Just a short day today as the weather is beautiful so I'm going flying the Vans. I constructed a root rib template with a dummy flap torque tube and overheight cut outs for the spar attach brackets. The fuselage was then levelled on the bench and the template positioned over the attach brackets with 1/8" clearance from the torque tube to the top longeron
and the bottom of the template horizontal as called for in the plans. The rear spar mount and spar carry through tube were then positioned to put the spar attach bracket in the centre of the spar as it passes through the root rib and the position marked on the template and the bracket and carry through tube tack welded to the fuselage. The position of the front spar attach bracket was then also marked on the template. Next the root template will be referenced to a template for a main rib using the cord line drawn on the plans. This will give the exact positions of the spar attach brackets from the bottom of the spars before they start tapering towards the root rib . It will also allow for the upper part of the door to be finished to final size and the root rib gap seal to be fabricated. This should allow the complete fuselage and tail sections of the aircraft to be finished before starting on the wings - I need to adopt this approach as I haven't got room to store the fuselage and build the wings (building in a single garage) so once the fuselage is complete it can be taken to the airport for safe storage.
