Some nights it's great to see your progress. Some nights it's a lot of fun to build an airplane. Tonight was neither of those...
It took me 2.5 hours to get those two bolts in place that you see in the photos. What a friggin' pain in the ass! I had to use longer bolts -- way longer -- than the plans called for. AN3-14 at the front, and AN3-21 at the rear!
Those strap are under a lot of tension, and there is no easy way to hold them together to the point where you can get the bolt to go through both holes, then put the nut on without the straps springing open on you.
For the front bolt I was able to take some wire and make a loop of a set dimension to hold the straps together JUST enough to get a few threads showing out the second hole, so I could get the nut started. That took me a solid hour of work. I first used some wire that turned out to be too thick to allow the nut to turn (it ran into the wire and would not turn). So I went down the AWG20 wire and that was just barely thin enough.
I tried to do the same thing with the rear bolt, but I just could not get the wire loop to the right size with all the tension. So I used one of my spring clamps that JUST BARELY was wide enoug to press on the bolt head on one side, and the leg of the strap on the other. Again I got JUST enough threads through the second hole to get the nut started. That bolt took the remaining 1.5 hours of the evening.
This 18 GA wire was too thick to let the nut turn, so I went down to 20 GA
