray tells me, the original wing had a lot of heavy filler slathered over it to make it smooth. The way I've planned the sheeting will require minimal, if any filler, so the wings may end up being lighter than the originals. We'll never know.

So after all that thinking and designing, I ripped some douglas fir into 13' long stringers and then ran them through the thickness planer to get to my desired 1/2" x 1/2". I cut out notches in the ribs for the underside stringer and discovered that I now had to add stiffeners to each of them. Not a big deal, just one step back for 2 steps forward, so added those stiffeners and now wait for the glue to dry.

  Jun 29, 2020     Spar Cap strips - (1.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Planed cap strips on bottom of rear spar. This is the area ahead of the aileron bay. Need to do some final sanding to bring them flush to the tops (bottoms) of the ribs then they'll be ready to accept sheeting.

Cut and epoxied cap strips on top of rear spar.

Traced and cut out nose ribs for ribs 2 though 6.

  Jun 28, 2020     More sanding. More shaping - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Glued some poplar to the upper surface of the wingtip bow. This is a "filler" layer to provide a nice contour that follows the upper skin curvature. Added gussets to the remaining glue joints and did some more planing and sanding to get very close to the final shape.

Spent some time sanding ribs and other miscellaneous glue joints.

  Jun 25, 2020     Sanding and Shaping - (3.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Had some time this afternoon so spent it getting reacquainted with the project, again. Spent some time sanding areas that had excess glue or dabs of glue where it wasn't required. Once I got moving on things I decided to shape the wingtip bow too. Used the hand plane and some 80 grit sandpaper to get the shape close to final clean up.

  Jun 09, 2020     Wing tip and such - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

Removed clamps from wingtip and spar caps. All those clamps did their job because everything glued in the right spot.

Removed the clamps and jigs from the forward wingtip bow. Cut it to length and gave it a partial sanding to clean it up a bit before gluing into place. It took surprisingly few clamps to hold into place.

Prepped, and cut doublers for landing gear access panel. Epoxied into place.

  Jun 08, 2020     Trailing Edge, wingtip and misc - (4 hours)       Category: Wings

Planed and sanded trailing edge on inboard section.

Removed from the jig the now dried and formed forward-most section of laminations for wing tip bow. Epoxied laminations together and reclamped in jig. Epoxied the two rearward sections of wing tip bows to wing.

Cut and epoxied spar cap strips for underside of rear spar. This will allow skin to have a stiffened edge in front of the spar.

Laid out wing skin sheeting to determine best alignment with least amount of joints, especially the difficult scarf joints.

  Jun 07, 2020     Wing tip and trailing edge - (2.5 hours)       Category: Wings

It was a cold, wet, rainy day here so I didn't have any excuses or distractions to keep me from the project. I started by tracing the forward rib profiles onto some cardboard for use later. I also traced the wingtip outline from the LH wing. Using this tracing I cut out some jigs to shape some laminations for the wing tips.

Trimmed down a short section of 1" thick Douglas Fir board into strips. Ran the strips through the thickness planer to prepare for the laminations. There are three sections in all. The forward section running from the leading edge to the front of the main spar. It curves through over 90 degrees on about a 6" radius curve. The laminations for this section required steaming to bend. The remaining two sections, between the spars and from the rear spar to the trailing edge, have only a slight curve to them so I laminated them dry.

  Jun 04, 2020     Misc little jobs continued - (2 hours) Category: Wings

Drilled, countersunk, and deburred the holes for the nutplates for the rear spar attach fittings. I only had enough nutplates for half of the screws but prepped the remaining plates as well.

Mounted the rear spar attach fittings using the above mentioned nutplates.

Completed the skin stiffener from yesterday and epoxied it into place.

Re-discovered the initial cut sections for the trailing edges. Sanded a couple of ribs to provide a straight run for the trailing edge to glue to.

  Jun 03, 2020     Misc little jobs - (1 hour) Category: Wings

Started back on the project by tackling some of the smaller jobs. This helps to reacquaint myself with the project and get some momentum going again. I expect there will be many further gaps in the project as summer jobs and other adventures take time.

Today I started building the final skin stiffener. This is a simple open box stiffener that spans across the landing gear bay to support the upper skin.

Also marked up and laid out the hole locations for some nut plates for the rear spar attach fittings.

  May 23, 2020     Sanded and glued some more stiffeners - (2 hours) Category: Wings

A few more stiffeners and gussets and blockage in place.

  May 21, 2020     Ribs and stiffeners added again. - (2.5 hours)       Category: Wings

I shaved and sanded the subspar to match the skin contour. This provided me with the correct location for the ribs and stiffeners that I'd removed yesterday. Before gluing them in, I made up some gussets for the corners of some of these joints.
When all was ready, I started gluing and clamping...

  May 20, 2020     Rib and stiffener removal. Two steps back - (1.5 hours)       Category: Wings

After working so hard to glue all the remaining ribs, stiffeners and such all at once, I now realize that I should have held off on gluing some pieces in. The landing gear subspar top needs to be trimmed and sanded to match the contours of the skin. This is more than just a little shaving off of one edge. Since the subspar runs diagonally back, from the root rib towards the tip, it sweeps from about 5% of the root chord to about 20% where it ends at rib 6. This sweep requires quite a bit of transition of the surface of the subspar. Since the ribs must sit flush with the top surface of the subspar, I needed to remove those ribs until I'd shaved and sanded the subspar to the correct contour. So all that work to save time resulted in a lot of time delicately removing those ribs and sanding away any glue or wood remnants.

  May 11, 2020     Wheelwell area continued - (3 hours)       Category: Wings

Fitted remaining ribs and blockage and stiffeners to the wheel well area. On the LH wing I had done this in multiple steps. That is, cut and fit some pieces, glue, wait for it to dry. Repeat on a few more pieces. Wait. Repeat again. Wait...

This time I prepped all the pieces and had them all fitting and ready to go and then worked out a sequence of assembly to allow it to all fit together. It was like a 3-dimensional game of Tetris with limited time due to the epoxy curing. Not to mention working with different thicknesses of epoxy. Thickened slightly for gap filling and thin for spreading like varnish. It all worked out but it certainly required a lot of clamps.

  May 09, 2020     Wheelwell area - (1.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Made a hole through rib N4 to allow landing gear retract spring to pass through. Despite using the LH wing and rib as a template, the hole for the spring in the RH wing was located slightly differently. The hole needed to be enlarged significantly. I'll do some work to close up the excess opening.

Additionally, since N4 was now glued in and secure, I was able to properly locate the fitment of the diagonal subspar. I cut a notch inN4 where the subspar will pass through and glued the subspar frame together.

  May 08, 2020     Added N4 nose rib - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

I don't know why it took so long to fit this rib and glue it in place, but it did. I needed to ensure that each end wasn't too high or wasn't too low. It couldn't be too far out and it couldn't be too close to the root. It had to be perpendicular to the spar and couldn't have a twist in it. Just like Goldilock's porridge, it had to be JUST right.

  May 07, 2020     Studs and ribs - (2.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Made the last of the spar studs and installed them. Knobbled all the studs and nuts with a punch pin so that the nuts won't unthread.

Glued a few stiffener plates to the previous ribs.

Trimmed the shear webbing on the forward landing gear sub spar.

  May 04, 2020     Gear, spar, and stud work - (5 hours) Category: Wings

Removed oxidation from the bronze bushing on the gear leg pivot. Mounted landing gear leg to RH wing. Fabricated and glued spacers between the ribs and the underside of the rear spar.
Fabricated 3 of the 4 remaining wing spar studs.

  May 03, 2020     Back to it. Ribs and landing gear - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

Had bolts and aluminum rod from AC Spruce arrive and had a break from other projects and spring chores so glued the cap strips and stiffeners to the remaining ribs and mounted the landing gear gearbox to the spar.

  Apr 20, 2020     Removed staples from new ribs - (0.5 hour)       Category: Wings

Spring has finally sprung. So there's lots of stuff to do outside and around the house. Not a lot of time for building.

I had an half hour window to remove the clamps and pull staples from the new rib sections.

  Apr 18, 2020     More rib prep. - (2.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Had to cut and plane some more cap strip and stiffener material. It's amazing how quickly 10' of wood can be used up on a few ribs. While I was at it, I cut and planed some poplar as filler in various places. For example, it will be used in the gap between the ribs, between the spar and the skins.

Glued the cap strips and stiffeners to some of the ribs.

Steamed and bent cap strips for the remaining rib sections.

  Apr 17, 2020     Hinges and Wheel well Ribs - (5 hours)       Category: Wings

Mounted aileron hinges.

Traced out wheel well ribs from LH wing onto card stock. Transferred tracing to plywood and cut out ribs and rib sections. Reused the steel framing studs from the spar table to be used as a 10' long straightedge. Used this straightedge to confirm contours of new ribs and to check on the existing ribs. Cut out rib stiffeners for the new ribs and steamed a few sections to permit them to fit the curve of the ribs.

  Apr 16, 2020     Landing gear bay - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Did some miscellaneous fitment and such. Added forward subspar to landing gear bay.

  Apr 15, 2020     Aileron fitment and hinges - (5 hours)       Category: Wings

I can't believe it took 5 hours to get today's work done. There was a lot of fiddling to get the aileron hinges in the correct location with minimal binding. Shift up, shift down, forward, backward, add shims, remove shims. The biggest challenge is due to the aileron not being perfectly true. There is a very slight bow to it. The bow is so minor that you can't even see it with the naked eye but when the aileron is installed with the hinges on either end, the middle hinge wants to travel and pull away from the spar slightly as the aileron goes through its travel. I found this the case on the other wing and aileron too. So, a lot of time was spent to reduce the binding to a minimum.

I used the aileron leading edge to sand an even gap on the stub ribs ahead of the aileron. Made nut plates for the aileron hinges. They're ready for installation.

  Apr 13, 2020     Sanding - (1 hour) Category: Wings

Removed clamps from glue joints. Trimmed and planed excess glue and doublers that needed to be taken down. Started fitting aileron hinges.

  Apr 12, 2020     More doublers and gluing - (2.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Removed staples from yesterday's gluing. Did a quick trimming of doublers that were extending past edges of ribs. Sanded areas that needed to be glued today.

Epoxied all remaining doublers and stiffeners into place. Epoxied aileron hinge blocks to rear spar.

  Apr 11, 2020     Rib stiffeners and doublers - (3.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Cut out stiffeners for the ribs at the rear spar connections. Measured and cut out rib doubler plates. There must have been about 50 of them. Some ribs required a few and some only required one or two.

Epoxied the stiffeners to the ribs and rear spar. Epoxied the doubler plates to all locations except at the rib to rear spar joint. I'll add those plates tomorrow once the epoxy dries on the stiffeners and I can remove the clamps. They are currently in the way.

  Apr 10, 2020     Rib stiffeners - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

Cut and glued additional stiffeners and blockage for ribs to main spar.

  Apr 09, 2020     Rear spar connector plate and trailing edge - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Trimmed the rear spar to match the plates as per the fit up last week. Cut and fit some blockage that the plates will screw into.

Got out the thickness planer and trimmed down some poplar for the trailing edge. Cleaned things up, put the planer away and then remembered that there's a short section of trailing edge required outboard of the aileron. Got that piece trimmed as well.

  Apr 08, 2020     Disassembled plane for further work - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Although today was progress on the project, it felt like stepping backwards. Having the plane together is rather inspiring. Having it all apart again is less so.

Since there aren't any exciting pictures when it comes to disassembly, I added a couple of pictures of the plane in its early days. The low altitude, inverted pass right over the airfield and photographer probably wouldn't be permitted in today's day and age. Not that I'd want to.

The second photo shows the plane at a significant inverted angle of attack. The airfoil is semi-symmetrical, not fully symmetrical so to fly inverted requires a significant nose up attitude. This is where the washout in the tips that was mentioned a couple of days ago could become an important and undesirable feature.

  Apr 07, 2020     Aileron and more gluing - (1.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Fitted and glued the sub rib at the inboard end of the aileron. Created spacers for the rib stringers and the top of the spar. Epoxied them into place.

  Apr 06, 2020     Ribs epoxied into place - (4 hours)       Category: Wings

Today was another big day. Four hours and it looks exactly the same as yesterday. Except that all the ribs on the RH wing are now set in place and are waiting for the epoxy to dry.

Today was a lot of measuring, fitting and adjusting, more measuring, some shimming, more adjusting, a lot of sighting, and then when confident that all the ribs were in the correct position, mix up some epoxy and start gluing. Of course, as you're gluing, you have to move the ribs to get epoxy into the joint, so more sighting, shimming, and clamping. Then more gluing. And then, double check the measurements. As the saying goes, measure twice, cut once. Since I'm gluing about 50 glue joints, it's imperative to get everything in the right position before the epoxy sets.

The first real measurement was to ensure that the RH wing had a sweep to match the LH wing. Measuring from the tail post to the tip of each spar, I made sure that the RH wing matched the LH wing. Ultimately a mismatched sweep will have negligible effect on the performance of the plane but it needs to right. Just because. The next big step was to set the correct incidence of the tip rib. The root rib incidence is easily set by the matching the position of the root rib on the LH wing and how it sits relative to the fuselage. The tip rib has 2 degrees of washout, that is, the tip rib has 2 degrees less incidence than the root rib. This washout is to reduce the likelihood of tip stalls and the corresponding potential for a spin. Of course, is only effective when the plane is upright. When it's inverted, that washout will mean the tip is at 2 degrees GREATER angle of attack, making the tips more susceptible to stalling. The net effect is that the plane will be prone to stall/spin effects when inverted. This a bit of an oversight on Dalotel's part considering that the plane was intended to be flown inverted at times. (Dalotel went to a great bit of effort to design an inverted oil system for the plane, and it has an inverted fuel system. So it wasn't like he didn't expect it to be flown inverted.) Regardless, since the LH wing has 2 degrees of washout, the RH wing needs to match. The correct incidence and position of each ribs IS important to the performance of the plane.

The actual measurement of the incidence isn't important during the build since it's dependent upon how it's sitting in workshop. What's important is the difference between the root rib and the tip.

  Apr 05, 2020     More assembly and fitting - (1.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Slid the remaining ribs onto the RH spars. Spaced them out and confirmed fit.

Temporarily mounted the empennage.

  Apr 04, 2020     Test Fitting Wings - (4 hours)       Category: Wings

Big day in the project. Test fitting wings and spars. Earlier in the week I got help from my family to lower the fuselage from the storage space I'd made for it. My son and I lifted the frame up above our heads to put it up there. That hurt the back for a week so we going to use additional help to get it down. I rigged up a pully from the rafters so that my wife could provide some additional lifting power. That made all the difference. I'll have to weigh the fuselage when I think of it but it's darn heavy.
Back to the project. With the fuselage down, we set it on a frame with casters on it. This frame was previously the base of a wing rotisserie for another project. It's proven handy again. We tried fitting the loose spar to the frame only to learn that the fuselage needed a bit more prep.

The wings are connected to the fuselage and one another through some beautifully machined aluminum connector plates. These plates run the full width of the fuselage and the wing attach bolts pass through them and through the welded steel frame. The bolts run through these plates and through a pair of tapered bushings on either side of the spar. I had 4 of these bushings in my parts and I discovered that both of these plates require bushings for final assembly. I found one more bushing in one of the plates but it appears that I'm missing 3. I don't recall drawings of these bushings so I'll have to get them made using dimensions from the others.

To prep things fully, I removed these plates and cleaned them up. This allowed us to slide the wing spars into the frame and then tighten the plates up on either side to fit everything properly. This also allowed me to locate the rear spar properly and drill the hole for the connection bolt. Doing this locks the wing into the correct incidence. I'm going to reference the location of the LH wing to locate the RH wing and set its incidence.

This will also allow me to set an even and proper sweep for each wing. Epoxied the root rib on the RH wing in place. The remaining ribs will be positioned using the root rib for reference.

  Mar 31, 2020     Rib mounting - (1.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Started the day by using a centre punch to tap the threads of the studs and nuts. This is to prevent them from unscrewing. There's very little load on the nuts themselves other than to prevent the studs from backing out of the spar.

I then measured and marked out the locations for the ribs. As luck would have it, a couple of the ribs need to be moved a slight amount. One rib would have been located in the centre of one of the spar mounting studs, and a second rib would have been located in the centre of one of the landing gear mounting bolts. Not a big issue, both ribs will be relocated about 3/4" outboard. Test fitting the ribs onto the spar. A couple of the ribs had to have the gap in their shear webbing opened up to fit the width of the spar. The root rib need to be cut into two parts; a section forward of the spar and a section aft of the spar. It is drawn and built as a single piece but it can't slide down the length of the spar from the outboard end as it doesn't have enough clearance for the studs and nuts. It can't be mounted from the inboard side either because the spar attach plate has two "ears" on it that the wing attach bolts go through. These ears are taller than the spar is deep. Additionally the spar end plate extends forward of the spar by a couple of inches. So after a bunch of fiddling and trying to fit it one way or another, I realized that the best way would be to cut the root rib into two. I cut the rib's upper and lower stringers at a shallow angle such that the joint will be a nice scarf joint.

  Mar 27, 2020     Spar studs - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

Further to yesterday's work, I had a couple of studs that needed to be removed. One stud needed the nut on one side to be backed off to better centre the stud and provide sufficient threads for the opposite side. This nut wasn't moving since the stud and nut had been tapped with a punch to prevent from backing out. In fact, this was the technique that Dalotel did for all these studs. Notice that the centre of each stud has been drilled out slightly. I suspect this was done to provide some movement when the threads were tapped. It was an effective approach because this nut would not unthread. While trying to unscrew it, I overtorqued the stud which broke off cleanly below the surface. It was going to have to be replaced anyway since the stud wasn't fitting properly. A little tap or two with a punch and the stud was removed.

I had a couple of nuts that needed to have the threads re-cut. The threads of the stud had galled onto the nuts. Galling is the process of similar metals or metals with similar hardness rubbing against one another and essentially fusing to each other. Since this was aluminum on aluminum and aluminum is quite soft, the risk of galling was quite high. Once the two surfaces have galled, you are NOT going to get them apart. A specialist in metals and materials could explain the difference, but for the layman such as myself, I equate it to friction welding without the heat.

  Mar 26, 2020     Spar studs - (3 hours) Category: Wings

Nothing to see today, but there was a lot of work done on the spar studs. Spent some time fitting up the studs and getting them seated as best I could. It was a combination of delicate wrench work and some gentle love taps with a rubber mallet. The aluminum nuts on either end of the studs have a shoulder machined onto them that fits within the oversized hole in the washer plate. Everything is built to such tight tolerances that there is little space for the shoulders to fit into.

Although these studs are 12mm in diameter and the nuts use a 22mm socket, I have to resist the temptation to over-torque them. They are not AN bolts and there's really no need to have them very tight. The nut is there to prevent the stud from backing out of the hole, connecting the spar plate to the spar.

Had a couple of studs that required a little extra love to move and now I will have to replace them with new ones. Another order for AC Spruce.

Once I was satisfied with the stud placement, I started filling the gaps in the spar notch with epoxy thickened with flox. The epoxy mixture also worked into the lighting slots in the spar plate. I thought it would only take an ounce or two to fill these gaps, but it ended up being closer to 6 ounces due to the lighting slots.

  Mar 25, 2020     Spar work - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Cleaned up the recent lamination and sanded out the epoxy drips and runs from the spar slot.

Installed the wing attach plate for the last time. Aligned things up and inserted the studs. This required the use of a rubber mallet. Some of the studs took a little extra love to go through the tight tolerances of the spar and attach plate.

Epoxied the last of the landing gear doublers to the front side of the spar.

  Mar 24, 2020     Last of the spar sheeting - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Added last lamination of the spar sheeting.

Cut out and match drilled the doublers for the landing gear mounts and bushings. The landing gear retract bushings that run through the spar are just over 2" diameter. Previously, I used a 2" forstner bit to make those holes through the spar and then cleaned them them up with a sanding drum chucked into my drill. The doubler on the front side of the spar requires a hole that is 2-1/2" in diameter to allow for the shoulders that are on the bushing plates. Fortunately I had a 2-1/2" forstner drill bit from a previous project to cut the larger holes. The edges of the holes then needed to be beveled to provide clearance for the weld fillet on the bushing plates. That worked out nicely but I'm a little disappointed in the bolt holes in the doublers. I should have clamped some scrap wood to the backside of the doubler while I drilled through to prevent the splintering you see in the picture. Fortunately it's not critical and those bolt holes will be covered by the bushing plates so no one will ever see them once it get's assembled.

  Mar 22, 2020     Spar sheeting continued - (2 hours) Category: Wings

Cleaned up edges of existing sheeting. Created a second layer of sheeting for the middle 1/3 and laminated it to existing sheeting. The first layer that I'd applied was only 1/8" (3.175 mm). The sheeting in this area is designed to be 4 mm. So I added a layer of 1/16" sheeting to bring the total thickness to 3/16" (4.7mm).

  Mar 21, 2020     Closed up spar - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Again, more of the same but this resulted in closing up the spar.

  Mar 20, 2020     More spar sheeting - (1 hour) Category: Wings

More of the same.

  Mar 19, 2020     More spar sheeting - (3 hours)       Category: Wings

Removed clamps and trimmed edges of sheeting thus far. Back drilled and cleaned up the holes for the spar studs and the landing gear mounts.

Prepped and glued the next section of plywood. The sheeting on the spar starts at 6 mm at the root and then steps down to 4 mm around the middle third, and then steps down again to 2 mm at the outboard third. Unfortunately I couldn't get any 4 mm ply from the supplier so I'm making my own by applying a layer of 1/8" ply and then a layer of 1/16" ply. The combined thickness of the two layers is about 4.75 mm.

  Mar 18, 2020     Spar sheeting continued - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Removed clamps and cleaned up excess glue from yesterday. Backdrilled through the new sheeting using the holes in the spar as guides. Varnished the areas inside the spar that won't be exposed to glue.

Prepared the scarf joints for the last section of 6mm sheeting and glued it to the backside of the spar.

  Mar 17, 2020     Wing spar sheeting - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

After a long hiatus, I got a couple of hours work in today. I had to take a break while waiting for my shipment of plywood to show up. It arrived yesterday and I was pleased to cut into it today.

The first thing I did was cut the 6mm ply into strips to cover the sides of the spar. Then I prepped the ends to prepare for scarf joints in the ply. Finally, I epoxied one sheet to the front of the spar.

  Mar 08, 2020     Threaded spar plate attachment studs - (.5 hour)       Category: Wings

Threaded the remaining studs using the lathe to hold the die and the stud. Much better results compared to running the die by hand.

  Mar 07, 2020     New Spar Attach Plate Studs - (2.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Had an order from AC Spruce arrive yesterday. It included some hinge material for the landing gear doors, some steel for the landing gear forks and some 1/2" diameter aluminum rod. I turned this rod down to 12 mm diameter studs for the spar attach plate.
I had made some studs previously but I wasn't happy with the tracking on the die when I cut the threads. After learning a new technique using the lathe to hold the die square to the stud, I was able to make some new ones. See attached pictures. Much better.

  Mar 05, 2020     Ordered ply for skins and spar Category: Wings

Ordered 15 sheets of 2.5 mm ply for the skins and 1 sheet of 6 mm ply for the spar from Canadian Aeroplanes Limited.

Each sheet is 50" x 50" so it will be a large, heavy crate when it's shipped to me. Looking forward to seeing it.

  Mar 02, 2020     Last of the spar drilling - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Using the drill press I drilled out the two, 2" diameter holes for the landing gear. These holes pass through the ash block in the middle of the spar and allow the retract mechanism to operate and the gear leg to pivot. After drilling these holes, I had to enlarge them about 1/16" to permit the landing gear plates to press fit into them.

  Mar 01, 2020     Landing gear bolting - (1.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Drilled the last of the spar bolt through holes. These were for the 5/16" bolts for the landing gear plates.

With the landing gear plates in place, used the plates to trace the exact location of the 2" holes. Tracing the inside of the bushing resulted in a circle smaller than what will be drilled out. Used a compass to scribe some arcs to then bisect and locate the centre of the circle. This is the point at which the 2" diameter bit will run for the landing gear plates.

  Feb 29, 2020     Spar bolting - (3.5 hours)       Category: Wings

After a bit of a lapse, it was good to get back on the project again. Last week I placed an order from AC Spruce which included some bushing material to be used as a drill guide for the 5/16" bolts. Unfortunately there was a shipping delay and it doesn't sound like the items will arrive for a few more days. So I did some scrounging and found some tubing that could be made to work. This tubing had survived a garage fire years prior but the heat caused it to sag and bend. I just needed to find a couple of sections that were straight over a few inches. The sections that I found, I sandblasted to get the outer scale off and then mounted in the lathe. I drilled them out to the required inner diameter and then turned them to the required outer diameter. This allowed me to insert the sections in the 12 mm ID tubing on the welded frame and use that frame to drill the 5/16" holes.

After careful layout and marking I was able to drill the critical holes for the landing gear and then finished up the 12 mm holes for the remaining spar studs.

  Feb 25, 2020     Critical spar work - (4 hours)       Category: Wings

Big day today. I started the day by transferring the marks from the spar attachment plate to the spar caps. This would provide additional confirmation on the hole locations, over and above the locations set by the flat plate drill guides. I prepped the welded drill guide by cutting it to the required clearance for the width of the spar. I also modified one of my practice studs to be used as an alignment pin for the backside of the drill guide. Using a hi-tech solution such (an elastic band) to hold the pin in the hole of the plate drill guides allows me to drill the hole perfectly perpendicular to the spar.

After doing some final fitment of the sockets from yesterday, I mixed up a batch of epoxy and thickener and set the sockets into final position.

After lunch, when the epoxy had set up enough to allow me to handle the spar, I attacked the critical and daunting though spar holes. These are the holes that pass from the front of the spar to the rear (or vice versa, depending on your perspective) and pass through the bolt holes in the spar attachment plate. Getting these lined up is critical. Not only to get the holes lined up for the stud to pass through the spar, but the location of the top holes in relation to the lower holes establishes the dihedral of the wing. Additionally, the three 8mm holes at the outboard end of each spar plate have some of the landing gear mounting bolts go through them. These also need to be lined up to one another properly or the landing gear mounts won't fit. Alignment, alignment, alignment. It's all so critical.

So after lots of measuring and layout and double checking everything, I clamped the drill hole guide plates in place and with the welded drill guide, started drilling. After all the prep, it was rather anti-climatic. I suppose that's what all the prep is for, to prevent anything from going wrong and keeping it dull. If it didn't work out it could have ruined the entire spar.

I drilled all ten of the 12mm holes and tested the studs for fitment with the spar plate in place. It all fits. Yay!

I've got to do the bottom ones yet but I'm waiting until I get my 8mm bushing for the 3 holes at the outboard end of the spar plate. Since the landing gear plates go through those 8 mm holes on both the top spar plate and the bottom spar plate, they are critical to the fitment. Hopefully that bushing material shows up in the next couple of days.

  Feb 24, 2020     Drill guide for wing spar - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

I was never really comfortable with the previously built drill guide. That is, the one made from 0.050" plate bent into a "U" shape and some tubing. I was afraid there was too much flex in the plate and this would result in the drill not penetrating the spar perpendicularly. Instead, I got a rigid frame welded up with the guide tubing as one piece. I will cut the centre section of the tubing to permit clearance for the spar and the plates that were cut by the waterjet.

I marked the outside edge of the spar connector plate to show where the holes are and then transferred those marks to the spar once the connector plate was fully inserted into the spar. This will allow me to ensure that the guide plates are located properly.

I drilled the root end of the spar for holes for the bushings that the end plate screws into.

  Feb 22, 2020     More spar work - (1.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Trimmed and sanded edges of skins on rear spar. Cut and prepped scarfs for 3/32" skins for main spar. The main spar has three different thicknesses of skins. It starts at 6 mm at the root, reduces to 4 mm over the middle third, and then done to 2 mm (3/32") over the outboard third. I could only prep the 3/32 skins as I haven't yet ordered the 4 mm and 6mm ply yet.

  Feb 21, 2020     Spar Skinning Part 2 - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Did a rough trim of the skin that I epoxied on yesterday. Cleaned up the spar and prepped the skin for the opposite side. "Painted" the inside of the spar with epoxy to seal it and glued second skin on.

  Feb 20, 2020     Spar Skinning - (3 hours)       Category: Wings

Spent some time fixing a couple of the bulkheads that were damaged moving the spar to the rotisserie. I also replaced one of the bulkheads that wasn't quite long enough for the gap between the upper and lower caps. Again, more sanding. I'm sure a craftsman would be able to get this stuff done without having to do so much sanding. Oh well, all in the name of fun.

I marked out and cut the skins for the rear spar. This was a little more interesting because the grain of the skins is at 45 degrees to the spar. Any way that you laid out the ply resulted in many scarf joints. Not a problem because I made up a jig for shaving the skin at the correct angle for the scarf joint. The jig worked pretty well. Although, I'll have to make a larger one for the main spar. Since the grain of the webbing is at a 45 degrees to the spar it requires a wider jig than if the grain was perpendicular to the spar. Once it was set up, I could put a section of the webbing in place, clamp it down, 10 seconds with the handplaner and then another 15 seconds with some sandpaper and the scarf joint was prepped. Another minute later I was attacking another scarf joint. I was pleased.

After all the strips of skin were prepped, I brushed epoxy on the spar and set the skins in place with lots of clamps.

  Feb 19, 2020     Spar work - (2.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Moved the spar from the bench to the "wing rotisserie". I got my family's help to move the LH wing out of the shop many days ago. This provides me some more room to work. Moving the spar to the rotisserie will give me room on my workbench again.

I measured and laid out the location for the spar webbing. This allowed me to determine how much plywood I'll need to finish the spar. Not just ordinary plywood, this is beautiful Finnish birch plywood. I'll need 15 sheets of 2.5 mm ply for the wing skins and a 4 mm sheet and a 6 mm sheet for the spar. I'll be ordering this plywood from Canadian Aeroplanes Limited. Since the plywood comes in 50" x 50" sheets and has to be shipped from Ontario, I want the order to be right on the first try.

I cut, trimmed and epoxied in the stiffeners for the opposite side of the bulkheads.

  Feb 18, 2020     Spar work - (5 hours)       Category: Wings

Spent quite a bit of time cleaning up the glue joints and various sections of the spar. Since the spar caps get thinner towards the tips, there is a section of the lower spar cap that is thinner than the depth of the slot for the aluminum spar plate. As such, the slot penetrated the topside of the cap. One of the things that I discovered when I glued the ash block in for the landing gear is that the block aligns with this slot. Not a problem, but it means that the ash block will require some routing to get the channel back to the full depth. It was a section about 8��long. The additional cut started at zero depth at one end and then got to about 3/8��deep at the outboard end. This required setting up a section of MDF "table" and fences on either side of the spar and using the router to cut the slot deeper. Once this routing was completed, I test fit the aluminum spar plate in the slots. Each leg of the spar plate fit into its respective slot with no problem. There was an issue with the separation of the plates though, or more accurately, the depth of each slot in respect to one another. Although I'd built the spar to the dimensions on the plans, I need to make some corrections. The separation of the spar plate legs are established by the plates at the root end so the only option is to cut the notches deeper to get it to fit. This required setting up the MDF table and fences again. Each time takes about 30 minutes of set up and locating so that I don't cut more than necessary. I'm hesitant to cut the notch any deeper than necessary. So after setting up the fixture to guide me, I cut the slot on one side another 1/8" deeper. After some trimming the slot by hand using a chisel and a knife I'm able to get the spar plate to fit properly.

I cut, trimmed, and epoxied stiffeners to the bulkheads.

  Feb 16, 2020     Installed bulkheads - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

Epoxied bulkheads into place.

  Feb 15, 2020     Back in action - (5 hours)       Category: Wings

After a bit of a lull in operations this past week, I was able to attack the project again.

I started with fabricating a second portion to the drill guide. The pieces made last week were the guide plates. They are intended to locate the drill holes accurately. The new piece is to work as a guide to ensure that the drill tracks through the spar accurately and lines up with the spar plate and the guide holes on the opposite side of the spar. I cut out a plate of 0.050" steel and bent it into simply a U shape that would wrap around the top (or bottom) of the spar and have a bushing to track the drill bit perpendicular to the spar. Each leg of the U has a hole to allow some tubing to pass through it. Once I get that tubing welded to the legs, I'll be able to cut the tubing from the middle and clean up the inside of each leg. This will provide me with a drill guide that ensures the tracking of the drill bit. At least, that's the plan.

I also laid out the spar caps and blockage for the landing gear. I made these blocks from laminations of ash a while ago. I'd made them oversized to allow for final trimming once the spar was laid out. This allowed me to space everything for the spar and make the necessary alignment. As planned, I had to shave about 1/2" to 3/4" off either side of the blocks to get them to fit nicely. This was a bit of an effort since ash is such hard wood. I cut holes through the spar bulkheads and trimmed them for proper fit. A lot of measuring and checking before anything was glued together.

  Feb 11, 2020     Finished spar repair - (1 hour) Category: Wings

Removed clamps from spar assembly. Used power rotary planer to taper new section of fir to required thickness. Fun making wood shavings. Too bad this was the second time I had to do it on this section. Finished with some sanding.

  Feb 10, 2020     Spar repair - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Finished the repair to the lower spar cap. Planed a new section of fir and created a scarf joint to mate it to existing spar section.
Epoxied and clamped the sections together.

  Feb 08, 2020     Drill guides for wing spar - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

Today wasn't really a day working "on" the wing but it was a significant day towards the project. I spent a good portion of the day with Grant from Excalibur Research Development and Manufacturing. Grant was recommended to me by my welder to help design and cut out the metal for my landing gear forks. I approached Grant earlier in the week and we'd made arrangements to meet today. I couldn't have been any more lucky to connect with someone so capable. Grant is an AME, a pilot, a business owner, a machinist, a welder, and one of those guys who sees a challenge and tackles it head on. Whether it's learning how to program PLCs or write code or design items for 3D printing. He's developed many different interesting things through his company.

Grant was very generous with his time and first of all we designed and drew up some drill guides for the wing spar mounting plate stud holes. The spacing of these holes is critical because they need to align with the existing holes that are in the spar mounting plate. Since the spar mounting plate is buried in the middle of the width of the spar, the holes will need to be aligned perfectly to ensure that everything lines up perfectly. Once drawn, Grant submitted the drawing to his water jet table and cut the guides out of some 3mm SST plate he had sitting in the table. 3mm SST plate is overkill for what I'm needing as each hole will only be drilled through once but since the plate was already on the table, it was easiest. After I'm done with the plates, they'll become wall art. They are things of beauty.

  Feb 07, 2020     Spar "repair" - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

When I was planing the taper to the lower spar cap I uncovered some less than desirable sections of the wood used in the spar. This section has a few knots and pitch pockets that weren't obvious until the taper was cut into the lamination. I've been mulling it over for a while knowing that I needed to do something about it. I had considered adding a doubler to that section of the spar. I would certainly be easier and wouldn't impact the rest of the construction. I was never really keen on that solution though so after a lot of deliberation, I finally took the plunge. I decided to remove that section of the spar lamination and put a new section in it's place. To do this would require the router again and some careful prep. The router is a great tool in that it removes a lot of material rather quickly. The consequence of that is that if you make a mistake, it can do a lot of damage rather quickly.

The section that needed to be replaced was actually the second layer of three and it was only in one area, an area that was exposed when the that lamination was tapered in thickness. This required the cut to go from zero depth at one end to full lamination depth at the other end of the imperfect wood. At that point, the cut would need to start becoming shallower such that it was at zero depth 15" further. This would provide a scarf joint that meets the 15:1 requirement. This is tough to describe but the picture may make it a lot easier to understand. The challenge is that at no point was the cut depth consistent to the surface of the spar that the router was moving over. The cut gets continuously deeper until it's a full 1" deep, then it gets continuously shallower until it becomes nothing.

I set up a jig reusing the MDF that I had used previously. I essentially built a table that's surface was parallel with the cut that I wanted to make, not parallel to the exposed surface. The first part was easy because that cut was parallel to the underside of the spar that was resting on the table. The next cut required a table with a surface at an angle that allowed the planer to rise away from the spar.

In the end, it worked. My cautious approach meant that I didn't cut full depth along the initial section and I'll have to set up the router again to remove some more material but I ran out of time for the day.

  Feb 04, 2020     A few more studs - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Made a few more wing studs. Again, had a bit of trouble running the die concentric with the stud, so I'll have to make a couple more when I get some more stock of aluminum.

  Feb 03, 2020     Spar Studs - (3.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Fortunately a shipment from AC Spruce arrived today allowing me to proceed on the spar studs. I have to fabricate some new studs to replace the damaged aluminum studs that bolt the wing mounting plate into the spar. These studs are 12mm diameter so I started with 1/2 inch diameter 2024T3 aluminum rod and turned it on the lathe down to 12mm diameter. I beveled each end slightly to allow the 12mm die to start easily. Using a 12mm die, I was able to cut threads into the ends of each completed stud. Unfortunately, in my haste, I didn't have the die perfectly square on the stud when starting a couple of them so the threads are concentric. I'll have to replace those studs and chalk it up to learning.

I cleaned up some metric socket head bolts that secure the landing gear door hinge. A few of them were rather weathered so I needed to give them a good scrubbing with scotchbright to remove the surface rust. I'm not worried about the strength as these bolts are really overkill for their purpose. They are much stronger than the aluminum hinge that they are mounting to the rib and door.

  Jan 31, 2020     Pitot Tube Install and misc cleanup - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

Installed aluminum tubing for pitot tube. Surprisingly it took longer than originally expected. Pushing 1/4" diameter tubing through many 1/4" holes results in a bit of friction and a bit of a battle. Each rib has two holes to feed the tubing through; the rib itself and the doubler on the other side of the rib stringers. So ultimately there are about a dozen holes for each section of tubing.

Cleaned up a few misc areas.

  Jan 26, 2020     Back to the spar attachment. - (3 hours)       Category: Wings

Tested the remaining wing attach pins and components with the dye penetrant. Happy to say that no cracks found anywhere. The red dye penetrant and the white developer are really noxious so chose to spray it outside. They are both extremely messy too. So after I finished the inspection, I gave all the parts a thorough cleaning in a bath of lacquer thinner.

While I was in the cleaning mood, I cleaned up the last of the aluminum studs that pass through the wing attach plate. Some of the previous studs still had some paint or varnish still on them. Afterwards, I took a 12mm die and cleaned the threads on the studs to simplify reinstallation.

I dug out the three remaining threaded inserts from the original spar. These inserts receive the screws to hold the end plate on. Also found the 4 screws that thread into it. This was a great find as the screws are somewhat unique in their size and certainly not available from AC Spruce or other conventional sources. Ray had told me they were in the collection but I missed them on my first and second pass. Certainly much easier to find once I had one in my hand to compare to.

  Jan 24, 2020     More spar routing - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Routed the upper spar cap just like I had done with the lower spar cap yesterday.

Used dye penetrant and developer to check for cracks in the wing mounting pins and associated fittings. Checked the wing mounting plate too.

  Jan 23, 2020     Spar routing - (3.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Picked up a new router bit. A 1/4" diameter, spiral, upcut bit. This allowed me to cut a slot for the narrow end of the wing attach plate and still get the full 2" depth plunge that I needed.

I practiced twice on a couple of laminations of 2x4s that I had screwed together. This allowed me to practice the handling of the router with this long bit and it allowed me to experiment and practice with the aluminum angle sections as fences. Firstly the 2x4s were screwed together well outside the area that I was going to route and I made sure the screwheads were well below the surface of the 2x4. I then levelled the surface of the 2x4 lamination with the thickness planer. Clamping the table together like I had done previously and then clamping the fences to provide guidance for a nice straight 8mm wide slot the full length of the attachment plate.
I experimented with the depth of the router bit for each pass and after a few successive passes, I was able to get the full 2" depth needed to bury the attachment plate.
After the 8mm wide slot was cut, I moved the fences outwards 2mm on each side and cut the 12 mm wide slot. Repeated twice more to get all 4 widths cut and the attachment plate to fit.
After 2 hours experimenting and practicing on the cheap 2x4s, it was time to tackle the lower spar cap. Fortunately all the lessons were learnt with the 2x4s and cutting the notch in the actual spar was a non-event.

  Jan 21, 2020     Router table build and experiment - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Using the MDF from the spar building table, I built up two table halves to support the router and guide fences. I will use this these tables and fences when I cut out the groove in the spar for the wing attach plate. Using a couple of 2x4s screwed together to simulate the spar, I clamped the tables to the spar and the fences to the tables. I don't have the correct sized router bit yet but that was ok, this was just a test run. It's a good thing I'm experimenting on cheap 2x4s, as it didn't turn out as successfully as I wanted. I found the MDF fences that I'd made flexed more than I expected. Additionally, I had made the fences the length of the wing attach plate. This meant that the C-clamps that held it into place prevented the router from running the full length.

So lessons learned:
1. Use something stiffer for fence. - I'm going to use some aluminum angle.
2. The fences need to be longer. - 4 foot sections of aluminum angle should provide enough length. The router table is already 4 feet long.
3. The 2mm steps in the fence aren't all that effective when tracking with a large router. - Solution will be to set the fence at the narrowest width of plate, route the centre channel, then move the fence back 2 mm for the next width of routing.

Amateur built or experimental aircraft is about learning.

  Jan 20, 2020     Spar connection plates and studs - (3 hours)       Category: Wings

Spent a little bit of time cleaning up the ends of the root block and the landing gear block. The root block wasn't perfectly lined up during the gluing so the hemispherical cut out on the one end isn't perfectly lined up. It's not critical as this is strictly the transition at the end. The 2" holes for the landing gear shafts will be drilled after installation. They need to be perfectly lined up and that's best done in when it's part of the spar.

Spent some time cleaning up the studs and plates that hold the wing mount in place in the spar. They were covered with paint and varnish. Additionally, some of the studs had cotter pins to hold the nuts in place. These cotter pins were rusted and need to be replaced. These studs are actually custom made aluminum rods with custom made aluminum nuts threaded onto each end. The nuts have a shoulder on them to fit into the holes in the plates. I have to replace a few of the studs that can't be reused. No big surprise, but there are no drawings for any of these pieces. My options are to replace them with AN5 bolts and making accommodations for the smaller diameter, or make some from aluminum rod turned down to 12 mm and alodined. Something to consider...

  Jan 19, 2020     Wing mounting plate dimensions - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

I'm going to need a drill guide for making the mounting holes for the spar plate. These are the ten bolt holes that hold the spar to the aluminum tongue. Since the drawing for the wing mounting plate doesn't have the bolt spacing dimensions shown, I had to measure the original one.

These bolt holes were drilled during assembly but it appears that they had some sort of external jig to guide their drill. The spacing for the bolt holes for the top and the bottom tongues are both the same, but the spacing isn't the same between all the holes. Most of the spacing are 75 mm but they vary from 73 mm to as much as 83 mm. I suspect that the lightening slots were machined into the tongue after the bolt holes were drilled.

I've measured the spacing and had my son draw them up on Solidworks for me. This is the Solidworks program that is available for free to all EAA members.

Since it had finally warmed up today (above freezing) I took the planer outside and shaved down the wing root block and landing gear block to match the width of the spar caps. It was great to get outside again. It's hasn't been warmer than -20C for the past week.

  Jan 17, 2020     Another light day - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

Added ply stiffeners to the balsa nose ribs.

Started making the required jigs to cut slot in spar. I'll have to use a router to cut a slot in the top and bottom of the spar to fit the wing mounting plate. I'll set up some fences to allow me to cut that groove accurately. I'm going to have to pick up a new router bit to get the depth I need. Yay, more tools.

Spent a bit of time looking at the threaded bushings that the end plate screws into. Just thinking through the steps to get this critter built. I don't think there are any of the original screws left that held the end plate onto the spar and I can't begin to guess what thread size Dalotel decided to make these screws. The sizes aren't shown on the incomplete drawing for the end plate. I'll have to remove one of the screws from the LH wing to check it for size and see if I can get identical screws for the RH side. My guess is that it's not likely to happen. I may have to machine some new threaded bushings for new screws for the RH side. Stay tuned.

  Jan 15, 2020     Balsa nose ribs - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

Did some light work today by making some balsa nose ribs on some of the new ribs. Glued balsa laminations onto the leading edge subspar and then with my long sanding block, shaped the blocks to accurately match the shape of the existing nose ribs.

  Jan 14, 2020     Wing mounting plate prep - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

The wing is bolted to the fuselage by a beautifully machined assembly that is glued and bolted to the spar. This assembly is made up of an upper and a lower tongues each extending into the spar by 3 feet. The tongues are bolted to the spar by 20 custom made aluminum pins and six of the AN5 bolts used as part of the landing gear. I spent some time cleaning up this assembly as it had some of the original spar still glued to it. A bit of work scraping, sanding, and then scrubbing with some scotchbrite to remove any serious scratches. There were a few deep marks and one gouge that I had to file and sand away to eliminate them as stress riser points. Not unlike dressing a damaged aluminum propellor.

I also removed the wing from the rotisserie so I could spend some time looking at the LH wing root and consider how the additional plate is added. Personally, I see no need for this additional plate. It just looks like some added complexity for no value. It doesn't provide any twisting resistance, nor should it as the distance between the front and rear spars would provide significantly greater strength and resistance to twisting. This plate is another beautifully machined piece of aluminum but for no value. There is a pencil sketch of the wing mount and this additional plate is shown, but not in great detail.

  Jan 13, 2020     Rear spar frustrations - (2.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Started off quite easily and successfully. I had to taper the outboard ends of the rear spar caps. They taper from a depth of 20 mm down to 10 mm over the last foot of span. Easy schmeazy, especially with my new blade in my hand plane. Yay, gotta love new tools.

I marked out the outline for the rear spar on my table top by snapping two chalk lines and then enhancing those lines with a marker. The spar caps were clamped down on these lines and then the rib locations were marked. At first it seemed that the rib locations were a little odd but I assumed that it was because only the outboard half of the ribs are evenly spaced while the inboard half are uniquely spaced. I then started measuring and locating where the aileron hinge mounts and their associated stiffeners go. At this point, it was clear that something wasn't right. The hinge points were not in the correct locations in relation to the ribs. Something was out, but what? After a lot of measuring, comparing, converting units and remeasuring it became obvious that I have another situation where the drawings aren't perfectly correct. The rib spacing on the drawing is incorrect. Additionally, the dimension shown for the aileron was incorrect.

Ultimately, I confirmed the location of the inboard hinge mount and the neighbouring rib. From there I used the actual aileron to confirm the hinge points. Drawings may be incorrect, but the actual item never lies.

  Jan 12, 2020     Round two for today - full length spars - (1.5 hours)       Category: Wings

I figured that I could continue on some work and not have to go outside again today; scarf joints!

It was time to get the spars to their proper lengths. This entailed cutting down the inboard end a bit to clean things up and adding a short extension onto the outboard ends of main spar top cap and both caps of the rear spar.

The top cap of the front spar needs to be 151-1/2" long. The longest board that I had to work with when I made the spar cap was something like 148" long. So yeah, a scarf joint just to get the last few inches. It was a similar situation for the rear spar. The top cap needed to be 144-1/2" long and all I had to use for that piece was a 12' long board. 12' = 144". So yeah, short by 1/2". Anyway, a little bit of work with a hand plane and the pieces fit up nicely.

  Jan 12, 2020     I hate the cold - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Removed clamps from yesterday's work. Cleaned off surfaces from blocks and laminated the pairs of blocks together with the individual blocks. The total thickness for all 5 laminations is about 5" thick. They will need to be thinned to about 4-1/4" thick. (Remember the spar thickness of 107.8 mm) The outer edges of the laminations will be trimmed back quite a bit too so not a concern that the edges are currently all over the place. They will be level with one another once they are cut to the appropriate size. The distance between the longer, somewhat parallel sides isn't shown on the drawings. That dimensions is based on the distance between the upper and lower spar caps and the edges will be cut to fit snugly between the caps.

I marked the lower spar cap and took it outside to plane down to the correct thickness. Because it's -24C outside (-36C with the windchill) I set the power hand planer to the most aggressive cutting and chopped away at the spar. I got it to close to the required thickness and then dialled the hand planer back to something less aggressive to finish it off. 15 minutes with the hand planer and I was done; both with the planing and with the cold. I went back into the shop for a while to warm up and get some sand paper. 10 more minutes outside of vigorous sanding and that was it. Truly done.

No photos outside, it was too cold for the fingers or the phone.

  Jan 11, 2020     Spar Laminations and More - (3.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Laminated the third layer on the lower spar cap. Lots of glue, lots of clamps, lots of fun.

Marked out the hole and cut locations on the new pieces of ash. Had to get a new 2" bit from Lee Valley today as the one I had borrowed was damaged and wasn't all that effective at cutting holes. The new bit made quick work of it. Lee Valley's tools are wonderful. Cut out the pieces for the landing gear mounts and the spar root mount. They will be made up from 5 laminations each. Glued and clamped two sets of 2 laminations today. Will then laminate the pairs and the individual piece together tomorrow to get the 5 layers. Doing it this way allowed me to keep on progressing down the right track. I could use my smaller clamps for the pairs of laminations and then tomorrow when the large clamps are available again, I'll be able to use them to glue the 5 layers together.

While I was at it I glued the single lamination piece for the rear spar.

Lastly, I snuck outside for a few minutes in the cold with the thickness planer to create some glue sample stringers. 10 minutes was enough and I'll likely have enough pieces for the rest of the project.

  Jan 10, 2020     Bottom Spar Cap - (1.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Picked up some ash boards today for dense, hard wood for a few structural points in the spar. Most obviously, the landing gear attachment point and the roots of both spars.

Ran the ash boards through the thickness planer, partly to get a nice, smooth and clean surface for laminating and partly for fun. Besides, it's likely to be the last day for the next week that I'll be able to go outside for more than a few minutes. Today got up to a balmy -10C, where next week it's forecast to get down to -29C. Why do we live in this climate

Anyway, back into the shop. Laminated the first and second layers of the bottom cap of the main spar. The photo doesn't look much different than previous laminations but it is new work.

  Jan 09, 2020     Spar work - (3 hours)       Category: Wings

Removed clamps from spar laminations. All sorts of excess glue dripped down over the sides which is a good thing. Better too much glue than not enough.

I used a surform file to trim the excess glue off the sides and a light pass through the thickness planer to clean everything up. I then marked the spar sides to show how much needed to be removed. The cap goes from 3 laminations of 26 mm thick each at the root (78 mm total) to a single layer only 10 mm thick at the tip. The transition from 78mm to 10 mm occurs in approximately the middle third of the span. Taking the spar outside into the cold and snowy weather I spent about 1/2 hour with a powered hand plane to get the taper close. Another 1/2 hour with some sandpaper and the spar cap is beautiful. (It took me another 1/2 hour in the heated shop to warm up again.)

With the spar table clear I was able to lay down the two pieces for the bottom spar cap. Due to knots and flaws in the wood I wasn't able to make this out of a single piece of wood. I had to glue two pieces together along the length of the spar to get the required width. Clamps and clamps and more clamps allowed me to glue this into on piece.

  Jan 08, 2020     Spar Work and More - (3.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Laminated third layer to spar uppers. As the spar's getting thicker, it's reducing the number of clamps that I have that will fit. Fortunately, each successive lamination is shorter than the previous section so it reduces the number of clamps required.

While the spar is drying, I cut out and laminated some of the doublers for the spar. Ten doublers in all. After the glue dries, I'll be able to quickly sand each of them to final required dimensions and cut out lightening holes.

While the doublers were drying, I trimmed some of the spar material to prepare for the scarf joints and trimmed the second lamination on the second spar. It tapers from 20 mm thick to zero over 1174 mm. Almost a 60:1 slope. A bit of work with the band saw, then a power hand planer, then, my favourite, sanding!

  Jan 07, 2020     Started the Spar - (1.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Before starting the spar I cleaned up the area that I'd worked on and glued yesterday.

Spent way too much time trying to build a temporary work table to build the spar on. I set up some sawhorses and tried to shim them into place so that they were even and level without any twist. I had a couple of steel framing studs to build a flat, continuous table top. Because of the potential movement of the sawhorses it just wasn't working adequately.

Looking at my workbench, I realized I could make it work. It was certainly long enough, and if I located the work area properly, I'd still have full access to my tool boxes on the bench top. Sighting down the workbench I could see that it was straight and level. Putting a digital level on it confirmed that there was no twist along the length of it. Sooooo, after all that work trying to level and stabilize the sawhorses, the work bench it is.

I set the steel stud open side down on the workbench and then stacked with alternating joints, two layers of 3/4" MDF on top of it. I'd cut the MDF into 6" wide strips to give me a smooth table top that I could build on and clamp to.

Again, out with the digital level and checked. A-Ok. I'm now on the right track.

So, with little fanfare and not a lot to it, I laminated the top two layers of the main spar. I spread thin epoxy on the mating surfaces of the boards to fully wet each side, then I spread on some more epoxy with high strength flox mixed in. This mixture is to take up any minor gaps in the surface. Then I started clamping. I would have liked to have more clamps but I'm sure that it's fine.

  Jan 06, 2020     Landing Gear Access Panel Redone - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

I wasn't happy with the location of the access panel for the retraction gearing mechanism. To provide better access to adjust the limit switches, the panel needed to be move back about an inch and a half. So I removed the previously installed supports and made new ones to locate the panel in the better spot. While I was at it I cut and sanded similar supports for the panel on the RH wing. I've taped them together with the panel and put it in the collection of goodies for the RH wing.

Of course, once the glue dries, I'll have to spend a few minutes sanding everything flush with the ribs. Sanding is so much fun.

  Jan 05, 2020     No sanding today, just planing - (2 hours) Category: Wings

Spent a couple of hours going through the last pieces of wood to make the spars. Since the spars are made of laminations to get the required depth, I decided it wouldn't be an issue to glue a couple of pieces together to get the required width for one of the laminations. Additionally, I was able to use a 12' section of lumber to cut the required pieces for the rear spar. I will have to splice a short section onto the pieces to get the required length of 13' though. Not an issue. As long as it's done as per AC43-13....

Also cut and planed additional lengths of 6mm x 12mm for stringer material.

No pictures of all this work. There is just a huge pile of wood shavings that I created outside in the subfreezing temperatures. I was trying to get it all done before the real cold weather that we're expecting later this week. -20C uggh!

  Jan 03, 2020     A little bit of planing and yeah, more sanding - (1 hour) Category: Wings

A new bearing and new gear chains for the thickness planer allowed me to rebuild it today. Now it runs as smooth as a Dalotel landing gear gearbox. Hmmmm, I don't expect that will become a common expression. Oh well. The planer is now running real smooth.

I tested the planer first by running a couple of junk boards through it.

After I was satisfied with the performance of the planer, I ran one the boards for my spar through it. I shaved down 13 linear feet of 4.5" wide Douglas Fir. Fresh wood provides such a beautiful smell.

Of course, a day wouldn't be complete without a little more sanding.

  Jan 01, 2020     Final sand? Not likely. - (3 hours)       Category: Wings

Spent the morning fixing the thickness planer that cratered yesterday. Discovered that the outboard bearing was what had failed and that the planer blades effectively took care of any of the loose pieces that dropped out. The outer race was jammed in the housing and the inner race was jammed on the planer roller. Ended up using the dremel tool and patience to cut each of the races to free them from where they were stuck. Fortunately, the dust seal on the bearing was still intact and the bearing number was readable. Ordered a replacement bearing from Amazon. It should be here by the weekend. Disassembled the tractor rollers and found that the chains that power them are very stiff. One of them was off the cogs and the second one looked like it had skipped some cogs at some point. Cleaned the chains with some varsol and then immersed the chains in an oil bath. Unfortunately that hasn't loosed the chains up much. Some searching on the net for replacements wasn't very successful. Maybe more luck tomorrow. So since the planer was out of commission, it was time to sand.

Spent 3 hours outside making dust. Perfect spot for it. Much better than making all that dust in the shop. Used the leaf blower to clean things off before putting the wing back in the shop. It was probably a good thing the sun went down forcing me to stop. I likely would have spent another hour sanding and not really accomplishing anything.

  Dec 31, 2019     Sorted and prepped wood for RH spar - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

I thought it would be neat to start the new spar in the new year so I sorted through the collection of Douglas Fir that I've been keeping since my last project. My desire was to build the RH spar using this lumber. Despite having a couple hundred pounds of lumber, after measuring and careful scrutiny of my current collection, I've got to get more. Some of the lumber that I have has knots in critical locations, or grain that runs out to the edge, or not long or wide or thick enough for the spar laminates. The main spar is a made of six laminations; three on the top and three on the bottom. The laminates are 4-1/4" wide (107.8mm per the plans) and each laminate is about an inch thick (26 mm to be precise). There are three different lengths on the top laminations and 3 different lengths on the bottom laminations. To get the required length and width and thickness requires up to a 13' long section without any knots or grain runout or pitch pockets. There is an allowable amount of imperfections permitted but it's not easy to get a good section of wood.

Sometimes you discover some imperfections when you're prepping the wood. For example, there was a real nice piece about 20' long that was about 9" wide and 1-1/2" thick. It looked like it could be used for a few laminations. As it turned out, there were a couple of knots about a third and two thirds of the way down the length of it. They were not visible from one side but they are clearly visible on the other side. I don't expect that planing the board down to it's required thickness will be enough to remove those knots.

Speaking of planer, after about an hour of using the planer, it decided to make metal and chew up the board that was in it. I'm not sure where this metal came from and what the issue is but that's something I'll have to look into. A quick glance at the blades suggest that they are ok.

  Dec 28, 2019     Stiffener, access panel, and oh yeah, more sanding. - (3.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Getting close to the final sand. I keep finding low spots and filling them with epoxy and fibre filler to bring them up. Afterwards requires some sanding to get them close. The final sand will use a 4' long section of aluminum hand railing. Since it will be a general area sand, I won't be able to hold the vacuum to capture the majority of dust so I'm waiting for a warm day to bring the wing outside to do that.

Created the access panel for the great retraction box. While I was at it, I cut out and prepped the panel for the RH wing too.

While looking at the underside near the wheel well, I decided that I should make a skin stiffener similar to what was done on the topside. The skin on the underside in that area won't be as stiff as the topside due to the hole for the wheel and the rest of the landing gear. As such, some additional skin stiffening should be added. Maybe it was there in the original, maybe it wasn't. It wasn't shown in the drawings but I'm adding it anyway. It won't hurt.

Lastly, I spent some time reviewing AC 43.13-1B - Acceptable Methods, Techniques, and Practices - Aircraft Inspection and Repair, and looking at the fabric covering on the aileron. From what I can see, the aileron and likely the wing were not covered as per AC 43-13. The rib stitching was too far apart and technically, there should have been a layer of fabric tape over the seam at the front edge of the aileron. Similarly, there should have been fabric tape over the seam at the leading edge of the wing. I suspect there wasn't.

  Dec 26, 2019     Sanding continued and aileron fitting - (3.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Yeah, more sanding. But then for something different I remounted the aileron and discovered that I had to modify the outboard bracket nutplate that I had created last month. This was the first time I'd mounted the aileron since then and I hadn't fully tested everything for fit at that time. Oh well. A bit of backwards to go forwards. Once the aileron was mounted I sanded the stub ribs between the rear spar and the front of the ailerons. I made sure there was sufficient and even clearance at each rib.

I took out a sharpie marker and outlined the rib stitching patches and reinforcements on the covering. I think I'd taken a picture of them previously but they were very hard to see with the heavy coat of paint that was on the fabric. It's very easy to see now and it will be helpful when it comes time to recover. The aileron was covered with one piece of fabric. The bottom was covered first and wrapped around the leading edge of the aileron and cut about an inch above the centre line of the aileron. The fabric was pulled over the ends of the aileron and glued and then the fabric was wrapped around the trailing edge and forward to the centre line of the aileron. The fabric was pulled down over the ends and glued to the ribs near the bottom surface.

I replaced a rib stringer that had been cut at one point. I wasn't pleased with it and I finally got around to splicing a new section in. It didn't take that long to do. I don't know why I put it off for so long.

  Dec 24, 2019     Planing and sanding and sanding and sanding - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Got to use the plane again today to shape the trailing edge and trim a few other places on the wing. Then lots of time spent sanding in localized areas.

  Dec 23, 2019     Almost done all the stringers and stiffeners and such. - (4 hours)       Category: Wings

Tested all the glue test blocks so far. As desired, all the breaks were at the wood and not the glue. Carry on.

Glued the last of the stringer and stiffeners in place.

Spent some time going over various glue joints and filing and sanding away excess glue. Not really necessary but my OCD makes me do it. I guess it's reducing the overall weight of the airplane by a few grams at a time. Lighter planes fly better anyway. Especially if/when doing aerobatics.

I was so pleased with the outcome of the new retract indicator pin, I decided to clean up the other one. A few minutes with some sandpaper, starting at 400 grit and working my way to 2000 grit removed the surface scoring and grime and oxidation. Removed the original red paint and then cleaned the pin and gave it a new coating of red on the end and at the midway point. Photo shows left to right, the original damaged pin, the newly restored original pin, and brand new pin from a couple of days ago.

  Dec 22, 2019     Sanding, fitting and more - (1.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Planed and sanded the new section of subspar. Really pleased with the splice joint. Fitted little stiffeners and stringers to hold various doublers and webbing in place.

  Dec 21, 2019     Fixing and Repairs - (4 hours)       Category: Wings

A bunch of sanding today and gluing. While I was at it, decided to attack a few spots that needed fixing. For example, when planing one of the members of the subspar, I uncovered a knot in the wood. This meant that this member had to be removed and replaced in entirety or a section spliced in. Since it was at one end of the subspar, I elected to splice a section in as per AC43-13. Similarly, I did a few repairs on other sections of ribs.

Added cap strips to N3 rib and epoxied into place.

  Dec 18, 2019     More fitting and sanding and gluing, oh boy! - (2 hours) Category: Wings

Yeah, it seems to be getting monotonous but really there are a lot of tedious steps to build an airplane. One of the frustrating things about building a wood airplane is waiting for the glue to dry. It seems that you can only prep so much then you HAVE to glue some pieces together before you can make any more progress. No photos today but I did glue in the nose section of N3 rib and built up the spar section of the N3 rib. For fitting I had to extend the landing gear. This was a bit of work because the weight of the gear is normally supported by the retract spring. When the wing is inverted, you're lifting the weight of the gear as well as compressing the retract spring.

  Dec 17, 2019     More fitting and sanding and gluing - (3.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Placed an order with AC Spruce for the new wheels, brakes, and axles. Once those arrive, it will allow me to more accurately mock up the landing gear fork prior to its actual fabrication.

Spent a lot of time sanding and fitting for the access panel supports and for the new sections of N3 ribs. The N3 nose rib is actually made of two independent sections that are bisected by the landing gear when it's retracted. They are nothing like as the plans show so lots of fitting by trial and error. Additionally, they need to provide clearance for installation of the landing gear spring. Good thing there's a photo of the wheel well from the original build. Looking at the old photo I don't see any value in the section of N3 rib glued to the front of the main spar, at least, not in it's triangular shape. As it is, the rib doesn't touch either the top or the bottom skin. I'm planning on a larger rib that actually touches both skins, providing extra support for the skin and extra stability for the rib. We'll see how it goes.

Spent a little bit of time on the pitot system. The pitot tube is mounted to the underside of the left wing and the sensing line runs through the rear spar and then inboard behind the spar and in front of the aileron. This will allow it to enter the cockpit in line with the instrument panel.

  Dec 15, 2019     Sanding, fitting and more - (4 hours)       Category: Wings

Cleaned up some of the glue joints. Cut hole through stiffeners and second skin on N4 rib for retract spring. Removed N2 nose rib and top skin stiffener from original wing section. Cleaned the original paint off of these pieces and prepped to fit into appropriate spots on new wing.

Cut and prepped new mounting blocks for retract access panels that were shown yesterday.

  Dec 14, 2019     More fittings and sanding and gluing - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

First photo pretty much sums it up.

Added misc blocks and doublers, varnished inside of N4 rib, added second skin to N4 rib, added remaining shear webs to forward subspar, added wing walk supports and braces.

Removed damaged blocks and supports from retract access panels. These original access panels are made from XXX (I can't think of the name right now, I'll update it when it comes to me) and have stiffeners riveted to them. They are in great condition and will be reused. The blocks that they were screwed to were damaged, some of the screws were damaged and some were stuck. The screws threaded into some beautiful nut plates that were mounted to the backside of the support blocks. The nut plates were held in place by tiny brass screws. Unfortunately since most of the access panel screws would need to be replaced and a bunch of the nut plates would need to be replaced, I'm going to replace them all with conventional anchor nuts with AN screws. At least I'm reusing the access panels.

  Dec 13, 2019     Ribs, Shearwebs, and Doublers - (3.5 hours)       Category: Wings

More of the same. One of the big steps was the installation of the landing gear torque tube. This wasn't really a big job to do but it was nice to get done. This makes it much easier for me to manually operate the landing gear. To install the torque tube I had to remove the wing from the wing rotisserie and rest the wing on a saw horse for a few minutes. Once the torque tube was installed I put the wing back in the rotisserie for ease of build.

  Dec 11, 2019     More subspar work - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Removed clamps and staples from subspar from yesterday. Removing the staples takes a long time. Inevitably you brake one or two off that leave a tiny stub that's too small to grab to pull out and just large enough to catch your hand on. The only solution is to push them deeper into the wood and leave them there. Where possible I use my rivet squeezer to push them just below the surface or use a hammer and punch.

Did a rough sanding of the subspar top and bottom. Need to get a long sanding block to do it properly so that the airfoil contour is correct. I'd found a 4 foot section of aluminum handrail works great for that purpose. It's the ideal size, shape, and weight. And it's always straight and true. I made one for my 1-Design wing but that piece of aluminum was recently liberated for a family project. I'll pick up another one tomorrow from the aviation department of Home Depot.

I removed the short nose section of N5 rib from the original wing. It's in good condition and with just a touch on the belt sander it fits into my wing. It's just like a "quick build" kit. Ha!

Epoxied in some of the shear webbing for the forward subspar.

  Dec 10, 2019     Bolts arrived - (1.5 hours)       Category: Wings

The big news is that the AN5-80A bolts arrived today. Thanks Airfasco. I used them to mount the retract gearing in place. Sadly, with the new subspar in place, I couldn't get one of the bolts in from the front. It had to be inserted from the opposite end. Not a biggie, I just wanted all the bolt heads on one side of the spar. All the other bolts will be inserted from the front of the spar, that way there will be minimal protrusion into the retract area. The photo showing the gearbox mounted shows the nut and washer. Although the photo makes is look like there's no clearance between the end of the bolt and the pitman arm, there is.

Added the shear webbing to the subspar. This closed up the small box for the subspar.

  Dec 09, 2019     Landing gear bay - (3 hours)       Category: Wings

More of the same. Lots of trimming, fitting, and bracing to ensure that the landing gear can retract without any binding and to get the secondary sub spar into correct position. This sub spar runs along the top of the ribs, from near the leading edge of the root rib, diagonally outboard towards the main spar of the 6th rib. As it goes outboard, it also climbs. Add in the fact that the ribs not only change size, but the airfoil also changes from the root to the tip, well, getting this sub spar into proper place isn't so easy. Did I mention that it's not even shown on the plans? Yeah, a bit of trial and error to get it to fit properly. Eventually, epoxied the secondary sub spar and bracing into place. After that had dried, the structure was stiff enough to elongate hole for spring return. It looks larger than necessary but there's a heavy vinyl sleeve that zips on over the spring to protect everything. Need clearance for that too.

I couldn't wait any longer, I just had to start planing the primary sub spar to shape. A few minutes with the hand plane resulted in a spar cap that roughly matches the rib shape and left a lovely pile of shavings on the floor.

  Dec 08, 2019     More fitting and cutting and head scratching - (3 hours)       Category: Wings

Planed some wood into dimensional stringers then worked on the wheel well area again. Drilled and enlarged hole in rib to allow landing gear retract spring to pass through and operate. Need to enlarge it some more but first I must add stiffeners fro strength. The stiffener that was installed according to plans will have to cut through to permit the spring to fit. Ray sent me a nice picture of this area that was taken during the build. I likely have this photo in all the other great photos that he'd provided. Admittedly I haven't sorted through all of those 50 year old pictures yet. Regardless, the picture that Ray sent me should indicate how the ribs were situated and how everything fit, but as it turns out, they must have made changes to the structure after the picture was taken. The spring return wasn't installed at the time of the picture and looking at it, it wouldn't have fit had they kept the ribs that way. So it seems they must have made some further modifications as they continued with the build.

So it's trial and error as I go.

I ran some tape between the tops of the ribs to replicate the skin. This allows me to visualize how much space I have for the gear to retract into the wing. I'm going to have to mock up some new landing gear forks. The existing ones are damaged beyond use and only provide a vague clue how it will all fit together.

Epoxied in the bottom strip for the leading edge subspar and fabricated the secondary subspar, which will reside where the blue tape is in the photos. All of this will strengthen this area and allow me to cut the stiffener that's in the way of the retract spring.

  Dec 07, 2019     More fitment and head scratching. - (3.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Completed nose rib number 4. Epoxied into place in wheel well bay. Epoxied leading edge and upper cap strip on forward sub spar. Mounted landing gear and swung it into the retract position to see potential conflicts. Realized that once again, the drawings do not reflect exactly what was built. In fact, nose rib number 3 as drawn didn't even exist on the completed plane, only a short section of rib stiffener. I realized this from the left over pieces from the original wing.

Laid out location for secondary sub spar as shown with blue masking tape in photos. This sub spar will run diagonally from the nose of rib 1 to close to the main spar on rib 6. Actual location needed to be identified and ribs will have to be trimmed accordingly. This sub spar is not shown on the rib plans so notch in rib 4 had to be identified through fitment. Rib 4 will be modified tomorrow or the next day. Additionally, the retract spring runs from the fitting mounted to the main spar at rib 1 to the appropriate bracket on the landing gear. The corresponding notch or hole in rib 4 isn't shown on the drawings so it will have to be located through fitment.

Cut out some plywood discs to mount the new tire to. This will allow me to mock up a new fork assembly and determine fitment for the wheel. Original tire sizes and wheels are no longer available. These new tires will use a standard 5.00 x 5 wheel but give the largest outer diameter possible with the narrowest tire and wheel size available. The original wheel and tire combo were larger diameter but narrower. The challenge will be to fit all this within the wing thickness.

Marked up some drawings for Pierre to machine. He didn't like the fact that the original drawings were in metric. Some simple conversions and some minor changes to the drawings then e-mailed to Pierre to start machining.

  Dec 05, 2019     Ribs and Spars in the landing gear bay - (5 hours)       Category: Wings

Prepped the forward section of the ribs in the landing gear bay. This involved cutting and fitting the forward subspar which is located at the 5% chord line. This subspar runs from the root rib to the second rib past the landing gear bay. This ties up and strengthens the skin and leading edge area above the landing gear bay. There are two sections of ribs that need to be made. That is, the forward sections of ribs 3 and 4. Unfortunately the dimensions for this section of rib aren't easy to work with. See attached drawing for rib number 3. The box spar is the rectangle leaning forward a few degrees. What is the length of the section forward of the spar? It isn't clearly defined. There's a dimension from the centre of the spar to leading edge, but who in their right mind would consider using the centre of the spar as a point of reference? There's no way to measure from there. Similarly, there are dimensions that run to points on the rib behind the spar but as I've discovered with this build, not all pieces are as per the drawings. So to create the rib required plotting out the coordinates for the rib and making it longer than required. I cut it out longer than required and then trimmed it down to fit with the front face of the spar. Unfortunately, after many cuts, I overdid it and cut the rib shorter than it should be. So, do it again....

Used the thickness planer to make some more stringers and strips for the subspar mentioned above. I moved the planer outside to run it. No sense adding more dust to the shop than necessary. It was a crisp -10 C outside with a bit of wind so I didn't want to stay out there longer than necessary. Only made the pieces I absolutely needed.

Fit the leading edge strip for the outboard section of the wing. This required a bit of fitting, cutting, and sanding to get to fit properly and have a straight line for the leading edge to follow.

It seemed like I did more than that today but that's all I have to show for it.

  Dec 04, 2019     Glue and Dust - (3 hours)       Category: Wings

Lots of progress today. Made some miscellaneous little parts, gussets, doublers, etc. Removed aileron and inboard aileron hinge bracket to allow access to inside of rib 6.5 from yesterday. Added epoxy to this inside joint and "painted" the inboard side of the rib with thin epoxy. Once the hinge bracket goes back in, it's not coming back out so that area needed to be sealed or varnished. Epoxied trailing edge in place and added gussets on the end ribs (these weren't in the original design but I feel they are worth the extra weight and effort). Epoxied the last of the spar caps in place. Varnished the backside of the spar where the landing gear back plates go and painted the front of the spar where the landing gear mounting plates will go. Will eventually need to seal up all of the wood structure so any area that will be covered by plates or brackets needs to be varnished or painted prior to having those pieces mounted. I will paint the rest of the wheel well once the rest of the ribs and structure is in place. Got out the thickness planer. What fun. There's something quite enjoyable about taking rough cut wood and turning it into dimensional lumber, especially if those final dimensions are only 12mm x 6mm. After an hour of using the planer I have some stringer material, some leading edge material, some sub spar material, and a few other pieces.

  Dec 03, 2019     Measure twice, cut once or in this case, glue once - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Trimmed rib number 6.5. Yes, 6.5. That's because it's about halfway between rib 6 and rib 7. It's the rib that's immediately inboard of the aileron, and it's only from the rear spar to the trailing edge. It is fully sheeted and it has a hole in it to permit the aileron to connect to the torque tube and to fit in the bearing as the inboard hinge. Measured, fit, trimmed, measured, fit, oh, maybe I moved something there, better measure again. Finally, was satisfied to mark where the aileron connection passes through rib 6.5 and cut out and finish the hole for the connection. See pictures.

Again, after some more fitting and adjustment and fitting some additional blocking for spar caps, I epoxied the rib and the spar caps, into place.

  Dec 02, 2019     Trailing edge and Spar Caps - (1.5 hours) Category: Wings

With the fuselage gone from the shop, I could rotate the wing fully giving me access to areas previously hidden. Touched up some of the newly exposed glue joints. Cut some blockage for some missing spar cap strips. Cut a section for trailing edge material at the root, inboard of the aileron. Did some more thinking about the wing skins and with a few extra scarf joints, I think I can get it down to 8 sheets of ply vs. the 11 sheets previously estimated. Why not do the skins per the plans? Because the plane wasn't built exactly per the plans. Ray confirmed that the wings were fully sheeted when he received the wreckage. So I guess the aircraft morphed during construction and the plans weren't updated. I'm sure many changes happen during the development of any prototype. Likely more often than many of us would realize. Of course, as the design goes into production, the drawings should be updated. Anyone who's restored an antique of any sort, can attest that it is different from the drawings.

  Dec 01, 2019     Progress - (2.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Rebuilt the rib that I'd cut up yesterday. Touched up some of the existing glue joints.
Did some shaping to the wingtip bow with the hand plane. There's something extremely satisfying about using a nice hand plane to make wood shavings. Next step will be to sand the tip down.

I also spent some time thinking about the overall layout of the wing and the best way to skin it. The wings will likely be sheeted entirely in 3/32" aircraft grade ply with the grain running parallel to the spar. The approximate outside dimension of each wing is 13' with a 6' root rib and a 4' tip rib. I'll have to see if there are different sizes of plywood available beyond the standard 4' x 8'. Standard 4' x 8' sheets will require quite a bit of trimming and waste if I want to layer the scarf joints onto structure underneath. That would be ideal. The last plane that I'd built was a DR-107. One of the simple, but brilliant things that Dan Rihn considered when he designed the DR-107 was the use of the plywood on its wings. A single sheet of 4' x 8' ply was used to cover each surface of each wing. That is, four sheets of ply for all the wing surface. The wing on the DR-107 has a root chord close to 6' and the wing tapers towards the tip. What was cut off at the tip due to the taper was then scarfed onto the root section to provide the width for the full chord. Only about a 1/4" was removed from the length of the plywood and it all fit on the wing. Of course, the DR-107 is a single seat plane and is quite a bit smaller, but I love those sorts of details in designs. Well done Dan!

For the Dalotel, my initial calculations suggest 11 sheets of 4 x 8 ply for this project, and approx 76 square feet of it becomes wasted. But that is if I sheet the entire wing. The drawings suggest that the area between the ailerons and main spar were left open, or unsheeted. I found some of Ray's notes that he made when he first acquired this project about 10 years ago. It also sounds like the wing was originally skinned with different types of ply in 4' x 4' sections. This resulted in a lot of joints and they used a lot of filler to try to smooth the wing. I think we can do better than that for the rebuild.

  Nov 30, 2019     More Backwards than Forwards - (5 hours)       Category: Wings

Today was one of those trying days where it feels like I would have been better off if I hadn't put any effort in the project at all.

I worked on the aileron mounting and the wing rib inboard of the aileron. This was a time for some headscratching. Despite all the drawings of the plane, some areas are vague or incomplete. This is one of those areas. The challenge is that the aileron hinges extend beyond each end of the aileron. The hinge at the outboard end of the aileron is a pin that threads into the end of the aileron and is secured with a cotterpin and an oversized, custom made locknut. The pin extends about 2 inches beyond the aileron and it fits into a bearing that's mounted within the tip ribs of the wing. The inboard end of the aileron hinge connects to the aileron torque tube connector. This end is permanently fixed. So the challenge is to fit something that's about 2150 mm long into a gap that's only 2054 mm long. (Since this is a French design, all the dimensions on the plane are listed in millimetres.) Since there's an access plate on the inboard end to allow one to connect the aileron to the aileron torque tube, it seemed like that should be the area that I'd have to modify to allow assembly. For mounting the aileron, my plan was to insert the pin in the outboard end into its bearing, swing the aileron over the middle bearing, and have the inboard end feed through a slot in the corresponding rib and then mount the inboard hinge bracket. I had trimmed the rib in this area and after much fiddling and cutting, it became obvious that the best solution would be to mount the aileron in the opposite order. That is, inboard end first, then swing into place, with the tip end lined up last. This would require having the outboard hinge pin out during assembly and then once the aileron was in place, thread the pin in place and attach the bracket and bearing for the pin. Of course, this means that there's the need for an access panel at the tip. Looking at the drawings again, it now appears that that's how it was done. It wasn't so obvious before.

While doing this, I checked the alignment of everything and discovered that the hinge points on the aileron aren't perfectly in line. The aileron is an aluminum structure and there's no chance for any adjustment so things must have been out of alignment when it was built. With only the inboard and middle hinges in place, the outboard hinge pin wanders by about 1/16 of an inch when the aileron is deflected through its full range of travel. This results in a bit of friction in the assembly when everything is fully snugged up. Not ideal but still less friction than some control surfaces I've seen.

The positive of today is that I have a better understanding of the assembly and have a plan for tomorrow. I'll have to make a new section of rib to replace the one I'd cut today but that's easy enough.

  Nov 28, 2019     Cover plates and Doubler Plates - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Spent a bit of time cleaning up the inboard hinge for the RH aileron. The bearing had a bit of surface rust showing. Had the bearing sit overnight in a bath of Evapo-Rust. Washed it off and gave it a quick brushing with a brass bristled brush. Sprayed it with WD-40 to purge any residual moisture. The WD in WD-40 stands for Water Displacement. WD-40 is not a lubricant, it's a solvent and it displaces water. Anyway, cleaned the WD-40 off and then immersed the bearing in a bath of oil. Spun the bearing by hand while immersed in the oil. Did this many times and the bearing is now running smooth. Cleaned off the bearing and then gave it a quick spray with GlideCoat, an aerosol wax designed to protect the surface of woodworking tools. I like it because it gives the metal a surface protection, it's easy, and it's quick drying. Mounted the bearing into it's bracket and safety wired it in place.

Cut out some cover plates for the holes I'd opened up a day ago. Also created some new doubler plates to replace old, damaged ones.

Lastly, I duplicated the stub ribs that close the gap between the rear spar and the front of the aileron. I used the existing ones on the LH wing as templates and cut out the new ones for the RH wing from some ply that I had from a previous build. It was a fun puzzle to see who tight I could pack the pieces into one piece of ply. The bigger challenge was to see how I was going to cut them out. My bandsaw has only about 7" reach. In the end it was pretty easy. They were all rough cut in about 5 minutes. Once they get mounted to the wing and the aileron mounted as well, they will be trimmed for ideal fit.

  Nov 27, 2019     Prep and Inspection - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

Fabricating some new nut plates for aileron hinge mounts. Also prepared those areas on the wing by coating with spar varnish. I won't be able to varnish those areas once the hinge mounts are in.

Placed an order for some bolts and other misc items from AC Spruce. Need these new bolts for mounting the hinge mounts.

Removed some cover plates that were glued to the box spar. The covers were over the holes left in the spar by the spoiler mechanism. Figured it would be best to have a look inside and glue new cover plates over them. The only discovery I made was a very small wasp nest inside one of the holes. Maybe it was there from 50 years ago. No wasps or larvae in there so all is well.

  Nov 26, 2019     Cleaned up more pieces - (0.5 hour)       Category: Wings

Removed bolts holding aileron inner bearing in place. Bolts looked fine but cleaned them up, repainted the heads, and put in new safety wire. Much better as well.

Cleaned the second servo tab rod ends and washers.

I know, I'm avoiding actual building right now but that's ok. Still familiarizing and planning.

  Nov 23, 2019     Miscellaneous parts cleaning - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

Spent some time cleaning up some landing gear parts and also one of the aileron servo pushrods. 40+ years of dust and dirt needed to be removed. The rod end bearings on the servo pushrods are screwed onto their tabs with metric caps screws and locknuts and with brass washers. A little bit of elbow grease and metal polish and those brass washers look real pretty again. I removed the rust from the lock nut by having it sit overnight in a small dish of Evapo-Rust. Available from the aircraft section of Lee Valley. ;-)

The bearings in the rod ends are really neat. The outer ring has two groves in it that allow to ball to be removed and everything cleaned. I didn't take a picture of that detail but I found an image on the internet of a rod end with similar grooves. I've never seen this style before. Very helpful for cleaning and lubing.

  Nov 22, 2019     Cleaned up some fittings etc - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

As the title says, spent about an hour cleaning up some fittings and bolts and nuts. Cleaned up and deburred end of aileron where torque tube connects. Again, the workmanship and corresponding complexity is impressive. Why a universal joint is required on the connector to the aileron torque tube is beyond me. It's part of the novelty of this plane. I suspect that the aileron end of the universal joint was dropped on the ground at some point. It required a bit of deburring for the ball joint to fit into the fingers. A bit of time with a fine file and some 600 grit sandpaper allows the assembly to come together. It's now beautifully smooth without any play in the rotation.

I took a picture of the spoiler system for interest sake and weighed the pieces of it. At least 15 lbs will be saved by not mounting the spoilers in the plane.

  Nov 21, 2019     Test fit aileron - (1.5 hours)       Category: Wings

Test fit existing aileron to LH wing. The ailerons were built out of aluminum. The LH one is still covered in its original fabric and the RH one is stripped. They are rather heavy because there isn't much of distance ahead of the hinge point for counter balance. As such, the counter balance is very heavy.
Check out the last picture. If you look carefully you can see the rib stitching and fabric covering the rib stitching. Rather than running a single strip of pinked tape down the length of the rib, covering all the stitching on that rib, they made individual "doilys" with pinked edges over each set of stitches. Again, not conventional. But that's part of the charm of this aircraft.

The other thing worth noting is that each of the three hinge points on the aileron are completely different from one another. Considering Dalotel was intending to mass produce this plane, I would have expected as much commonality amongst parts as possible, but no.

The outer hinge point is a small diameter shaft that is screwed into the end of the aileron rib. See attached picture. The larger diameter end of the shaft is threaded into the tip of the aileron until the threaded end is completely buried into the aileron. Note the excessive length of shaft that becomes threaded into the aileron. I'm sure that the threaded portion of the shaft could be half that length without any issues whatsoever. The small diameter shaft runs through a bearing mounted on a precision machined aluminum fitting mounted in the wing.

The mid hinge point is bolted to the backside of the spar and in addition the bolts and the nut plates, it is made up of 3 precision machined aluminum fittings and 2 half bushings that fit into the aluminum fitting. See attached picture.

Finally, the root hinge point is a large diameter ball bearing assembly that is screwed onto a machined aluminum fitting. You can see it in the picture of the underside of the wing (underside of aileron is yellow). The torque tube connection shaft comes out of the aileron and connects to a complex universal joint inboard of the hinge assembly. Details on that connection in future entries.

Again, it's worth noting the quality of the machining and complexity of some of the work and yet, at the same time, the much simpler, much less glamorous nut plate that secures the aileron tip bracket. See attached picture. Some of the nut plates are beautiful. Others, like this one, are purely functional. I'm going to replace this nut plate with some AN nutplates riveted to an aluminum plate that is screwed to the wood. Most of the smaller bolts in the plane are metric cap crews that are safety wired in bundles. In a case like this, I'm going to replace them with AN bolts and have confidence in their strength.