I started off with what has become a bit of a hangar ritual, sanding the fiberglass parts and adding more filler. It’s looking better, but still needs more work.
We didn’t drill our wing attachment points, since our project’s previous owner already had. I wanted to be sure that the wings were lined up correctly- not because I doubted Richard’s work, but because if there were a problem, it would be a hole lot easier to fix now, before we cover the fuselage. And of course, if it was off, we would have no choice but to fix it sometime. To simplify the check, first I leveled the fuselage left to right with the water level. Then I raised the tail until the bottom of the wing was level. I checked along the length in several places to be sure that we had the same incidence angle on both wings, and no warps from the factory. All of that checked out perfectly. Next I checked dihedral by measuring the height difference between the wing root and the wing tip with the water level. I was getting a slight difference between the two wings, and after much head scratching I realized that the struts are probably on backwards. I think I have the right strut on the left wing and vice-versa. I looked back at pictures from Richard’s log to see that in his pictures the bolts are pointing down, which confirms this suspicion. Next time we put the wings on I’ll swap the struts and check again to verify the dihedral.
