The Wings

The wings were built pretty much from cloth and resin. In the finished plane, the wings will be demountable and attach to the fuselage via four pins - two holding the spars to each other and the seat back, and one each side at the rear of the wing (lift/drag pins). The only pre-formed parts in the wing kit are the two spars, which come pre-moulded with the spar-pin bushes in place.

You start construction by getting the spar nice and level, then put a series of pre-shaped foam blocks onto the front of the spar to define the leading edge. This whole bit is then covered with a large sheet of bi-axial fibreglass, which is lapped onto the back surface of the spar. The biaxial cloth soaks up resin like nobody's business, so a spare pair of dedicated resin-mixing hands came in very handy for these big lay-ups. Thanks to our fast-dwindling supply of friends for their unstinting help.

	Once you've done the leading edge and cured it, the proto-wing is quite stiff, so now it can be turned over and a second set of foam blocks are attached to the rear of the spar to define the shape of the middle of the wing. The trailing edge is all control surface - either flap or aileron - so this middle section of wing is quite interesting since it contains all of the fixing points for the control surfaces, and the channels for the aileron push rods, and the tubes for the pitot/static fitting... The control surfaces are made separately, much like the rudder and fin. These bits we have now started to fill to achieve the final smooth surface finish. It is worth while getting stuck into this as early as possible, since it is a huge job and not one to have to face all in one hit! We have spent about a year doing all the filling...

The wing modification for the weight increase is interesting. We fixed the wings together with the old pins and existing bushes, and measured all the angles in sight - particularly incidence and dihedral. In order to drill out the existing fixing bushes in the spars we used a starret (sp.?) cutter, which gives a much cleaner cut than the generic hole saw mentioned in the text. A 3/4" cutter sliced all of our bushes out very neatly, using the 1/4" drill guide supplied by the factory. We then glued in the new larger bushes and used the (greased) bolts (supplied) to hold the wings together, Re-establishing the dihedral originally measured.

We have some pictures which show the completed (but unfilled) wings being jigged for cure of the attachment points into the cockpit module. The weight-mod fixing points and one spar cap are being installed into the cockpit module seat back. .

This shows the living room of our long-suffering hosts, who luckily have a house wide enought to fit the whole wing span. .

And some more for good measure. The left-hand picture is a general shot of the wings, jigged in position and with incidence angle carefully set, having their spar pin fittings bonded in place. The glow from the cockpit module area is our thermostatically-controlled fan-forced set of 100W light bulbs which we use to cure small lay-ups. The right-hand image shows the wings back in the workshop. Spar cap is in evidence on the port wing (uh..the one of the right), and aileron drive push-rods and quick-connect fittings are basically complete.

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We've now completed all of the wing fixings, the aileron mechanisms & flap / outrigger fittings. Just a few weeks ago we finished the long haul of filling all of the surfaces. We started with the control surfaces (smaller so less threatening) then we filled those darn wings. We found that small imperfections in the profile could drive quite a lot of filling. Unfortunately the old style wing tended to have surface imperfections by its nature. Count yourself lucky if you have the XS style fast-build wing kit...