Fuselage Completion #4 (Rear spar carry-though assembly)

Total Build Time: 691 Hours.

I pulled out some of the last remaining aluminum laser-cut parts from my aircraft kit that arrived last November. It was nice to be working with aluminum again after having done so much work recently with steel and titanium.  Once I had these parts on my workbench I realized how few parts I had left in my kit. Other than some large pieces like the windscreen, canopy, engine cowling and fuel tank, the number of small bits lying around waiting to be assembled is very small.

The wings on my Waiex have two main backbones structurally speaking. The Main spar, and the rear spar. The main spars will connect by overlapping each other and being bolted together (within the spar tunnel in the fuselage.) The rear spars however end up being joined together via this rear-spar carry-through assembly, with will bolt at either end to each wing as they are inserted into the fuselage. In other words, the wings are held onto the aircraft by just 4 bolts (2 in the main spars, 2 in the rear spars.)

This was a fairly straightforward assembly. However there are 2 large pre-cut holes in this provided part, and neither one is in the proper location. The push-rod from the idler (control stick) to the mixer (ruddervators) will pass through this hole, so it needed to be in the correct location.

I used a hole saw to modify the hole to the correct location.

There were a lot of rivets that were a little tricky to pull in a straight manner, so I used my trusty spacer to help with access.

Here is the completed aft spar carry-through. It is inserted into the fuselage during the wing rigging process. Note that, per the plans, the attach plates are not riveted at this time. I found this to be important to help with deburring during the wing rigging process.

This picture shows roughly how it will connect to the aft spar of the wings.