Riveting the rear spar&misc pieces

I riveted the rear spar pieces together yesterday. Didn't take too long to complete that job. I then started working on all the misc items in the wing. I fabricated the wing tie down. The old way was with a piece of 1/2" alum. stock and then you bolted it to a piece of angle that was riveted to the spar web. Two bolts went through the spar flange strips as well. It was located in the middle of the wing. The problem with that location is that the pitot tube is also located slightly outboard of the tie down. RV's have short wings compared to most other airplanes so when you pulled up to a tie down at an airport and tied your plane down, the ropes went out a extreme angles to reach the ground. These ropes would run right across your pitot tube so in a wind storm with all the rocking the airplane does it would bend your pitot tube all up. I learned this lesson on the first plane. Since then I have moved the tie down to the outboard section of the wings. I still mount them to the spar flanges but I used the RV-7 style and they have a larger area to clamp to the spar and the web. This will work great and should get my tie downs close to being over the top of most airport anchor spots.

The other items I fabbed up was the bellcranks. I had this great idea to use RV-7/8 style bellcranks but it would not work on my RV-6. I extended the gas tanks where the brackets mounts is right under the tank extension. This part is riveted to the spar and there would be no way to service the bellcranks. SOOOO I punted on this and just starting making the old ones. The RV-6 uses bearings in their bellcranks instead of bushings so you get a smoother feel. It's more parts and more work to install them over a -7 kit but in the end, your control harmony is better. I return the -7 parts next time I go to Van's. I am also working on getting the ribs for the bellcrank assembled and the .032 tank rib with the nutplate strip in it. I want to get all of these parts fabbed and painted so I can start assembling the skeleton of the wing. I will do this on the bench and then mount it in the jig. You can flip this thing over to get better drilling access than you can hard mounted in the jig.