Wingtip Confusion

[Eric Page]

When I was building my IV, I riveted aluminum strips to the outboard rib and installed nutplates to these strips.
I used screws to fasten the wing tips.

I riveted aluminum strips into my end ribs and put in nutplates. My wingtips are drilled and attached with
screws to the strips.

Yes, both the S5 and S7 manuals mention this as an option, and I think the S7 manual pitches a kit of parts to do it. I can't imagine what the kit contains other than nutplates, flush rivets, screws and maybe countersunk washers.

I'm planning to make mine removable. I don't expect to remove them, but I'll definitely need to if I glue and rivet them!

I don't think it matters much as the the width of the strip, 1.5"? As to the gauge, as long as it can securely hold the nutplates and your able to countersink the nutplate rivets.

Good point. I'm assuming the strips I found are them (and they're 1" x 0.050"), but I just don't understand how the holes don't line up unless they were drilled separately from the cap strips!

The sloppy mess with the glass in the wingtip is typical of all the parts I got from Skystar when I built mine. I would never try to bond to the polyester resin with 3M 2216 or Hysol, because I don't think it would hold.

Hmm, that's interesting. Oddly, the bond failure in my wing tips is at the aluminum, not the fiberglass/resin. I suppose it's not critical that I achieve a structural bond on those strips, as they're really only there as spacers anyway.

If the structural adhesives we use aren't reliable on polyester resin, then I presume we have to use more resin to close the tail of the tips.