Saturday May 23, 2020
Drilled/Fit Wing Root Fairings, Rigged L Aileron (Mating Wings)
6.5 Hours

Over the last few days while I was busy at work, some parts finally arrived. Most importantly, I got the aileron bellcrank bushings and wing root fairings from Van's.

I started today with drilling and fitting the wing root fairings. Here's the left one partly drilled.

Drilling it forward to the front of the wing.

Here it is drilled all of the way around. It's very tightly stretched around the nose of the fuel tank. All of these holes get dimpled or countersunk, then nutplates installed.

The plans want a consistent 3/8-1/4" gap between the faring and the fuselage for a rubber gasket, so I marked that and then snipped/filed.

The gap looks good here.

Repeated the whole thing on the right side.

Next, I got to work on the aileron bellcranks. I drilled the new bushings out to 1/4" and installed the bellcrank on the left side. Then I put the left aileron in its neutral position and installed this jig on the bellcrank that puts it in its neutral position. I adjusted the bellcrank to aileron pushrod so everything lined up right.

Attachment to the aileron.

Then, I clamped the stick in side-to-side neutral (exactly vertical).

Finally, I adjusted the aileron bellcrank to stick push rod to the right length and put a bolt through it.

That's the left aileron rigged. Next up, the same process on the right side. After that, I just need to finish the two fuel tank lines and then I can remove the wings from the fuselage.

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