Flap skeletons and brackets   May 25th, 2009

Decided to take a quick break from the tanks and work on the flaps. I started by clamping together the flap skeletons, and then the bottom flap skins.
The skin itself is used as the ‘rear spar’, and the ribs don’t always get close enough to the skin. So, I had to make tiny shims out of 0.025″ aluminum to insert between the rib and the skin-formed rear spar. Also, because these rivets will be completely enclosed by the flap skins, they are AN470, 1/8 inch. It is very tempting to just drill them #40 (which is what I did initially), but closer inspection of the plans will set you straight.
Here is the flap with the top skin on.
The most inboard rib will have a bracket rivet to it. This bracket eventually connects to the rod that makes the flaps go up and down. Also, it is important to make sure the rib is oriented correctly. You can tell because the tooling hole on the left (closest to the front spar) is closer to the bottom of the flap.
Next time, I’ll work on making this bracket. Apparently it uses a very non-conventional fabrication method…
This entry was posted on Monday, May 25th, 2009 at 2:01 am and is filed under Flaps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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