Wings arrive!

Monday 7th July

Accepted wings delivery

I had quite a time getting this kit through customs. The European Union has a new 'simplified procedure' for customs clearance which has made things infinitely more complex. To be allowed to import something like this, you need to have 'End-User Authorisation, for which you need a TAN ("Trader Authorisation Number", I believe) for which you need a VAT ("Value Added Tax" - like US sales tax but much higher) number. Of course, being a private individual working on a private strictly non-commercial project, this is not a VATable activity. However, as it happens, I was once registered for VAT a long time ago in relation to a business idea I began to work on but which did not come to pass. In the end, I gave them this number to keep them happy as they were clearly perplexed and going in circles, poor things. The next day, having paid over the VAT and customs clearance fees together with a fairly large sum of money for the additional days storage (11 days in all - you get 5 free) at the docks warehouse, the truck arrived.

Despite requesting one, the truck had no tail lift and I certainly have no cargo handling equipment at home. As it turned out, the driver was more than willing to help. The length of the spar box is an advantage because it is easy to lift just one end down from the 4 ft 6in deck of the truck and then lift the other end. The main box was quite a bit lighter than I had expected (the sizes and weights are all on the Vans website) because of course the parts for the tanks were missing from it.

With the boxes on the street, the truck departed. My advance planning for this situation amounted to buying two 'skates' for moving heavy furniture or appliances. Dorothy and I were about to use these to move the boxes towards the house when a kindly neighbour came along and insisted on lifting them with me. He is retired and a good 10 years older than me and I fully expected him to damage his back but there was no stopping him. I often come across situations like this where I carefully plan how I am going to handle something and someone comes along and takes over, dismissing my plans with "No, no, you don't want that. You want this". It always seems impolite to burst the baloon of their well-intentioned 'expertise'.


Anyway, we got the crates into my front garden (Did I mention that I live in a terraced house where some idiot built an aircraft workshop blocking the entrance to the back garden?) and there I put my foot down and would not allow them to be lifted further. I went back to work and left things until later when I had the field to myself. That evening my daughter's boyfriend was in attendance and he is a much fitter and more amenable young man. Together, Matt and I lifted the long spar box through the hallway and kitchen and out throught the kitchen window - it was too long to make the turn through the doorway.



The spar box was damaged at one end. It may have been the customs people having a little look to ensure I am not building a stealth bomber. Anyway, I opened the top of the spar box to check and everything looked just fine. I also got the top off one of Evan Johnson's tank crates and took a peek. They look terrific. I can't wait to have a proper look.


Light was fading so the crates were just man-handled into the workshop.

Elevation

Sunday 25th Nov 7 hrs 45 min

Cut and edge-prepped 16 E908 stiffeners for the right Elevator. Match drilled stiffeners to E901-R skin. Dimpled Stiffeners.

Building the elevators, particularly the right elevator, is like a lot like building the rudder. Much of the time today was spent marking out and cutting the stiffeners and then preparing the edges after match-drilling. This time I didn't have to worry about the length of the stiffeners as they are all the same.

The main difference is that the skin is pre-bent so that it wants to stay closed. This makes it quite awkward to gain access to the inside, particularly if you are working alone. I am quite sure that Dorothy (my wife) would be happy to help out if asked but she was away visiting her mother as she does on most Sundays and in any case, I don't want to call on help too often so that I have lots of 'credit' left for the times when I can't do without a second pair of hands.

So I rigged the set-up you see pictured here (actually this is the left elevator). I used the wooden cradle from the horizontal stabilisers, clamped one trailing edge to the bench and placed one of my lengths of teak seating rail running between the two cradle blocks. The spring tension in the skin kept the length of teak fairly securely in place. I was working on my sacrificial slab of chipboard again as I needed to drill into the surface. The piece of scrap timber you see under the drill is placed so that the far edge just overlaps the trailing edge where it is 'indented' to allow space for the trim tab. It is screwed down into the chipboard to hold that section of the trailing edge firmly.

The tension in the skin is such that it bends up between the clamped trailing edge and the leading edge so it was important to work systematically from the trailing edge forwards and from left to right ensuring that the stiffeners hold the skin perfectly flat.

I kept the blue vinyl in place for this operation as there is a lot of potential for scratches from the stiffners whose edges have still not been polished.

Dimling the stiffeners was done with the pneumatic squeezer.