After the final small priming job – main spar flanges – I’ve assembled the ribs onto the main spars, ready for riveting. I 3D printed thirty of the custom nylon clips (15 left-hand and 15 right-hand) and fitted these to the ribs. These clips have provision for a 20mm wiring conduit, two smaller holes for either air lines or coaxial cable, together with a slot through which a cable tie can be anchored. I inserted each rib in position and held it in place with the bolts and cleco’s. I’m waiting on some tooling before I drive the main spar rivets, in the meantime there are plenty of other jobs to go on with.
I did look forward in the plans and pulled some parts required for later on. One of these items, the aileron bell-cranks, showed up a problem. There is a brass bush about which the bell-crank pivots, held in place with an AN4-32A bolt. One of the bolts has a slight bend in it, which is enough to make it not go through the brass bushing. Rather than force it or otherwise work around the problem, I’m going to organize a replacement bolt, since this is a fairly important part of the control linkages.