October 23, 2011 - Mount the Xenos
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Mounting the wings to the fuselage is always a big day for any airplane
building project and today was the day for the Xenos. Bruce and I
had already spent half a day just getting to them over to his Shop.
We needed a big flat area because the wings on this plane are so
long. After all, it is a glider that has a motor.
First task: level the fuselage. |
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Check. |
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| Second task:
fit the wings together for the first time ever. |
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Check. The wings fit
together perfectly. Which was good. |
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| The next step is to
connect the wings together on the fuselage. But first we needed to
cut a little bit of the fuse away to get the wing spars in. No
problem with a drill and dremel tool. |
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| And the left wing
is in. |
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| And now the
right. So easy to say, but it actually took us a couple of
hours to get this far. In aircraft building, nothing is every
easy. |
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Now comes the fun part: drilling
the wing main and rear spars to the fuselage.
First we made sure the wings were
straight and aligned. We used the digital level to make sure the
wing dihedral was the same on both sides. Then we made sure the
distance from the middle trailing edge of each wing to the fuselage rear
was equal. All was well -- well, maybe we had to wiggle the wings a
little.
With the wings where they needed to
be, Bruce drilled the fuselage rear spar to the fuselage and to the wing
rear spar tabs.
Bruce's sons, Nathan and Jake, helped
us all day. And we needed them. Those wings are heavy! |
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| And hes in! |
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The Xenos is really looking like a
plane now. |
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With the rear spars drilled, it was time to drill the front
spars.
The RV had eight bolts on each side, and the holes were
pre-drilled. But because the bolts were "close-tolerance" it was
still no easy task to get them in.
With the Xenos, there is only one bolt on each side -- but it is a big
one, 1/2" diameter -- and you have to drill it yourself. We
had bought special bits from McMaster-Carr for the job. One bit was
a 1/4" to 3/8" step bit, and the other went from 3/8" to 1/2".
First Bruce drilled spars to 1/4", then to 3/8" and finally to
1/2". |
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| Bruce was in the
cockpit at least two hours. |
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| It took lots of
tools to get the job done. |
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| Still
drilling. There just wasn't much room to get the drill in
there. |
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| Nathan and Jake
giving their Dad moral support. |
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| We started at 10AM
and finally finished up around 5PM. But a major milestone in
the project is complete. Now Bruce and paint the wings and we can
finish up the fuselage. The cowl, spoiler cable assembly and a
million other little details are left. But the Xenos should fly in
the spring! |
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