rodsmith
Well-known member
Just finished installing my quick build wings on my plans built fuselage. All in all went pretty well. I had Mark send me the wing attach hole drill guides. He mistakenly sent the LSA guides initially, which has a 1/4" and 5/16" drill guide. I hung on to those as I was happy to also have a 1/4" guide. Both my fuselage fittings and wing fittings had 3/16" pilot holes. I made some hole locators for the back side of the guides. They were 3/16, 1/4, and 5/16 pins welded in sleeves a 16th larger (1/4" pin in 5/16" sleeve etc). I drilled the holes in 1/16" increments, final size was done with reamers after drilling 1/64" under. I bought a 12" drill extension and was going to machine the base of the drill bits to 1/4" to fit it. Unfortunately when I put a 1/4" bit in it, it had some run out which was unacceptable. I ended up welding the bits and reamers to 4130 tubing, way cheaper than buying 12" bits. I initially planned on renting a dry wall jack but made some sturdy supports for both inboard and outboard wing locations with height adjustment. With three friends it was easy to get the wings up and into position. Installed the right wing first with 3/16th bolts and everything was perfect. Angle of incidence was exactly 2.0 deg, wing was exactly perpendicular to fuselage centerline. Used the drill guides with locator pins in the backside and drilled to size without having to make any adjustments. Left wing was another story. The vertical tube the rear fitting is attached to was slightly forward of where it should have been. The backside of the rear fitting interfered with the wing fitting. We had to put the wing back on the table. I cut off the rear side of the rear fitting and replaced it an 1/8th of an inch aft. Only took a few hours but it was 10 days before I could get everyone together again. On the second try was able to get the 3/16th bolt through the rear fitting. On the front fitting there was some misaligment, the bolt wouldn't go through the back side of the fuselage fitting. The wing was aligned great so opened up the hole on the rear fitting and proceeded to drill to size. Ended up with a 1.9 deg angle of incidence on the left wing. Measurement from wing tips to tail post were different by 1/8". 2" is considered good enough so I was really surprised how close it was. I built the wing struts according to Bob's instructions. Found it difficult to clamp the flat fittings to the curved outside of the strut and align them parallel with the flats inside. Took several attempts to get the clamps in the exact right position. When transferring the fittings to the inside I had some minor misalignment on a couple holes and ended up with some loose holes. I highly recommend starting out with 3/16" holes and bolts. When everything is measured and drilled, re drill to 15/64" and ream to 1/4". As far as getting the strut length correct, it was easy with the water level to set the wing tip to 2.9" higher. I drilled the struts for the inboard fittings and bolted them to the top of the strut, that way only had to clamp the outboard fitting to get the correct length, with the wingtip at the correct height. Be very careful that you don't get fittings mixed up from side to side, or flip them top to bottom while taking measurements or drilling. I was afraid of doing that so marked everything real well.
