John Denver once wrote a song, "Some days are diamonds, some days are stones." Today was kind of rocky. Went to the shop with high hopes of making major progress on the flaperons. For some reason, the instructions on page 18-03 really confused me. Got off to a bad start right away on Step 1. How do you cleco parts together that don't have holes in them yet? Puzzled over this for a while, then just put the parts together with the counterweight loose. Duh - that's what they meant in the first place I guess. Drilling the two end holes in the counterweight wasn't too hard - I was very careful to mark and drill the holes in steps in the drill press. Then for Step 3. Tells you to rivet the end ribs to the counterweight - but provides no way to mark the location of the holes with the parts assembled, and they fall apart when you uncleco them. After lunch I got Carolyn to come up to the shop with some fesh brain power. In a half hour we had the parts marked for drilling. Humiliating. After that I very carefully marked all the holes for drilling through the skin into the stainless steel counterweight. All the holes went in very easily, once again using the drill press with a sharp #40 bit. Test assembled the parts with #40 clecos, and found out 3 or 4 of the holes had slipped off center. They will be OK when drilled out to #30, but I wasn't happy about it and a bit mystified since I had been very very careful. Decided the best thing for damage control was to do dumb work the rest of the day. Deburred a lot of small parts. Planned to finish the day by shooting primer on the small parts and the spar, but ran short of time. It figures. Better luck next time.
