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Kupe's Zodiac 650B
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Date:  5-15-2013
Number of Hours:  2.00
Manual Reference:  6-W-8
Brief Description:  Left Wing, Rear Top Skin

Armed with 24 feet of 2" x 2" square steel pipe, all sorts of shims, a main spar angle template, and 2 levels, I proceeded to level the wing in spite of the slope in my garage floor. It took about 10 minutes, but I got where I wanted to be.

Next, I trudged down to the basement to retrieve a rear top skin and bring it back upstairs. It was early and I didn't want to wake up any sleepers to help out so I did it by myself. Talk about awkward. Still, I managed to get the 12-foot-long piece of .025 aluminum skin all the way to the garage with no damage to the skin, my home's interior, or my wife's car in the garage, only to discover I'd gone all that way with the wrong end forward. The wing root end of the skin was at the wing tip end of the skeleton as I entered the garage. So on out to the yard I went where I could set the sheet down on the soft grass, lift it from the other side, and rotate it 180 degrees. A 3 minute job for 2 people turned out to be a 15 minute job for one. Lesson learned. Besides, the "sleeper" in the house woke up when she thought she'd heard thunder - the sound made by a large piece of aluminum skin as it snakes through the house.

Once the skin was on top of the skeleton, I spent about 30 minutes sliding, shifting, poking, aligning tapping, clamping, and duct taping it into position. After one last re-check of the wing's level position (in two axes: spanwise and verticle) the drilling and clecoing commenced. To help with minor nudging of the ribs under the skin, I fashioned a couple of "rib nudgers" out of furring strips which let me push and/or pull the ribs into place through the lightening holes in the rib webs. These worked out very well.

I finally quit when I ran out of pilot-sized clecoes - going to have to buy more. In the meantime, I can updrill the rib attachments to the main spar to retrieve about 30 more of them so I can get started on the bottom skin.
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It took a lot of shimming and shifting to achieve this reading.

It took a lot of shimming and shifting to achieve this reading.

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The

The "rib nudgers" - one long and one short - they make short work of minor rib placement adjustments.

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The mostly drilled out rear top skin next to the empty cleco container.

The mostly drilled out rear top skin next to the empty cleco container.

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