I put together a punch list of things to do before riveting the wing leading edges and top skins.  I made it through most of the list today before running out of steam.  My buddy Andre is coming over tomorrow morning to help with the riveting, so I want to be ready to hit the ground running.  Unfortunately, the 4×4 posts on my wing jig twisted and pulled the brackets out of alignment.  I had to take both wing skeletons down, redo the brackets, and re-level and straighten the spar.  That took most of the time today.

Here are the outboard leading edges clecoed on for the last time.

My Dynon autopilot roll servo showed up today.  I’m not going to install it just yet because I’m waiting on an order from B&C for some d-sub 9 connectors so I can fabricate a connector for this at the servo.

I countersunk the galvanized pipe used as the aileron counterweight.

To form the dimples in the skin, I mounted the 1/8″ male die on a special bucking bar I bought.  Using the galvanized pipe as the female die, I hammered this into the holes in the skin.

…resulting in dimples in the leading edge for the CS4-4 blind rivets.

No pictures tonight as they would be indistinguishable from yesterday’s.  Basically, I repeated all of yesterday’s steps on the right aileron, but I did it quite a bit quicker tonight since I didn’t need to refer to the instructions.  Afterward, I got started deburring some of the components.  Van’s instructions have you prime at several points along the construction.  Instead, other than the stiffeners, I’m waiting until all of the aileron components are ready to prime at the same time.

I clecoed the left aileron completely together in preparation for match drilling.

The aileron counterweight is a galvanized iron pipe that runs the whole length of the aileron.  This has to be drilled to #30 for countersunk blind rivets.

The entire bottom of the spar (with the exception of the outboard two rivets) also has to be drilled to #30 for blind rivets because there is no way to reach inside and buck these.

There is also a hole that attaches the counterweight pipe to the nose ribs so that the pipe can’t rotate.  This can be reached through one of the #30 holes in the spar after the trailing edge skin has been removed.

I went out before work this morning and backriveted all of the stiffeners on both of the aileron skins.

Using the bending brake I made for the empennage skins, I bent the aileron skins.  I ended up having to fine tune the bends with the hand seamer.  Just like on the elevators, you want the skin to stay perfectly straight from the spar back to the trailing edge radius.

The ends of the aileron spars need reinforcing plates where the hinge brackets attach.  These are made from 0.040″ aluminum and match drilled to the spars.

After match drilling, the hinge brackets are clecoed on…

…and drilled out with a #12 drill for AN3 bolts.

Before calling it a night, I also clecoed the leading edge ribs in place and match drilled them to the skin.

I finished trimming and deburring the aileron stiffeners.

I use a cheap $3 punch set from Harbor Freight to mark all parts before priming.  I don’t bother marking the actual part number, just something that helps me get all the parts back into the same position.  Here for example is the stiffener that goes on the right aileron, bottom side, 3rd out from the inboard stiffener.

All the stiffeners have been drilled to the skins…

…deburred, dimpled and primed.

Here’s a cool artistic shot of all of the rivets in the holes (held in place with rivet tape since I’ll be back-riveting these).  It’s too late to rivet these on tonight, so I’ll do that before work tomorrow.

I picked up some Aeroshell 7 grease today and installed the aileron bellcranks permanently.  When torqued to the wing, I found I had a little bit of binding.  I traced this to making the brass bushings about 0.030″ too short.  The plans say to make them 1/64″ to 1/32″ longer than the steel bellcrank tube, but you really want to make them whatever length will just fit between the brackets.  I ended up elongating the holes in the upper brackets to allow them to be installed without bending towards the bushing.  Here is the right bellcrank with autopilot servo pushrod (currently just hanging down) installed.  This side also has a longer bracket on the bottom side of the wing where the servo will mount and a brace that is installed diagonally from the top bracket to the servo (you’ll see when I install the servo).

Here is the bracket installed in the left wing.

To install the leading edges, you need to grind away part of a double offset rivet set because the manufactured heads are right up against the main wing ribs.  This allows you to get the rivet set square to the rivet.

Really jumping around now, I pulled out the rough stock for the aileron stiffeners and cut them down to size and began cutting the tapers.

Before leaving town, Jenn helped me rivet the splice plate back onto the left wing.  This side looked even better than the other.  Right after initial fitting, the joint in basically perfectly flush along almost the entire length.  I have to do a little adjustment in a couple of spots, but it should be relatively minor.  This blurry picture really doesn’t capture how nice this looks.

I’m ready to rivet the leading edges on, but since I don’t have a riveting partner right now, I got started on a few other tasks that need to happen on the wings.  I got started fabricating the aileron bellcrank bushings.  These are brass tubes that have to be reamed out to 1/4″ for an AN4 bolt and trimmed to a very precise length (basically about 0.015″ to 0.030″ longer than the bellcrank).  I did this by chucking them into my drill press and pressing them down onto a file.  This slowly filed off the ends until they were the correct length.  I also polished the outside with a scotchbrite pad while I had them running on the drill press.

Here is how the bushing fits in the bellcrank.  The bushing is clamped between two brackets mounted to the spar and doesn’t rotate.  The bearing surface is between the outside of the bushing and the inside of the tube on the bellcrank.  A layer of grease keeps everything moving smoothly.  The bushing has to be slightly longer than the bellcrank tube to prevent the brackets from causing the bellcrank to bind.

Here are two of the brackets loosely bolted to the bellcranks.  These can’t be permanently installed yet because I don’t have the appropriate grease to install these with.  The other brackets are already installed on the wing and torqued.

I also fabricated the pushrod that the autopilot roll servo will use to drive the aileron bellcrank.

Here is how the pushrod attaches to the bellcrank.  When I get the roll servo, all of this can be installed in the wing permanently.

My wife is leaving town for a few days, so I wanted to get the leading edge riveted back together before she left.  In preparation, I went out this morning before work and drilled, dimpled and primed the shims.

I clecoed everything together, but it’s too late to rivet this tonight.  We’ll knock this out tomorrow morning before she leaves.

Since I couldn’t move forward on the leading edges, I went ahead and drilled and dimpled the wing access plates.  The holes along the straight edge are drilled and dimpled for #6 screws and the rest are drilled and dimpled for #8 screws.