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Pete's Bearhawk Web Site
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Date:  1-31-2009
Number of Hours:  1.50
Manual Reference:  
Brief Description:  Major (cosmetic) spar problem discovered...

Well, today was depressing. It had been going so good up to this point. I went to begin attaching the nose ribs to the main spar and found a problem. My nose ribs were smaller than the main spar. In fact, the main spar should measure 7.59" in height and mine measures 7.84"; that's about 1/4" too tall!

I must have measured it about 20 times today trying to figure out what in the world was wrong. The middle ribs fit very well into the main spars. I'm still not sure exactly what happened since both main spars are the exact same height. Maybe I bent the spars on the wrong side of the mark, I can't remember how thick the line was...

The one thing I love about building an airplane is the problem solving aspect of it; but I HATE solving problems that I've caused because of stupidity. This one just made me want to burn my shop to the ground and walk away.

I was able to pull it together, put down the matches and think for a bit. I realize that this is mostly a cosmetic thing that would leave a large bump where the spar is in the wing once it's skinned. I decided to try to use a series of 0.032" shims. You can see in the pic that it will look good but it's gonig to be a BIG pain in the butt!!! I'm going to stew on it for a little while and see if something better comes to mind. I don't need to come up with an answer until I'm skinning it. I'm certainly not going to remake the spars at this point.
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Main spar size problem (top)

Main spar size problem (top)

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Main spar size problem (bottom)

Main spar size problem (bottom)

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Main spar shims (top)

Main spar shims (top)

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