Tonight, I had another work surprise, I didn't have to go in on the night shift, but would have to remain on call.  WooHoo, that means I can put some more time in on the plane.

Tonight, I continued on the wing skeleton assembly by fitting the leading edge ribs and drilling to size.  In the figure below, the pre-punched rib attached holes do not line up with the main spar holes.  Van's instructions state:

•  Abandon the rib holes in the those locations.
•  Attach the rib(s) to the main spar.
•  Use the main spar to back drill new holes to the leading edge ribs.

The leading ribs in this picture are the first two W-709 leading edge ribs (or the first ribs outboard of the aileron bell crank assembly).

A big picture shot of the leading edge ribs cleco'd to the main spar.  Oh boy, more holes to debur...

Once I got done with deburring all the holes for the leading edge ribs, I needed to figure out where I was going to run wires through the wings.  I looked to Van's web site on the frequently asked questions (FAQ).  After reviewing those options, I decided to put the 3/4" hole in the lower 1/3 of the rib between the large lightening hole and the next one aft.

In order to ensure that every hole is in the exact same location, I made a template using one of the W-711L ribs.  I used the thin plywood from the wing spar crate. 

• I traced the outline of the rib and the arrows indicate which way is UP.  Drawing the outline of the rib is very helpful as the tooling holes in the plywood do not line up on the W-712 rib.  You can then use the rib outline to make a really close placement for the 3/4" hole.
• I drilled two holes into the plywood on the forward side using the tooling holes in the rib for position (left side of photo).  I drilled one aft hole in the plywood using the aft tooling hole.  This will allow me to cleco the W-711L ribs to the plywood.

Once the plywood jig had been drilled, I cleco'd the rib to the plywood and lined up the unibit for proper placement.  When I was happy, I used a couple of wood clamps to hold the plywood in place.

Since the unibit has so many "steps", I used a red sharpie marker to identify the 3/4" step in the bit.  The OD of the conduit Van's sells is 13/16".  Van's instructions state that by drilling the hole to 3/4", the conduit corrugations will "snap" into place when routed through the ribs.

I drilled out all of the W-711L ribs at one time.  When I was done with the W-711L ribs, I flipped the template over, cleco'd a W-711R rib to the plywood, did the "dead man chalk outline" thing on the back side of the plywood and then drilled all of the remaining ribs.

I am not sure at this stage if this will solve all of my wing wire routing issues.  I am planning on having the following options in the aircraft:

•  Van's lighting kit #6
•  Duckworks HID landing lights (both wings)
•  Heated Pitot
•  Autopilot
•  Wingtip Antenna(?)

So far, Van's has next to nothing about routing of wiring in the instructions and the literature I have from the hardware manufacturers doesn't talk about it much either.  I would imagine that this will occupy my mind for the next period of building time.  Time to do some research...