More wings

Four-day Thanksgiving weekend meant lot of building time. Finished up all skin-to-rib and skin-to-spar rivets on both left and right wings. Also riveted the J-stringers on both top skins. Began riveting flap brackets to the left wing- here is a photo of the outboard flap bracket- lots of long AD4 (1/8") rivet shop heads:


Also on the left and right wings- match drilled, deburred, and dimpled the aileron gap fairing. Waiting for the opportunity to prime them, along with a backlog of other parts. Its dark when I get home from work now, and the weekend weather has been crappy, so priming has backed up. Most likely this weekend.
The right wing top skin is finished (except the gap fairings) and shown here reflecting my car.

Got the call from ABF that my fuselage kit will be here next Thurs. Well I won't be done with the wings by then, but at least there won't be any building delays waiting for it...

Wing top skins

Here is the left wing panel with the leading edge assembled and riveted to the spar, as well as the tank mounted to the spar. It can't be seen in this photo, but the aileron brackets have been riveted on to the rear spar, and the Duckworks landing lights have been mounted in the leading edge. What can be seen is that the top wing skins have been riveted on. I did this riveting solo, standing on a step ladder, by first attaching the skins along the leading edge (top in the pic), then going partway down each rib. Then I laid on my back on the platform shown under the wing to reach up and finish each rib, top to bottom.Lastly the trailing edge (skin-to-read spar) was completed. The J-stringers have not been riveting in yet. Here is the right wing panel, showing the step ladder and the riveting that has been done from the top. The inboard skin is finished except for the trailing edge and the outboard skin has been started. You can see where the clecoes are missing, that is where the rivets have been put in. This is all "blind" riveting, meaning you can't see the bucking bar on the shop-head side. It takes a little practice , and it helps to have long arms and patience, but it can be done.

Wing framework and tanks

The wing kit arrived in June, 2007. I had prepared by building the two wing jigs you can see in the photo. I decided to build both wings at the same time, so four vertical posts were set up to support the main spars at each end. The main spars are preassembled and gold anodized. In this picture, a lot of work (mostly tedious) has been done, such as deburring, priming and riveting all the wing ribs and rear spar parts. The top skins have just been clecoed to the framework at this point, I haven't even removed the blue plastic.
Assembling the tanks was a time-consuming process. Every mating surface had to be sealed using a fuel-proof adhesive known as Pro-seal. It has to be mixed before use, has a pot life of about 45 min (at least in my garage in the summer it does), has the consistency of taffy, and it stinks. The picture shows the right tank before the rear baffle is sealed and riveted on.

Both tanks have been completed and passed leak testing!

Empennage (tail parts)

I began this project with the tail section, or empennage (French for "tail section".) Van's Aircraft sells the airplane kit in sections, which you must buy in order, starting with the tail, then the wings, fuselage, and lastly the finishing kit. It's ingenious marketing really, you can get started building for only $1500 (tail kit) plus $1-2k for tools. The tail kit consists of the horizontal stabilizer, the vertical stabilizer, the rudder, and the elevators.
Here is the horizontal stabilizer fastened together using clecos ( a "cleco" is a spring-loaded temporary sheet metal fastener.) All the parts in this picture are pre-formed and the holes are pre-punched. The parts can be clecoed together as you see here right out of the box! Looks easy, doesn't it?

A few other steps are needed- all edges deburred, all holes matched drilled with the correct size drill, the parts disassembled, the holes deburred and dimpled if needed, the parts cleaned and primed, then finally, the parts can be riveted together.
Here I am with rivet gun in the right hand and bucking bar in the left, riveting the horizontal stabilizer.

Completed Empennage Parts

Completed horizontal stabilizer hanging from the wall of the garage.
Vertical stabilizer on another wall.
Elevators and rudder taking up space in the house.

About the project

I'm building a Van's RV-9A in my garage. I actually started at the beginning of this year, 2007. Since that time, I have finished the empennage (tail section), earned my private pilot certificate, and completed about 75% of the wings. My first few posts will bring things up to date.

First, a picture of me with the plane I used to get my pilot license and now rent to build time (and have fun!)- N6330S, a 1967 Cessna 150G ("G" is for "good" :)