Wiring up the wings

With the wings finally on, we can now finish up all the wiring: the nav/strobe lights, pitot heat, autopilot on the wing, fuel senders, pitot and AOA plumbing. Took almost a day to wrap this up (8hrs).

Also had to finish the wingtips, wire them and test everything for operation:

 

The images below show how the wiring to the tax/landing lights were secured. Here is a place where experience really counts. For example, you don't want the power connection going to the lights ever touching the airframe. Consequently its imperative that you insulate it well. Harley (Glenn's brother) advised on how to insulate using wrap around the connection. Lots of small details took quite a bit of time (6 hrs).  

 



 

Here is the final product!

 

We test fired the strobes and landing/taxi lights. Everything works except for the wig-wag functionality. Realized that we need to get a new flasher module. Its on its way from B&C and once that's in, we got everything wired up in the panel!

Installing the Wings

Last big piece of the puzzle: Installing the wings. Before that we needed to make sure that our gears tracked straight, and had zero tow-in/out. We had to use one 0.5 degree shim. We also went ahead and finally installed the brakes, finalized the axel assembly and started to work on the brake line (8 hrs).

 

 

 

With the gear out of the way, it was time to install the wings (2 hrs). We were able to easily fit the wings between Glenn, Dennis and I. I held the winds at the outboard end, while Dennis helped slip the wings in the correct position. Glenn inserted the bolts in the fuselage. This looks like an airplane! Here are some shots on the big day:

We also drilled the rear spar bolts as well. Took 4 plumb bobs, a fishing line, a couple of levels and lots of patience to get this right (5 hrs). The plans mention clearly that there is no scope of any mistake here, so we took our time and spent an entire afternoon measuring and then finalizing where to place the hole. Also needed to finalize the holes where wiring from the wing would enter fuselage.

Also, we ended up test fitting and rigging the ailerons, flaps etc. It took few hours (10 hrs) to get that right. Once done, we pulled the wings out, painted the area on fuselage where the wing will bolt on and then did the final assembly! The wings are on for good now!

Riveting Bottom Skins for the Wings

Quite bummed about the avionics loss. While we wait to sort the issue, decided to go ahead and rivet the bottom skins on the wings. The idea was that it would be good to put the wings until the final assembly, thereby making me feel a little better with some concrete progress.

 

Here is our workbench. This job is a tedious two person endeavor and it took us almost the whole day to riven the bottom skins on both the wings (10 hrs).

 

 

Here is Glenn helping with the rivets. We alternated between bucking and hitting.



Almost done! Final thing to rivet the flaps hinges. The wings go on the cradle until we are ready to mount them (possibly after everything on the fuselage is near complete).

Building on QB Wings

The quickbuilt wings are already fairly complete. The key remaining tasks include: wiring the wings, adding the lights, Autopilot servo and pitot-tube, Plumbing pitot tube line, mounting the ailerons and flaps and finally riveting one of the skin on the wings.

 

The progress on the wings have been slow. While the primary focus has been the fuselage so far, few of the things have been accomplished in past few months.

 

First, mounting the heated pitot was tackled. This is dynon heated pitot with a mount that was bought from SafeAir (5 hrs). The wiring and the plumbing is also done.The mount still needs to be riveted to the bottom of the wing:

 



 

 

 

 

 The AP roll-servo is installed on the right wing (2hrs). One of the aileron pushrods was already fabricated by the previous builder. So it was first simply measured to verify the length:

 

 

One of the dreaded task in mounting the landing and taxi lights on the wings is the cutting out portions of perfectly good wings. Glenn, who is an artist in metal work, did those effortlessly. Taxi and landing lights are installed in left and right wings respectively (10 hrs).

 

 

I also decided to put in flop-tube in the left wing. Did not realize that this would take long. Thanks to Glenn, the flop tube and the fuel sender in the left wing was done (8 hrs).

 

 

 

Meanwhile, the wingtips are also being fitted. Aligning the edges of the wingtips, aileron and the flaps is important and the progress is slow and incremental (5 hrs):

 

 

The previous builder had mounted the aileron and flaps for left wing already. But the right wing needs to be taken care off (5 hrs):

 



The work on the wing will continue in parallel to the fuselage.