Several more hours today on the garage...

Getting there..  Need to make sure those lower two shelves are super strong to hold the wings.  And they will be.

Probably spent 6 hours today working on my garage to remove old and decrepit shelves and junk and start installing new shelves that will hold both wings and fuselage parts.

The start of the installation of the new shelving.  Hoping to finish it tomorrow.  I designed it to be insanely strong to hold both wings (bottom two shelves) and all the fuselage parts.

Meanwhile I ordered a pneumatic nibbler (Neiko 30067A) to fix the fuel tank skin (and anything else that comes up that requires sheet metal cutting).  Looked at the other tank skin and it looks OK.


NEXT SESSION:

1. Finish the shelving!
2. Take the tank off the right wing and do the sealing procedure (after cleaning the inside with MEK).  There's also one last forming hole that needs a sealed rivet installed (will do both tanks).

Just wanted to let everyone know that I've created a discussion forum for builders of the Sling.  If you're a builder (or someone from the factory!) please create an account and post away any questions, answers, tips or advice you'd like to share.  All will be appreciated!

Just click the link above to get to the forum!

Thanks!

Craig

2 hrs. over the last two days adjusting the top wing skins (the step section only) and test fitting the fuel tank.

Checking the flatness of the top.  Looks excellent!

Took awhile to get the tank to go on.  It kept getting hooked up on the skins.  The fuel tank skins need to go outside the wing skins and I had to make sure that was happening on the top and bottom while sliding it on.  Also the second connector in from this side is cleco'ed in place for now, but it was preventing the tank from going all the way on, so I switched the cleco's to be from the other side of the connector and all was better.

Are the skins of the leading edges supposed to meet like this?  Hmmm....

NEXT SESSIONS:

1. Never got to work on the shelving, so I must make progress on that in order to get things cleared out in the garage and better organized (am I obsessively organized?).
2. Need to check on access to the bolts that connect into the Z-sections (connectors) of the fuel tank.
3. Seal the tank!

2 hrs. priming the top skins and starting to cleco them in place for the test fit.  Also started construction of the shelves that will hold the wings and fuselage parts.

Need to fiddle with the step ribs top skin (just a slight adjustment), but other than that they fit well.  Next I'll cleco together the fuel tank back channel and Z-sections and test fit it on the wing.  I may need to remove the top skin there to more easily get to the bolts that connect the tank to the spar.  After that's on I want to check the leading edge all the way across for straightness.  Also check along the top of the wing.

Building the shelving.  Needs to be secure...

NEXT SESSION:

1. Finish construction of shelving.
2. Fix the step rib skin.
3. Cleco together the fuel tank back channel and test fit to spar.

1 hr retrieving, peeling the plastic off and cleaning of the right wing top skins.

The fuselage sub-kit arrived yesterday!!  Very excited.  But, it was quickly apparent that I need to put in a few hours this weekend doing a major overhaul of organization to the left side of my garage.  All the junk has to come out and I need to put up some full length shelving to store not just the fuselage parts, but the wings.  Off to Home Depot tomorrow to buy wood, shelving brackets and angle irons.  It will need to be super strong to support the wings...  I'll over-design it for sure...

Meanwhile I still want to make progress on the right wing.  Pulled off the plastic and cleaned them tonight.  Tomorrow I will deburr and prime and then cleco them to the wing structure.

NEXT SESSION:

1. Deburr and prime the right wing top skins.
2. Cleco to structure.

3 hrs. over the last 2 days filling rivets and flipping the right wing.

After the taping, sanding through the tape to expose the heads, smearing Bondo across the heads, drying and then sanding the heads, pulling off the tape reveals this (I also cleaned the surface with my Extreme Simple Green solution).  Nice!:

Long view down the wing.

My friend David came over to help me flip the wing.  Thanks David! ;-)

NEXT SESSION:

1. Make sure the jig ends are perfectly level with each other and secure tightly to the bench.
2. Start the prep of the top skins.

4 hrs. Prepping the leading edges, putting on the right one and taping up the rivets for filling.

Leading edges all primed (inside only as I've been doing for all skins).

Starting to put the right leading edge on.

Working my way around, row by row.  It can be hard to bend it around, but this method of 1 or 2 rivets for each rib at a time seemed to work well.  The only hard one was the first one around the bend - but some good pushing while inserting the cleco worked.

And it's around!

I figured while it's on its back I might as well do the filling.  Here it's all taped up.  After this I did the sanding to expose the heads.  Tomorrow I'll mix up some Bondo to spread on the heads.

This is all you need for the rivet filling.  I found the medium grit (120) of the small sanding kit worked best.

NEXT SESSION:

1. Bondo the rivet heads, then sand when dried.  Then pull off the tape and viola! 
2. When the rivets are done it's time to flip the wing once again.

1 hr. pulling plastic and trying out the filler for the rivet holes.

The right side leading edge plastic took less than 5 minutes.  The left side, shown here....  1 hr....  It's one or the other with plastic on the skins.  The extra sticky are a test of one's patience...

Mixed up a small batch of the Bondo brand body filler I got today to try out the rivet filling.  Goes on quick... and dries quick too.  I only mixed a batch half the size of a golf ball and it dried to the point of un-usability before I got halfway through it.  On Sunday I'll sand it off and pull the tape and it should be perfect.  I'll just have to be mixing tiny batches over and over in order to do this.

4 hrs. riveting the bottom of the right wing.

It's a thing of beauty!!!  All riveted except where the fuel tank and remain leading edge will attach.  Also didn't rivet trailing edge of step ribs since the top skin comes around and goes underneath the bottom skin.

And my Stratux (Stratus 2 clone) is powered up!

Foreflight connected immediately after connecting to the Stratux'es WiFi network!  You can tell by the Freeflight text in the upper left of the map.

 Connecting my laptop to the Stratux WiFi allows you to connect to its control panel.  Here we can see that is receiving the ADS-B Out messages from 3 airliners overhead.  Very cool!!

NEXT SESSION:

1. Pull plastic off, deburr, clean and prime the leading edge skins for both wings.

3 hrs. cleco'ing on the bottom skins and testing out a method for filling rivets told to me by Jean at the The Airplane Factory USA.

A little side project to build a Stratus 2 (ADS-B Receiver, GPS and AHRS) clone for less than $150.  The Stratus 2 is $900... ;-)  I'll power it up tonight.

The outside surfaces won't be primed until the plane is ready to be painted, but some parts of the skins go under others, so I applied primer (Cortec 373) by brush to those places.

The other overlapping strip on the bottom skins.

I tried a method of filling rivets recommended by Jean at TAF and it worked great!  Just put a strip of painter's tape over the rivets and sand off the tops.  The rivets pop through in seconds!  Deciding what to fill them with and then I'll give it a shot.  I like efficient!

Bottom skins all cleco'ed on and ready to be riveted.

NEXT SESSION:

1. Start riveting bottom skins on!

4 hrs. Flipped the wing, test fit of skins and prepped the bottom skins.

After cleco'ing up the bottom skin I found that the bottom stringer was pushing the rib about 1/4".  This pic doesn't show it because I had already removed the cleco's (though you can see that if you lined up the holes in the stringer with the skin holes it would push the rib).  Clipped off about 1/4" from the end of the stringer.

Just a view of the bottom skins during the test fit.

This is after I clipped off about 1/4" from the stringer.

All of the bottom skins (including the left wing) cleaned, deburred and primed.  With my equipment and process now, my cleaning, priming and sprayer clean-up is quick enough that I can do all of it "just-in-time" before the parts are needed.

Fully prepped skins back on the wing.  Ready for cleco'ing and riveting.  Need to make sure I don't rivet holes where the fuel tank will attach.  Also the last row of holes on the step ribs (closest in this picture) should not be riveted since the top skin there comes around the trailing edge.

NEXT SESSION:

1. Cleco'ing and riveting of the bottom skins.  Make sure the jigs are perfectly level with each other before any riveting!!

2 hrs. drilling holes for grommets and a failed effort to modify the landing light mounting brackets for my Sunspot 36LX lights.

Drilling out all the holes for the left wing to accommodate the grommets and wiring.  Since I discovered that you can't drill these out once they're attached to the spars, I need to drill these out now.

All done!

The included brackets are too small for the Sunspots, so I tried to use a hand electric jigsaw to enlarge the holes.  Didn't work....  Came out terrible and unusable...  Now I need a Plan B....

3 hrs. installing a connecting piece on the rear support channel and doing the right wing wiring.

Installed this plate between the 2 pieces of the rear support channel.

Installed the grommets for the wiring.

Unrelated to the wiring, I tested the fuel level senders.  The resistance varied between 10 and 200 ohms for both senders - good to go!

Measuring out the wires.

Tested them all for continuity - all good!

Bundling the wiring in sheathing.

Have to have the wires separated for the whole sheathing process to work...

Wrapped the end I was inserting to make it easier to thread it through.

Nice!

Here's a video of me doing the sheathing.

 Away for a week for work, but when I return...

NEXT SESSION:

1. Flip wing over to start the process of riveting the bottom skin!