Upper wing assembly

Robert Hughes (UK):

ONE DAY'S WORK ON A DINGO WING... Having finished assembling the upper left wing, I thought I'd see how much progress I could make in a reasonable day on the upper right one. The picture shows the result of about seven hours gentle work, minus tea breaks (I am British). It doesn't really show in the picture, but this includes both spar-to-fuselage attachment points, the main spar to strut attachment, and two brackets for the internal diagonal bracing tubes. I'm definitely not a fast worker, and I like to do a trial assembly of everything before setting rivets. If mastic is involved I'll do two or three trial runs

Robert Hughes (UK):

TWO DAYS WORK ON A DINGO WING... Following my post about what I achieved in the first seven hours of building the right upper wing, here's what I got done in the next seven. The leading edge skin is fitted. It's only 16 thou thick, so you have to be quite careful handling it, but it comes with the curve partly pre-formed, so it's not too difficult. The video gives good guidance on how to do it, and from that I've developed a technique that suits my complete lack of experience The "bars" in the picture are a trick of the light, the skin is quite smooth and evenly curved. The rest of this seven hours was spent on preparation and assembly of the trailing edge spar, ready for fitting to the rest of the wing. This spar is a bit more complicated than you might expect, consisting of two channels and a tube, as well as various brackets & spacers. It's interesting to see the thought and experience that's gone into designing how the loads are transferred, between the root attachment, aileron hinge positions, struts & rigging, and the rest of the structure supporting the skin. The lower and upper wings are identical, except for the strut & rigging fittings pointing up vs down, and ailerons being added to the lower wings. This approach simplifies the design & build, and keeps the parts count down.

Robert Hughes (UK):

THREE DAYS WORK ON A DINGO WING... I've now done 21 hours building the top right wing for my Dingo. The rear spar has been built and fixed to the front spar & rib assembly. A lot of the third day's work has been taken up with fitting the diagonal bracing within the wing. This is one of the few areas where some of the holes are not pre-drilled. The round tubes also need flattening slightly into ovals to fit into the rear spar, and some of the holes through the ribs need filing out to ensure at least 2mm clearance around the tubes. This entails a few rounds of trial assembly, clamping the parts together with cleco pins. Nothing difficult, it just takes a few hours to make sure it's right. It's really looking like a wing now, and I'm looking forward to Day 4

Robert Hughes (UK):

THREE AND A HALF DAYS WORK TO ASSEMBLE A DINGO WING I have now finished assembling the top right wing for my Dingo ready for covering with Oratex, and it took 24 hours 30 minutes of work. I spread it over a week, but if you did it full-time at seven hours a day it would be 3.5 days. Before this I had already done a little preparation of components for all four wings, painting 12 small brackets and 20 tubes, and also trimming "tags" off a few components. Total time for that preparation was about two days, which equates to another half a day per wing. I wasn't hurrying, just working at an enjoyable pace, and I'm sure some people could do it more quickly. FutureVehicles describe the Dingo as "Easy Build", and my experience to date is in line with that description

NOTE: Examples of the components that had to be painted. I used a self etching primer which dries in minutes, and over coated it a fuel resistant clear lacquer. Both were applied from spray cans.