Redoing fuel caps

December 7th and 8th, 10h

I decided to redo the fuel tank lids after checking with Vans. The issue happen when torqued the bolts after the sealant was dry. I added fuel tank sealant to the outside of the bolts, but Van said that it is not enough.

So I went ahead and removed all the bolts from all the lid for both the left and the right fuel tanks. Then I spent many hours cleaning the lids, the holes and nutplates. Then I reset the bolt with wet sealant again.

Riveting Bottom skin

November 30th, December 1st, 14h

We continued on riveting the bottom skin for the right wing. We nearly finished the whole bottom skin, at the exception of the last 2 raws. We ended up having a little incident, dropping the bucking bar inside, we decided to check with Vans before continued.

Then we moved on to the left wing and riveted the whole left bottom wing skin. As well, we finalized the pitot tube installation.

Before closing in the wing. We took pictures of the serial number of the hardware inside.

Riveting Bottom skin

November 24nd, 6h

After some more reading and talking with Vans about riveting the bottom skins and attaching the flaps, I realized that I had to setup the flaps first. So I had to remove all the previous rivets I set in the bottom skin. Then after setting up the flaps. We riveted the bottom inner skin and half of the bottom outer skin for the left wing

Centering Aileron and Setup Flaps

November 23nd, 6h

I centered the ailerons by creating a jig to set the ailerons at the neutral position. Then, I torqued to setting all the aileron bolts once it is set at neutral. Afterwards, I attached the flaps while making sure that the trailing edge of the aileron and flap align. Afterward I drilled the skin to the brace and flap hinge, in the pre set flap position. After deburing, I dimpled the skin and countersink the brace. Now, the flap hinge is ready to be riveted to the bottom skin.

Riveting Bottom Skins

November 3nd, 5h

The wing internals are nearly complete. So, it is time to start riveting the bottom skins. First we start with fitting the skins. The is a very small gap, about 1mm between the bottom skin and the fuel tank skin in the left wing. It does not look concerning.

Then we moved on to the riveting. We started with the most inner ribs, working in an L shape, but access is pretty bad, with not much visibility. After a bunch of trials, we decided to break for the time being, and continue this on a fresh day.

Wing internals continue

November 2nd, 5h

I continued on the prep for the wing riveting. So, I finish all the pitot/AoA probe wiring:

Attaching the wires from the probe to the controller with zip-ties and zip-tie attachments that I glued with E6000 to the control unit.
Extending the wires from the control unit by using 20 gauge wire of the same color and butt connectors
Applying a wire protection for all the pitot/AoA wires, as well as the stall horn wire.

I also looked into attaching the pitot probe to the must with screw, but I had some trouble with tapping the holes. I am consulting with Dynon on that, and my current plan is to fill those holes with JB weld and to make new ones.

Wing Internals

October 27th, 6h

We need to finish all the small details inside the wing in order to rivet the bottom skins and finish the wings.

So, I applied E6000 to the conduit.
We started setting up the wiring of the pitot, but then we realized that we need to buy more wire and connectors
We looked at the wiring for the lights, not much to do there. We tested passing it through the conduit, it worked great.
We wired the magnetometer through the conduit, it was pretty easy to drive through, and not much setup needed.
We wired the roll servo by making a connector and a cable for all the wires. As well, we glued some zip-tie attachments to control routing the cable and relieve strain.

Overall, we are pretty close to finishing up all the small internal details of the wings, and move on to riveting the bottom skins.

Aileron and Flaps Attachments

October 19th and 20th, 12h

We rivets the flap and aileron braces for both the left and right wings. Then we attached the aileron for both wings. The aileron move pretty smoothly and have a good range of motion.