| The four missing: 2-23 channels had not arrived yet. Since these were needed for the next steps, we decided to skip some steps to start working on the wings. Riveting the ribs was very fast... |
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... except for three that did not fit to our satisfaction. You can see on the picture on the left that the metal plate riveted to the trailing edge of the wing prevents the end of the rib from sitting properly on the tube. |
| Our solution was to file some metal off the plate (about 1 mm thinner
at the edge) and remove some plastic from underneath the tip of the rib.
The fit was then perfect. This adjustment took just as much time
as it took to install all the other ribs...
Later on, the inspector recommended we polish the surface of the metal part we filed. This will prevent cracks from forming if the surface is very smooth. |
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Nicolas is now drilling the holes for the rib support channels. |
| We had a bit of fun here... To make our Chinook different from all the others, we checked the alignment of the rivets with a LASER BEAM! Before the rivets were "popped", a small laser pointer was used to illuminate the five rivet mandrels aligned on the rib support channels. You can see on the picture the five "red dots" caused by the laser beam hitting the top of the mandrels: as straight as a laser beam!! We'll see how useful this technique is later. |
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Our first question: how are the rib support braces supposed to be installed.
The picture on the right is closer to the diagram provided in the instructions,
and they actually say to trim the braces. Somehow, I would prefer
the placement shown on the picture on the left... How many rivets
do we have to attach these? (See
what we did later.)
Speaking of rivets, ASAP gave us the "exact" number of rivets we needed! A few spare rivets would be useful... |
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