Days 21-22

Today we installed the wing top skins. These come in two pieces, the main skin down the wings and the wing step portions. The main skin is cleco'ed and riveted on first. There is a reinforcement pieces that we had to make sure was installed correctly at the end of the wings, as well as making sure all of the wing ribs align and are cleco'ed properly. once all that is done, we go through and clear drill all the holes, de-burr them and then rivet everything together. After the first set of rivets are pulled, we then remove the cleco's and repeat the process.

After the main skin is riveted, we then cleco'ed on the wing step portions. It is important again to make sure the many wing ribs are proper cleco'ed in place. It can be easy for them to get misaligned. It was also important to make sure the trailing edges wrapped correctly.

We order special solid rivets to do the trailing edge of the top skins. In the build manual it instructs you to trim the rivets so that they don't bind when the flaps and ailerons move up and down because of their tight tolerances. This seemed like a time-consuming process. We found a video online were at the build factory they use these solid rivets and a smasher set. We thought this was a great idea and would work and ultimately look better than trimming a few hundred blind rivets.