Installing Ribs

Not a lot of work done on 53T lately but Matt and I did do some work this week on insulating the attic.  Only 2 or 3 rafter widths left on that job and hopefully we will do that tomorrow!  We did do some work on 53T today though.  I bought a piece of stiff aluminum angle at The Yard Store this morning and am using it to jig together the two ends of the trailing edge on either side of the piece that I cut out.  I started cutting the scarf on one side of that gap today.  Matt worked on getting the ribs ready to glue in place with some last minute touch up.  We ran a taught line to establish where we wanted the leading edge and made sure that we had a 1.5 mm gap between the rib for the skin.

We finished up the afternoon by mixing up epoxy and gluing and clamping the 6 false ribs to the forward spar.  I have some more work to do around the airbrake before I'm ready to epoxy the real rib in place.  We will also need to glue 4 of the false ribs to the rear spar.  However our monthly glider club meeting interfered which was quite interesting.  It featured the designer of the Belite Ultralight, www.beliteaircraft.com.  He spoke at length about the recent feature of his plane on Mythbusters and the design of the craft. Very cool.

I also made it out to Harry's shop this afternoon and picked up a 4 foot square piece of 1.5 mm plywood which will be used for the new skin.  Slowly but surely I can see this repair coming to an end!