Mind the gap.

When we moved into Einar's shop, he asked me when I would be ready to paint. About a week, I replied.

Boy, was I wrong.


Ailerons, flaps, rudder, elevators and stabs all have gap seals, and I decided to fit the gap seals to everything before painting so that I wouldn't have to worry about scratching the paint while mounting them. While the latest round of assembly manual updates (posted on the builder run support site in March 2013) had information about the gap seals for the tail feathers, there was nothing for the ailerons or flaps except for a single sketchy page from the Classic manual for the flaps. I emailed PA asking for any updates, but there's been no response, so I was on my own. ("think of those who went through it before you, and say to yourself, 'What they could do, I can do.'")


I could have done the gaps seals back at my hangar when I had everything set up after completing the covering, but I wanted to get everything tucked away at Einar's before the bad weather hit, and later you'll see how good a call that was.

First, scrap wood clamped the aileron to the wingtip to line them up. 

Luckily, mi amigos came through and told me to set up the aileron gap seals so there was 1/8" space between the wing trailing edge and the seal. I set them up so the cutout in the outer gap seal was centered on the hinge, then drilled the tangent of the aileron leading edge tube and the gap seal on each end of the top.

Then I crawled under and did the same for the bottom. 

Unmounting the seal, I used the 2.5" rivet spacing from the elevators and rudder gap seal mounting instructions for the aileron gap seal, and drilled 1/8" holes for the AN4-2 rivets I'll use later.

Remounting the seal to the aileron, I drilled the top and bottom of the leading edge, then repeated the process for the inner gap seal.

Poor thing looked like a pincushion by the time I was done. 

For some reason the flap gap seals are shorter than the aileron gap seals, and there's no way to get the same 1/8" spacing as on the other control surfaces. However, on the flaps in addition to the rounded gap seal there's a flat piece over the top of that, so getting the 1/8" spacing is not as critical. Since I was unable to set the 1/8" spacing I just mounted the trailing edge of the gap seal to the leading edge of the flap, allowing room for proper rivet spacing.

Since I wasn't worried about setting a spacing for the wing-gap seal, I was able to do all this on the workbench. 

 

Just to be sure, though, I drilled the initial bottom holes with the flap mounted on the wing. Yes, I'm wearing a headlamp, they do come in handy after all.

It took almost all of Einar's clecos to do the gap seals.

After I finished the left wing Einar helped me swap wings onto/off the stands, and I started on the right wing. I was able to reference the left wing flap, and it went quickly.

The inner edge of the flap gap seal is supposed to be supported by a Flap Gap Seal Support, but looking at photos of other SeaReys I could see this part was buried under the engine mount, and the gap seal served no aerodynamic function inboard of the flap root. In fact, I noted that many builders had trimmed their gap seals to end at the root of the flap. Made sense to me, so I did the same.

This meant a quick run to my hangar, since my bandsaw is set up with a metal cutting blade. It also reminded me why I wanted to get the wings to Einar's and out of my unheated hangar. 

The stack of scrap wood is all that remains of the dolly the hull used to rest on. 

Nailed the cut on the first try on both sides.

The real proof of my work, taking the clecos off and seeing how I did lining up on the aileron/flap leading edge tube. Not bad at all. Later I'll go back over all the holes with the soldering iron to seal the fabric.

Next will be the left aileron, then the tail feathers. THEN we might be ready to paint.