Tonight, I was supposed to work the night shift to support some maintenance initiatives on our diesel generators.  The bad news was that they sent us home and I lost out on 10 hours of overtime pay, but the good news was that I got to work on the plane.  WoooHoo!!

Tonight, I started clecoing the wing ribs to the main spar on the left wing.  This is not difficult, but particular attention needs to be paid to whether you are installing a W-711L or a W-711R.  The rib flanges are oriented in a particular direction to facilitate bucking rivets when attaching the skins.

This was one of the more eventful nights so far on the Wing Kit.  To date, I have around 80 hours on the wings and it hasn't resulting in assembling any large structures.  This is the first night for assembling large parts and looking like I am working on a real airplane.  Hey, you got to strive for the small, but achievable goals here to stay motivated.

Here is what the wing structure looks like after clecoing it all together.  The next step Van's calls out is to final drill the holes attaching the ribs to the spars to their final size (#30).

I thought that this was a neat picture (Got the idea from Dan Checkoway).  One of the things that continues to amaze me about the RV-7 is how well all these pre-punched parts line up.  Here the wing is just sitting between two saw horses.  I have done nothing to take out any twist or sag in the spars.  Everything lines up great without any jigs.  If it don't line up correctly, you put it together wrong...

When I was match drilling the rib/spar attaching holes, I noticed that one hole took a little more effort and I immediately stopped drilling to see what was different.  Sure enough, there was no pre-punched hole in the W-711 rib that lined up with the rear spar in the wing walk area.  I thought maybe that I lined something up incorrectly. 

I went back to Van's instructions and buried at the end of the second step (paragraph), it mentions that the W-711L & R in the wing walk will have two holes that will be abandoned on the ribs and that two new holes will be drilled using the rear spar as the guide.

As you can see from my photo, there were actually only 5 new holes that were required in the ribs.

When I got done with drilling all rib to spar attach holes to final size, I marked location of each rib (i.e.: which wing, top/bottom, and position within wing).

•   Arrow points to the top of the rib.
•  R- Right, L- Left
•  Number- Starts at 1 on the inboard side and goes to 14 being the outboard rib.

Finally, I disassembled the left wing and begin the repetitive task of deburring all the holes I just drilled.

Under "Preparing The Wing Ribs", Van's states to make provisions for running wires for lights and strobes. I am putting in landing/taxi lights and wingtip strobes (Van's lighting system #6).  Van's web site has a FAQ on where to put the holes to run those wires.  Below is a drawing from that document.  I am leaning torwards the location of the 0.75" hole.  I think that I will sleep on it and figure it out another day.