Brief Description: Mate the Right Wing to the Fuselage
With Matt's help mating the wings was not that difficult.
We set up some padded sawhorses under the wing for support and then Matt grabbed the outboard end of the right wing while I maneuvered the inboard end to slide the main spar and rear spar between their respective center sections in the fuselage. The wing slid right into place with little difficulty. The only thing I had to watch out for was to not pinch the bottom skin of the fuselage and to make sure the wing skin rested on top of the fuselage skin.
Matt continued to hold the outboard end while I hopped into the fuselage and inserted the guide pins that I made a few years ago from hardware store bolts by grinding off the threads and tapering a rounded point onto the ends. Matt had to wiggle the outboard end around a bit before I could slide the pins in. Once the pins were in I replaced them one by one with the close tolerance bolts.
The close tolerance bolts were difficult to install, especially the first couple of bolts. I used my rivet gun with a flush set with a hard piece of plastic between the set and the head of each bolt and a very low pressure setting to tap the bolts in. The 4 bottom bolts had their washers placed under the heads of the bolts while the 4 top bolts had them installed under the nuts. This is because you have to torque the bottom bolts themselves rather than the nuts since there is no room in the gear leg mounts to do anything except hold a wrench on the nuts to prevent them from turning while you torque the bolts. There is plenty of room though to torque the nuts on the top bolts.
The only thing we had to watch out for was not to tap the bottom bolts in beyond about 1 thread so we could start the nuts and gradually spin them on as we tapped the bolts through. If you tap the bottom bolts all the way in before starting the nuts there will not be clearance between the end of the bolt and the gear leg mounts to install the nuts.
The right wing is on!!! I still have to actually torque everything down but the bo
Right wing is mated to the fuselage! - top view
Right wing main spar bolted to center section
Right wing is mated to the fuselage! - bottom view
