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My Airplane Projects
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Date: 1-7-2011
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Number of Hours: 7.00
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Manual Reference:
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Brief Description: Worked on the wing installation, made tapered pin.
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Snowed all day. Went to airport and began work on left wing. Laid it down on the tables, removed masking tape, and installed flaperon, stall warning cover, tie down ring, and nav light.
Dwayne and Ron R. helped me install both wings. No matter how hard we tried we couldn't get the pins in. No amount of wiggling, coaxing, and strange incantations would move the recalcitrant spars into alignment. Called NAPA to see if they had a muffler pipe expander in stock. Some other builders swear by them. None in stock, and 100 bucks to order one.
Bill suggested turning down a piece of metal to make a tapered pin, another trick some builders have used with success. I went to ACE and picked up a piece of pipe that I thought was about the right size. Also stopped at the Chinese restaurant for a bowl of their incomparable hot and sour soup, to cheer me up.
When I walked back into the hangar and looked at the plane something struck me as wrong. Bottom line - the plates with the electrical connections on them for each wing, that I had not painted because they wouldn't show ....... showed. Duh.
Anyway the piece of pipe I had bought was not thick enough. Bill found a piece of 2" solid aluminum rod and we decided to make our own tapered pin (bullet) as a test run of the new old lathe that Bill recently acquired. An hour later we had a perfect bullet, that worked flawlessly to align the spars. In 2 minutes both pins were in where they should be.
I marked the fuselage with a fine Sharpie so the foam strip can be applied in the right place, and then installed the non-skid pads on the wings. Bill helped me remove the wings and put them back in the rack for the weekend. I removed the connector plates to bring them home for paint.
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Bill working the lathe.
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Turning down the bullet.
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Two wing pins and the new tool.
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