It's been over a week since I published, so let me bring y'all up to date.
Progress
§29-08 R, -10 R, -12 L & R, -14 L & R, -16 L & R — completion of the nose ribs
The tie-wrap clips finally arrived and I was able to finally finish the Left wing and do the entire Right wing in about an hour. Recall that I had problems with getting the rivets to properly set. There was a suggestion to use a small washer to reinforce the thin metal of the rib, but that didn't work. That was my only spare, so I went with a more fool proof method of using #6 nuts, washers & bolts. These had the advantage of being removable. Later, when I was running the wiring harnesses, I realized that the tie wrap clips on the outside 2 ribs are attached at the rear of the lightening hole and not the front. Had I riveted them in, I wouldn't have been able to correct my overside. Anyway, §29 is done.
§30-05, -06, - 07, -08, -09 Left & Right — Wiring harness
This chapter is the placement of the wiring harness. It was very straightforward and took about an hour or two. As mentioned, I needed to reposition 4 of the clips, but no other complications.
§31-05, -06, -07, -08, -09, -10 — Wing skin preparation
I've been really looking forward to putting on the skins since they are what transforms a collection of spars & delicate ribs into a structurally sound and clearly recognizable wing. These pages were all about prepping the skins. Nothing conceptually difficult, but lots of labor. Each page represents two skins that needed to have the plastic removed, edges deburred, some edges 'broken', and nut plates riveted on. Pretend that there's another page for the single skin that didn't have nut plates to be added, so it doesn't even have a page to represent it.
§31-15, -16 -17 L & R — Clecoing top skins into place
The top skins got placed before the bottom skins since the wings were already right side up and I didn't have anybody to help me flip them. The stiffeners went in easily and the skins attached without a hitch. I put a cleco at every intersection of a rib and a stiffener. Those are essentially the load points in flight and the clecos will be able to support the wing when inverted to work on the bottom. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of my handy work.
§31-18, -19 L & R — Light Bracket
Man, by this time I was flyin'! Translation: I was working so fast that I got sloppy. On each side is a simple bracket (same on both sides) and a truncated nose rib. I missed the fact that the bracket is symmetric L vs R, but isn't symmetric Up vs Down. I also missed the fact that the -002 rib is called out on the L wing because typically the L side gets the -001 variants of parts. Anyway, those got assembled and riveted in without double checking. The next day I looked at one of them and realized that there was no way that a skin was going to go over and get fastened properly. By this time my son-in-law, Dennis, had come over to help so he got a lesson in drilling out rivets and backtracking your work to see where you screwed up. He helped install the rebuilt brackets and then we were able to flip the wing onto its back.
Obstacles
Pitot tube mounting bracket.
I thought I had a W-00039-001 and a W-00039-002 (mirror image parts), but discovered that I have two of the -001 variants. I've written to Vans to get a replacement, but the web store shows 30-60 day backorder. Luckily, it's something that can be installed at any time in the future. In fact, I might not use this one as it sounds like Dynon has a different mounting system.
Rib interference
When I placed the left lower mid skin on the assembly, I noticed that there was rib that was obstructing the opening through which the wing strut would attach. I verified that things wouldn't fit and decided to just shut down the shop because I was tired and had been working hard and fast. I know from personal experience that if I kept going to find my own fix for the problem, I'd likely make something much worse or fail to realize that there was a reversible error in previous work.
Luckily, I was able to find a simple explanation & fix. Per the RV-15 Wiki, there was a design flaw in the rib in question and it was made with the same tabs as the rest of the ribs, but the tab shouldn't be present in this location. I presume they modified the part after I got mine. Vans says to just cut the offending material out as they won't send a replacement. They advise that you do that before you install it. Oh, well.
That's it for today and probably for the week. It's a busy work schedule and I doubt I'll have time to get into the shop for the rest of the week.
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