May 08, 2022     Bottom Skins Riveted - (3 hours)       Category: Right Wing

Final assembly and riveting of bottom skins

  Apr 24, 2022     Reassembly of Bottom Skins - (4.2 hours)       Category: Right Wing

Built wing attachment doublers, fit root skin, and cleco'd almost everything back together. Still need to final hole drill the outboard trailing edge and rivet everything together. Most holes have a rivet or cleco in them.

  Apr 24, 2022     Reassembly of Bottom Skins - (4.2 hours) Category: Right Wing

Built wing attachment doublers, fit root skin, and cleco'd almost everything back together. Still need to final hole drill the outboard trailing edge and rivet everything together. Most holes have a rivet or cleco in them.

  Apr 23, 2022     Deburring for Hours! - (6 hours) Category: Right Wing

Drilled from bottom skin to spars and spent the rest of the time deburring with my new TX In and Out tool from The YardStore. Nice tool, still a ton of deburring. Primed parts as I went. Final bottom skin assembly is next.

  Apr 16, 2022     Leading and Trailing Edges - (3 hours)       Category: Right Wing

Bottom leading and trailing edge fitting

  Apr 15, 2022     Bottom Skins - (1.6 hours) Category: Right Wing

Drilled inboard and outboard bottom skins

  Apr 15, 2022     Fitting Bottoms Skins - (1.2 hours)       Category: Right Wing

Fit and cleco'd bottom inboard and outboard skins

  Apr 14, 2022     Lower Skin Started - (1.3 hours) Category: Right Wing

Installed strut attachment fitting, tie down connector, and started prepping lower skins

  Apr 13, 2022     Wiring for Nav/Strobe Lights - (1 hour) Category: Right Wing

Finished drilling and installing wire holders for nav/strobe lights and the wire itself.

  Apr 12, 2022     Wiring for Nav/Strobe Lights - (1.2 hours) Category: Right Wing

Started wiring for nav/strobe lights. Very hard to get rivets through area where root doublers are, there is not enough A5 rivet depth. Chose to use A6 near root.

  Apr 10, 2022     Skeleton Assembly - (3 hours)       Category: Right Wing

Finished prepping main spar, prepped rear spars and ribs, deburred, primed, and riveted almost all of the skeleton. Drilled the root front rib too large and will have to order another. A6 rivets should use #10 bit or 13/64", not whatever huge bit I chose! We got a water rescue call for a plane that flipped over on Jaybird Shoals and I could not finish the riveting. Only about 30 minutes of work remain.

  Apr 09, 2022     Spar Prep - (2.6 hours) Category: Right Wing

Drilling, deburring, and priming main spar, nose ribs, rear ribs, spar extension, etc.

  Apr 07, 2022     Fixing Factory Mistake - (.5 hour) Category: Right Wing

The factory accidentally installed the uprights that support the fuel tanks. It is not possible to install the nose ribs with that riveted, so tonight I drilled out those rivets.

  Apr 03, 2022     Skeleton Assembly - (3.8 hours)       Category: Right Wing

First time back on the project in almost a year because I have been in the police academy. I asked Zenith to delay the wing and fuel system kits several times since I knew I would not have time to do any work. The kits arrived last week and it feels good to be back on it!

I assembled the skeleton with cleco's. Had to trim the root rib slightly to fit. The spars came from the factory with the upright channels for the fuel tank already mounted with solid and pulled rivets. There is no way to install the nose ribs with those rivets in there. I contacted Roger to make sure I had the correct spars and we verified they are. I will have to drill out the factory rivets to install 2 nose ribs and will use AN3 bolts instead of solid rivets to reattach.