Brief Description: Pulling Wing Fabric over structure.
Caution: Before you begin pulling the envelope into position I suggest you review my comments in this log dated 9/18 regarding installation of the safety wire shown on page 2-49 of the Manual. Although that Step is shown as the last step in the envelope process you may want to consider doing this step before you begin pulling the envelope.
Pic, 1. The Setup I used to begin pulling the Right envelope over the wing structure. The Fabric was isolated from the wooden bench by a paper painter's cloth and will never touch the ground during the process.
Two people were used to pull the fabric over the structure. We found that shaking the fabric while pulling it toward the wing root worked well until we were close to the "Fish." We used the aluminum wide mouth vice-grip pliers to get a better grip on the fabric. Lance advised me to pull the fabric 1 1/4 " over the Fish instead of the 1" suggested by the Manual at page 2-46. This extra 1/4' provided a nice tight fabric.
I used Lance's 2 pull system: 1st Pull. The fabric is pulled by hand until it was close enough to temporarily attached the fabric with 2 screws on the top and 2 on the bottom to the "fish"and used the Fish tensioning method to bring the fabric closer to its final alignment.
The 2nd Pull. I removed the temporary screws described in the 1st Pull and then realinged the fabric over the fish until I achieved the 1 1/4 inch overhang and then attached all the screws as described in the Manual. See pic 2.
Pic 3. Right wing fabric pulled into its proper position. Here the top and bottom bows have not been installed. Installing the top and bottom ribs into the fabric as described on page 2-49 is NOT an EASY TASK. See my following log entry for an alternative solution.
