Wing Rack, Part 2 (2)

2 hours

I finished building the wing rack.  With all the parts cut out yesterday, it was a cinch to put together!  Once my wife got home from work, I got her to help me get the right wing on to the rack.

Wing Rack (1)

1 hour

With the right wing just about done, now I need a way to store it.  Like many other builders have done, I'm going to build this rack:

http://sonexfoundation.com/uploads/wing_stand_snx815_revA.pdf

I dug through my scrap wood pile and found all the plywood and 2x4's I needed!  Both my circular saw and miter saw are at work for a different project, so I cut everything on my little table saw.  Cutting 2x4's on a table saw is not very easy and it's definitely not safe!  I almost launched a couple of them across the garage, but with some extreme care I got everything cut without destroying anything.

Tomorrow I'll go out and get the hardware to put this thing together.

Pallet Work Table (1)

1 hour

I took my huge pallet apart, trimmed the OSB sheets down to match the width of my sawhorses (42"), hauled everything down to the shop, and built myself a 10' long table.  Pretty easy!

Starting on Forward Spar Assemblies (0.5)

0.5 hours

Today I decided to take a break from cleaning up the forward spar caps, and started laying out the forward spar assemblies.

At first I was a little disturbed because my spar caps look significantly different from the drawing.  I thought I had seriously misplaced the bend on both of them!  Then I remembered there had been a revision to the WIX-T11 drawing which moved the bend centerline.  After looking up the revised version on the Sonex website (Link), I determined my spar caps were right on after all.

However, the WIX-T10 drawing that I have (rev A) still shows the old spar caps, so it's different from what I have.  I emailed Sonex just to confirm I'm still locating the spar cap and channel correctly, and to find out how I can get the updated (rev B) T10 drawing.  It's Sunday so I don't expect a reply today, but I'm going to wait until I hear from them before I drill any holes in the spar channel.

I also spent a little time organizing and setting up my work area, and it's looking pretty good now!  In a future post I'll show my setup and the tools I've been using.

Back to work after a huge break! (1.5)

1.5 hours

Alright it has been about 3.5 years since my last post!  It has been a busy time so the Waiex got put on the back burner.  Long story short, I got commissioned in the Air Force, moved from Wisconsin to Oklahoma, went through pilot training, got my wings, moved again to Arkansas, and finally have my own house again and little chance of moving for a few more years.  So I haven't made any progress on my long term airplane project, but I did accomplish one of my long term life goals of becoming a military pilot!

Anyway, I have been gradually setting up a new shop in the basement, and it is pretty much usable now.  I'll post some pictures of it later.  Today I finally busted all the parts out of storage, where they have sat through two moves and three years, and took an inventory of what I had packed up.  I think everything made it without any significant damage, except one stabilator rib flange that got a tiny bit bent.  I'll see if I can straighten it out but if that's all I have to do over then I'd call that not too bad!

Next I started catching up to where I had left off.  I was working on creating all the C-channel ribs for the stabilators.  Having almost no memory of how I built the ones I have done, I sat down with a ruler and the drawings and checked all my work.  Everything looked good from what I can tell, except for the very first rib I built which I knew was kind of off as soon as I built it.  So I will rebuild that one and maybe the one that got a little bent.

That's all for now!  It's good to be working on this thing again!