Devin W.C. Ryan

Building 4 Star 60 Day 15: Wings Coming Along

Wednesday evening was an exciting building session as I can really see how things are going to be fitting together!  We looked how the stabilizer and fin will connect to the fuselage, which really makes the project take shape!

R main spar & 2 forward spars glued
R main spar & 2 forward spars glued

Worked on both wings.  Started with the right wing, above, by cutting and sanding the dihedral angle on one end of the 1″ x 1″ angled shaped wing dowel support block.  Once the angle and length were correct I glued the block in place between the two W-1 wing ribs and the leading edge.  Clamped it together to let it dry.  I oversanded the block a bit so once in place added some extra glue in the gap and inserted some filler, which will need to be cut and sanded next time.

I then trial fitted the main spar and after cutting a little bit off a couple of the diagonal braces I was able to glue the spar into place.  Unfortunately during the trial fitting of the rear spar we discovered it was not sitting flat.  Appeared that the web was to ‘short’ so the spar was unable to sit properly.  Peter is going to use some filler to make up the difference by gluing it to the top of the rear web.

Moving to the left wing I glued the trailing edge ensuring the bottom and tips of the ribs had plenty of glue.  This is a key part of the plane as it’s where your control surface, airleron, is going to hinge too.

Left wing trailing edge glued and pinned
Left wing trailing edge glued and pinned

Speaking of airlerons I marked the centre lines on both the leading and trailing edges for both as they’ll need to be beveled and rounded respectively.

Centre lines marked on airlerons
Centre lines marked on airlerons

After we were done building Peter and I had a cup of tea and chatted about life 🙂.

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