Decisions, Progress, First Boo-Boo 5/63

I woke up thinking about wing spars this morning. No idea why. I reviewed the Change Notice 1 paperwork and went to the shop to study my stack of ribs. The root rib is made of .032, which tells me it was made after September 1980. (Root ribs prior to that date were .020.) Change Notice 1 was issued to reinforce the root rib and rear spar attach area after 3 or 4 RV-3's were lost to wing failures between 1978 and 1980. Within this change notice, there are several different options for fixing the root rib, based on the completion level and vintage of the aircraft in question. Change Notice 2 was issued to reinforce the main spar. Both Change Notices must be done in order for the aircraft to be approved for aerobatics. There are two different Change Notice 2's, based on which type of spar you have, Type 1 (pre-1984, 1/8" spar cap lamination bars) or Type II (Post-1984 with 3/16" spar cap laminations). If you have read this far, you might be getting confused. Well join the damn club, because it is not quite so easy as ordering the parts and just doing it, like I thought I could do when we started this project. It will cost me $800 and many weeks to order the bar stock for the spar caps and build a Type II spar. It would cost me $2600 to order shiny, new, machined RV-3B spars, and zero build time, and I'd get a modern F-303 bulkhead assembly match-drilled to the spars. Hmmmm..... This is starting to seriously become an option!

I knew that annoying hole in the table was good for something.

Anyway, after sitting there a while I decided to actually do something. I fluted and squared the HS-305 ribs and drilled them to the spar, making sure the rib was flush with the top of the spar. (The rib was slightly smaller than the spar.) Then I made two HS-308 front spar/Vertical Stab Spar joiner plates. TWO, you say?? Yep. Got a little overzealous with the band saw, took too much out of the inner radius of the upside-down T-shape, so I scrapped it and made another one. I sure hope that's why Van's provided a piece of plate that was twice as big as what I needed... 

Notice there are rivets between these ribs. Eventually I'll need to drill some or all of them out to make room for the Horizontal Stab mounting bars. Figure I'll just leave them in for now & cross that bridge later. MUCH later.

In the ruler picture, this is showing how the rib is flush to the top of the spar. The other rib is just as flush even though it doesn't look like it here. I like small victories. :-)

Radius cut too sharp. Damn.

Much Better!