a little shop therapy tonight

One of the things that I'm really enjoying about being in the shop working on airplanes is it gives me a great way to decompress from work as a 911 dispatch supervisor.

With new technology arriving every day at work, it becomes very difficult to champion change as a team leader in the communication centre.  We're all feeling a bit overwhelmed and morale at work isn't the greatest right now.  I think too that we all feel we were robbed of the  summer as the leaves are already changing here in our part of northern Ontario.  Winters tend to be fairly sedate (we don't use the "Q" word - that's how you summon death and mayhem in emergency services) and as a result nightshifts feel longer.  It's no fun going to work in the morning when it's dark and coming home when it's dark.

Going to the shop for some plane therapy helps, so that's where I headed tonight.

I made working on the 701 wing extension a priority tonight as Ron wants to get that finished up so we can concentrate on both my 750 build and finishing off his Scout.  Once they are complete I'll be able to get some stick time in both while we fly off the required post inspection hours.  We're aiming for spring and that should be around the time I'll need use of the workbench for my wings and fuselage.

I've been working on the wing tip extensions.  We decided to extend them by 18 inches and this requires extending the wing spar caps as well.  These will be extended out to the tips, giving a much stiffer extension that what the plans call for.

Here I'm using the rivet pitch guide to centre punch mark the rivet hole locations.

Th red sheet metal rivet pitch template.

After marking, and using the drill press to make the  holes in each of the upper and lower cap angles, I backdrilled each of the spar cap extensions through the spar web extensionm adding clecos as I went to ensure the spar web cap remained in the correct place.

Take it all apart and debur all the holes on each piece (my new tool works great for that!).  Then reassemble with clecos and test fit in position at the end of the wing spar.  Perfect fit, tight and level!

Fit the front side spar web extension doubler and back drill through the web.  Disassemble, debur, reasemble for final fit:

You can really see the diference in the shine on the new aluminum and the originals on the right. I'll be taking some aluminum safe cleaner to the original stuff before closing up the wings.

Extension in place awaiting final assembly. Have to decide where the two new wing ribs go before cutting the lightening holes.

I've made the spar caps match the angle of the spar tips.  Really like how they look and how they will secure the tip skins:

Great progress tonight...... not bad for 3 hours of therapy :)