The wings went on today. I had the help of 4 guys who have helped installed wings a few times; one is our Chapter Flight Advisor. It took all of 2.5 hours and most of that was positioning and set up.
I was in the cockpit with the hardware store bolts; we had two guys at the front of the wing with one person who used a screw driver to open up the rear spar tangs when needed. The 4th was at the end of the wing. The wings both slid in with relative ease, same with the bolts once it was lined up. I did not have a drift pin but that would have helped.
First we checked that the wings were in line with one another using 4 plumb bobs and a laser level on a tripod to shoot a line along them. When we measured from the aft wing tip to a common point at the fuselage they were within 1/8” of one another. The tolerance is ½”
Then on to the incidence, the left wing was almost perfect at 0.1 degree with the left at 0.3. We set the left to zero and drilled the hole up to 3/16 and installed a bolt and nut just snug. This will get drilled up and reamed to final size. My Flight Advisor (also a certified test pilot) recommends using a close tolerance bolt here which makes sense, so I have to get those on order. He actually keeps 2 on hand for just his purpose, so I may use his and then replace them with my order.
After setting the incidence to zero on the right wing the rear spar was drill to 3/16 and the bolt installed. The experienced guys on the crew said this as the smoothest fitting they have seen, the wings went in once and stayed. This was the first RV-8A they had done, up to now it had been 6, 7 and 9s. 2.5 hours total from start to finish. I had to call it a day but, eager to continue the fitting.
