Mike Sylvester wrote: > Hey Guys, It's a little slow on the net right now so I'll pose this > question. What do the wing gap cover screws screw into ? Do I need to put > wood blocks on the inside of the wing ? Looking at a few web sites, I > don't think that screw location has ever been address. Will small sheet > metal screws not pull out ?
My gap seals were (up until a couple of weeks ago) held on with a combination of double-sided tape and two #4 woods screws abouv 3/8" long on each seal. One was in the bottom into the rear spar, and the other was at the trailing edge where top and bottom of the gap seal met. That worked OK, but now that I'm trying to get the double-sided tape off, I can say that I wouldn't wish that job on my worst enemy! It takes about an hour per wing, is an exercise in futility, and has resulted in damaging some of the only real paint on my plane, the underside the stub wings. I've been kicking myself that I didn't simply extend the stub wing surfaces out that extra inch and a half so attaching the wings left only an eighth inch gap or so, which could easily be filled by colored vinyl "electrical" tape. I'm doing that right now, and it's really not that hard to do, even after the plane is built...assuming you haven't painted it yet! The downside to a small gap is that you have less flexibility in manuevering the wings around to line up the wing attach fittings. But another thing I'm going to try to implement is nutplates and 4130 steel spacers on the main wing attach fittings so I'll only have four long 3/8" and four long 3/16" bolts to fool around with when removing and installing the wings. I'm not sure why I care, since it's been 5 years since I had the wings off last, but if nothing else it will help minimize the discontinuities in the outer wing/stub wing gap. The aft fittings are easy to access...just drop the flaps and there they are, but the mains will require a hole the diameter of a socket. The longer bolts and steel spacers will cost me some weight, but at this point I'm happy enough with my plane to expect no real degradation in performance by gaining another few ounces... Mark Langford N56ML "at" hiwaay.net website at http://www.N56ML.com --------------------------------------------------------
