Happy holidays! Working in cahoots with Captain John, my wonderful wife snuck around and bought me a Sioux 2X rivet gun for Christmas…very cool! Unfortunately, I’m not at a place in the wings where I can use it. I’m still in rib prep hell.

This little gadget does indeed help out. It’s mentioned in 23 Years Of The RVator, and you can find plans for it floating around the internet. It makes flanging the ribs much easier…I did a whole pile of wing center ribs in an hour or so.

The spiffy oak flanging tool

Took a break from wing ribs to build a wing jig over the Thanksgiving weekend. Captain John trekked up from Plymouth to lend a hand and some brain cells.

Our basement workshop has some drawbacks that we had to consider for the jig. First, the floor isn’t remotely level, so that meant designing a jig that could be aligned at the posts and spar supports to level the spars themselves. Second, the ceiling is old plaster over a rusting metal lath, so it really couldn’t be counted on to support posts. So the solution had to be more or less free-standing, anchored only to the floor.

With those limitations in mind we fabricated four posts, each one five feet high and consisting of two 2″x6″s glued and screwed together. Here’s the assembly line in progress; Captain John is in the background, attaching a 2’x2′ plywood plate to the bottom of one post.

Wing jig building

Here’s one post with support gussets yet to be attached. After each plate is bolted to the floor, the gussets are screwed to 2″x4″ anchors on the plate (not yet attached in this picture). There’s just enough play in the posts to allow them to be adjusted and aligned, after which the gussets and posts are clamped to hold everything in alignment while they’re screwed together.

Wing jig prep

The posts are now bolted in place, and ready for the arms that will support the spars themselves.

Wing jig mounted!

But first, there’s more rib prep – flanging and fluting – to be done. And there was much rejoicing…yea.

I’m in wing rib hell. Try as I might, I can’t do this every day for hours on end. So, I’ve been devoting an hour or so each day after work for the past week deburring holes and flanges. And since I probably get too worked up over smoothing the edges, it’s gonna take several sessions.

Wing rib prep

Time to rivet all those rear spar parts together. Follow the advice in the plans to tape up those holes that aren’t to be riveted at this time…those -4 rivets aren’t fun to drill out.

Rear spars being riveted

And here’s the finished product. Success rate on these rivets was 100 percent…no drill-outs required!

Rear spars completed

It’s getting darker earlier, and I didn’t have much time to get parts primed after work – so I just did the stuff previously alodined.

Rear spar parts primed

I had two more work trips during the last two weeks, so there isn’t a lot of visual progress to report. This entry is the culmination of bits and pieces of work done around travel and family stuff.

After the front spars were prepped, the next step was constructing the rear wing spars. The first task in this process was deburring the spars themselves and match-drilling aileron reinforcement plates to them. Nothing difficult here, I just followed the plans – with one minor exception.

These reinforcement plates fit snugly up against the rear spar’s upper flange, and I match-drilled the #40 holes on each spar flange and reinforcement plate. The instructions don’t specifically call for dimpling these flanges before the rear spar is riveted together, but it would seem to be easier to do it now while the parts can be dimpled separately…so that’s what I did.

Rear spar reinforcement drilled

Note the aileron pushrod hole cut into the reinforcement plate. The location of this hole is traced onto the plate during match-drilling. A Dremel tool with a carbide cutter makes quick work of “roughing out” the hole, and a sanding drum on the Dremel takes care of the rest.

The rear spars’ attach plates and associated doublers are actually RV-8 parts, and must be trimmed according to the plans.

Rear spar attach plate drilled

After deburring, countersinking and dimpling the reinforcement and doubler plates as required, I alodined them using the always-handy Touch-n-Prep pen.

Rear spar parts alodined

Got the tiedown plates riveted together and bolted onto the wing spars today.

Tiedown attached

Time to ease back into RV building. Did a lot of nutplate riveting…thank goodness for the pneumatic squeezer!

Lots of nutplates riveted

Got back from Fairbanks, Alaska…it was a long, tiring trip. But we finished everything we set out to accomplish, most of which involved flying helicopters in icing. Here’s a pic of the test aircraft after an hour or so in clear ice.

Sponson ice

Fairbanks is an amazing place for airplane nuts. Some airplanes that you’d see in museums in the lower 48 states, are flying every day in Fairbanks hauling supplies to outlying communities. Here’s a Curtiss C-46 departing Fairbanks International (PAFA) with a load of fuel oil.

C46 departing PAFA

And here’s a very rare find…a Carvair. It’s a DC-6 that was modified decades ago to carry cars, and only a handful still fly.

Carvair at FAI

On my day off I managed to log some float time with a flight from the Chena Marina float pond, just a mile or so west of PAFA.

Landing at the Chena Marina

Another rare bird…a Turbo Otter at the float pond.

Turbo Otter at Chena Marina

I’m heading to Alaska for two weeks, so the goal for today was to finish match-drilling the tiedown plates and associated nutplate mounting holes, then to prime the plates, spacers and also the countersunk main spar holes. By the time I get back from Alaska, the weather here may be too cold to prime parts outside. Here are the tiedown plates.

Primed tiedown plates

And here are the spar countersinks.

Primed wing countersinks