I went straight home from work to deal with my little gap problem from last night. A lot of builders helped me by looking at their planes and letting me know if they had a gap, how much and how wide. Turned out that I suspected to have a vertically bent longeron on the left side. This is a result from banging on it which I did on the left one. The angle tries to evade the force by not just bending in the direction you want it to but also in the perpendicular direction. This creates a vertical (unwanted) bend. I thought I had made sure that I had taken this out before putting them away.
So I rushed home, took a closer look at the gap (which appeared to be smaller today) and finally I decided to give it a shot by pressing down hard where the gap was widest. I heard a metallic sound followed by a sudden movement and .... the gap was gone. Just like that. The longeron must have not been perfectly sitting on the posts and the pressure made it move a little more. That was all it took and the skin was perfectly matching the canopy deck.
I decided to hang the second skin and make sure that the right longeron aligned correctly as well.
It turned out to be perfectly aligned right from the start, no pressure required. I clecoed everything in place and verified the correct alignment multiple times.
That's when I decided that I didn't have the guts to start drilling just yet. If anything is wrong I won't be able to fix this. I would have to throw out the longerons and do it again. I'm just going to let it sit over night and take a fresh look at it tomorrow and probably start drilling the first holes. There are a lot to get match-drilled and this task will take a while.
Monday, April 11, 2011
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