Wing Attachment

Section 44

The wings have actually been 'attached' for several weeks at this point.  I had also done substantial prep work in my garage working with making the wing root fairing supports and the upper wing root fairings.  I honestly thought the rest would fly by pretty fast, however that was not the case.

Being the first time to ever attach wings onto a plane I figured I would diligently follow the steps in order, and sticking to the plans... well that didn't last.  My major concern is once you put on the wings the plans have you pull them back off to do some attachments and what have you.  Then you push them back in for final bolting.  Given the importance of the wings I didn't like that idea, instead I decided to push the wings on and bolt them all down so all my match drilling and what not would be solid and not shift around.

The problem was that I made everything a bit harder going this route.  A lesson learned is I should of drilled the hole for my Pitot/AoA tubes before putting the wings on.  That made this a bit harder.  Also I should of gone ahead and riveted on the wing root fairing supports.  That also became a challenge with the wings attached.

The biggest time-sink by far on this section is all the drilling, match drilling, nut plates, putting on parts, taking them off, putting them back on ect.  You also spent quite a bit of time sanding.  You have to sand the inboard edges of the flaps so they fit, you also sand the top and bottom fairings so they fit.  It's not hard, just time consuming.

With the wings attached, and all related parts done I was able to finish wiring routing of the wings.  My conduit works out fantastically and was about perfect on size.  I had to get creative since I'm putting my OAT by the first access panel on the left wing.  This involved drilling a hole in the conduit and fishing the wire so it come from the cabin to that spot.  I did the same on the right wing for the trim and trim sensor wires.  This kept wires in the conduit and out of the ribs.  Below is a picture of the root after I dressed the wires.