Wing spar

After some problems with the power supply at the airport, I finally got started on the wing today. I am unable to run my compressor normally since it will trip the breaker if it starts under load, and the panel is located in someone else's locked hanger. I guess the problem is that there are several hangers on the same 20 amp circuit, and in the winter a couple people leave their preheaters on 24/7. For the time being I'll have to start the compressor with the drain valve open and then it will run fine to cut out. When the tank pressure drops to below what the tool I'm using requires I'll have to drain the tank and start over. A serious PITA, but it gets me working. We're going to talk with airport management to see about running a breaker just for the one hanger as a permanent fix.

Thursday with the help of a friend I built a 4' x 8' work table. This thing is pretty stout, and I'm sure it will stand up to whatever it gets put thru during the build. I would still like to build a dimpling table for the DRDT-2, but will probably wait till I get to riveting on the skins.

Work table with the spars on top.

Today I fabricated the J channel stiffeners for the left wing. I was lucky to see a post from another builder that pointed out the fact that you skip not only the plate-nut mounting holes on the lower stiffener, but also the skin rivet immediately next to them as well. He had found this out the hard way when he tried to cleco it to the top flange and finish drilling.

Match drilling the J channel stiffeners on the left spar.

 After fabricating the stiffeners I began countersinking the left spar. I got all the tank attach plate-nut mounting holes done, and was going to start riveting them on when I discovered a problem. The K-1100-08 plate nuts I was sent have both the screw and rivet holes dimpled, and from the details it appears that this is wrong, the rivet holes should not be dimpled. I checked the called out single leg nut plates for verification, and they did not have the dimpled rivet holes. I'll be calling Vans tomorrow to make sure, but it looks like I'll be slowed down slightly waiting for the correct hardware. I'm going to build the wings one at a time due to space constraints, but will fabricate the J channel stiffeners and prep the spar for the right wing while I'm waiting for the proper nut-plates to come in.