Wing Center Skinning

Build Hours: 865

Lots of hours were involved in completing one of the UC wing center sections. There's a lot of missing steps in the next sequence of pictures which I hope to fill in as we complete the center section on the other UC. Now that we've gained some "prior building experience", we'll know when its a good point to take a picture.

Some of the pictures are dark due to me bouncing the camera off of the concrete floor which killed the flash, arghhh!

The UCSide

(kinda like the popular cartoon - The Farside without as much humor:))

"The intrepid builder realizes too far into the project that the cockpit is rather snug!"

As always, we started with a pattern. During the entire nose skining process, we kept the fuselage level and the wing spar plumb by clamping the rear spar to a 1" x 2" steel tube clamped to the siderails. Level and plumb was checked often!

We use the offset pen/pencil to follow the fuselage shape.

We used the vacuum bagging method to form the nose skin around a 2" pipe.

Here the skin is being trial fit.

After the nose skin, which required lots of strapping and adjustments, we installed the top aft skin. We then flipped the fuselage to fit the bottom skin. The extra rib and reinforced ribs are for the wing step area.

This is the gear leg in place under the wing.

This is the gear leg attached to the spar and the aileron bracket.

This picture shows the shape of the rear spar and the aft skin fit. this will all be covered by the wing fairings when completed.

The wing step has an additional .040 panel to stiffen things up.

Another view of the rear spar and lower skin attachment.

The rectangular riveted section is the landing gear doubler.