Apr 17, 2022     Wings 4 - (100 hours)       Category: Wings

Wing tips.

I installed the aeroled's abd the lens for each wingtip per the plans. I am using the sunspot AeroLeds that vans sells. Works great, easy plans to follow and I'm very happy with them.

I then went onto the wingtips where I had to install a ton of nutplates and since I am using the Bob Archer wingtip Antenna I figured that I should install that now since it will go under the nutplates.

All in all this was a fairly uneventful task and now I'm basically done with the wings. The Quickbuild option saved me a ton of time which is perfect since my finish kit is now here sitting in my garage.

  Apr 17, 2022     Wings 3 Bottom Skins - (30 hours)       Category: Wings

Took a very long time to finally rivet the bottom skins in place. Dealing with the pitot tube was annoying and had to take out the mounting bracket before ri could put the pitot tube out.

Thankfully my mentor was willing to spend several hours with me over 4 days getting these skins riveted.

I ended up moving all the wiring for the nav and landing lights so that it stays along the spar and kept the shots mid rib for the pitot tube and power, the GMU11 adhrs (left wing) and the VOR antenna and A/P servo (right wing).

I did find two issues with the quick build kit. First the attach tab for the right aileron was installed without hardware so the bolt did not line up. I contacted support and they advised me to bend it slightly outboard and that should relieve the pressure on the bolt. Upon inspection the tab was bent slightly inboard so when I adjusted it to slightly outboard the bolt went in fairly close to straight. With the bearing inside the addachemeny it will not be an issue.

The second issue I found was they had installed the wrong nutplates on one of the access panels. This just also happened to be under 2 skins. So I had two drill out half a dozen rivets and gently peel back the skins to remove the nutplate and install the correct one. Luckily you cannot even tell since I have become a pro at removing rivets 🫣

  Apr 01, 2022     Aileron Actuators - (28 hours)       Category: Wings

There are several small items I did between the last post and this one, mainly centering around systems routing and wiring. Sadly I am still waiting on a couple more items before I can close so I skipped ahead and completed the aileron actuators and the bellcrank assembly. I did not yet install the auto pilot servo as it will make riveting the bottom skins a little more difficult and I can instal that though the access panel later.

Once again I was able to cut the steel tube and drill all the holes with my harbor freight band saw, drill press and my Ryobi hand drill. It is quite a pain working with steel parts.

The puzzle of final assembly was pretty challenging as I primed the inside and outside of all the parts that were not already powder coated. These parts were already very snug before priming and adding the primer proved to be too much. Thus, I ended up having to remove-assemble-repaint all the parts that overlap

When you assemble the actuator in the wing root, you have to actually push the home-made tube deep into the bell crank, so yet again I had to remove and repaint the primer in the outside of the tube. Luckily this was not too difficult.

Once I got everything on I was incredibly pleased with the measurement once I put the aileron bellcrank in neutral using the jig from Van'a. Both sides were spot on perfectly 2 & 17/32 “ from the rib. Incredibly impressed once again with the accuracy of Van's parts and this time I proved to be quite accurate myself given all the different chances I had to be off if I wasn't perfectly accurate.

Now that I have finished this I am just about ready to close. I will only have the wing tips left before the finish kit awaits. It's getting closer!

  Feb 20, 2022     QB wing part 1 - (58 hours)       Category: Wings

Inspection of the QB wings, ailerons, flaps and bottoms skins complete. Bottom skins were damaged so Van's sent me 2 new ones, other than that the quality of the work was incredible. Few bolts were loose and one access panel needed some love to lay flat but the overall workmanship was very well done.

Additionally the inventory was a lot more hardware than expected. I found it very useful to roseate the bags into the trays with the correct label and made additional trays for hardware that was in familiar.

Very easy to work with screws and nut plates. Although I do not play on installing the stall warning so the access panel on the leading edge is unnecessary, so I have to figure out how to plug this two holes. I ordered some reduced head 3-3.5's for these holes.

Once I finished catching up with the plans I began working on landing lights. I also ordered these from vans but they will be quite some times before they come. The plexiglass was easy to work with but scratched even with my finger nail so I used A LOT of painters tape to keep it from scratches. Luckily I discovered just how easy it was to scratch while practicing on the edges (per the recommendation of section 5).

It was a bit of a hassle moving the wings back and forth from the wing racks, but the location of the landing lights made it so that I had no choice here.

Next is to work on the Pitot Tube. I purchased the pitot mast from Dynon and it looks like it will work just outside the bulkhead where the aileron bell crank is located. Should not interfere with the tie down and I can use the rib to help anchor the back of the mast ledge to it with a small piece of aluminum angle.