Attached The Wings

Austin came home this weekend and wanted to work on the airplane so we went big! We mounted the wings and set the sweep and incidence and drilled the rear spar. Drilling the rear spar is one of those tasks that many dread because it's important to the flying quality and safety of the airplane and because there's very little margin for error. You can fix a mis-drilled rear spar but it's a lot of work. It came out great and Austin was a huge help.

 

Here's Austin drilling (actually reaming) the rear spar on the left wing. I told him there are very few people I trust to work on the plane and he's at the top of the list.

For drilling the pilot holes prior to the final size, I made a drill guide from the longeron bending jig by drilling guide holes in each end and clamping it to the rear spar.

There's only a very small area that can be drilled to allow for proper edge distances for the rear spar bolt. The picture below shows the area for the center of the hole.
 

It was a long, hot day (high 93°) and just as we finished drilling the spars, Paula called us to meet downtown where she was volunteering at the Wein & Saengerfest. We ate at Friesenhaus and had really good German food and some Hafbräu Hefe Weizer. After we returned home, the plane was in the driveway and the weather forecast didn't have any inclement weather and we'd just had a good meal and some good beer so I considered leaving it there until tomorrow. No, maybe better put it to bed properly in the garage. Good thing we did as we had thunder and lightning and it rained cats and dogs later that night. Just barely fit in the garage.

I haven't blogged in a while but I have been making good progress. The landing gear is completed and you can see it resting on dollys in the picture above.