Making the Aileron Alignment Jig

After a short break, I came back down to the shop to get the alignment jig made.  I’ve ready a few ways of doing this, but honestly, Vans has the most simple way of doing it and its worked for countless other builders, so I decided to stick with convention … Continue reading

Priming the Counterbalance and Fixing the Mistake

Even a little progress is some progress.. right?  I didn’t get a whole lot done tonight, but I did get over a small hump that I have been mulling over:  The messed up leading edge rivet.  A few posts back  I ended up damaging the left leading edge skin due … Continue reading

Riveting Aileron Reinforcement Plates

I didn’t get much accomplished tonight.  What has gotten me stuck is just how to deburr the inside of the A-409 counterbalance pipe for the aileron leading edge.  But I did get a little progress made, I’ll detail that below.  I started out by pulling all the parts out of … Continue reading

Deburring the Aileron Parts

Time to get down to the dirty work: Deburring, and edge finishing.  This will be a short post, but it was jam packed with work.  First I deburred all the holes in both aileron parts (skins, ribs, spar, etc).  Then, I deburred all the lightening holes in the spar, of … Continue reading

Bending the Aileron Skins

Bending skins is one of those tasks that make me nervous! Van’s ships the aileron skins with the trailing edge bent only just enough to form the trailing edge.  The reason is so that you can easily attach the stiffeners via backriveting.  The task itself is not difficult, but it … Continue reading

Riveting the Aileron Stiffeners

Since the AKZO had plenty of time to harden, I decided to go ahead and rivet the stiffeners to their skins so I can continue on with the build process.  Since these are backriveted on, this was a very quick little build session, which was nice because I have TONS … Continue reading

Priming the Aileron Skins and Stiffeners

I was pretty happy with the way the Alodine treatment turned out last night, so I figured I would go ahead and lay down some AKZO primer on them to see how well it sticks.  This is going to be a small primer session, with only doing the stiffeners and … Continue reading

Drilling the Aileron Nose Ribs and End Ribs

I am kind of running out of tasks to do until the Alumaprep and Alodine get here.  I was able to get a little work done  tonight though, only about an hours worth.  The next step in the instructions tells us to match drill the A-704 nose ribs, fluting the … Continue reading

Drilling, Deburring, and Dimpling the Aileron Stiffeners and Skin

After dealing with Unicoi Aviation’s Taxes, our family taxes, and end of year for work, I decided to hit the shop and do a little building.  I actually made decent progress on the build tonight, and have both ailerons ready for assembly.  I had finished making all of the stiffeners … Continue reading