My brother Timmy and I agree that the worst part of building an airplane is removing the plastic! That stuff was really baked on there!
Wing root ribs
This is one of those things that can make you go crazy! It should be a straight forward job, but getting everything to line up properly is really tough! I persevered and eventually got everything square.
Here it is drilled and clecoed in place !
GPS mount
I decided to mount the GPS antenna on top of the left wing near the root. I created this doubler to go under the skin.
Magtometer
Since the Bearhawk is a steel cage, it doesn’t fare well with the ADHARS. So Dynon makes a remote Magtometer. I mounted it on the far end of the left wing far away from any magnetic metal.
Pitot tube
For the pitot/aoa tube, I ran the lines with grommets through the forward rib noses.
Wing fuel lines
I kept the aux tank transfer fuel lines high in the wing.
The aux tanks use a facet fuel pump to transfer fuel from the aux tanks to the main tanks. I made sure that there was no interference with the aileron bell crank and the fuel lines.
The main fuel lines came out of the tank and needed to go through part of the rib. In this case a doubler was needed since the hole was through part of the lightening hole. Some people have used fittings to go around the rib here, but I was really striving for clean fuel system with a few direction changes as possible.
Here you can see that I decided to tee the aux fuel line into the top sight gauge line. This allows for the fuel to not only fill the main tank, but also back fill down the sight gauge and push the little orange ball down, while fuel is being transferred. When the aux fuel is being transferred and when the aux tank is empty will be clearly evident.
Fuel Tank Straps
My trusty helper and I went to work fabricating the fuel tank straps. I used outdoor carpet to protect the aluminum tank from the steel straps.
Drilling the wing mounts
I got focused at the task at hand that I forgot to take pictures of the process. This is the only picture I took! Sorry!
I created a water level system and spent the better part of a day leveling the fuselage and aligning the wings. Every adjustment made something else change.
After finally getting everything set, I used a set of drill guides to step drill the wing mounts. This is one of those things that you don’t want to mess up thankfully it went perfectly!
Wing supports
I set up shop in the front yard to build wing supports. I used the plans that Mark Goldberg supplied and they worked great!
Here are the wing supports laid out to support the wings while we drill them in place.
We successfully moved the wings to the hangar to fit them to the fuselage.
Cutting access for aux tanks
The main tanks are already cut, but the aux tank holes aren’t. So masked out the area to protect the aluminum before I cut.
I used a jig saw to rough cut the skin. Then used a large vixen file to take it to the proper deminsion. So much filing!!!
You can see I wasn’t quite done filing yet. I took a break to layout all the nutplate holes and counter sunk them.