As of tonight ribs 3-9 are bonded in place. I'll get rib #10 done early tomorrow and the basic framing of my left wing will be complete. I'm doing my best to keep the garage warm and I'll give it a full 48 hours before I hang it on my wall and start on the right wing.

I anticipate that the right wing will go much faster than the left since I won't need to stare at it for hours working out my layout/cleaning/clamping/bonding strategy.

I could use a favor from anyone who has purchased quick build wings from the factory, and that is to see if you can post a picture or good description of the Hysol fillets at the rib/spar intersection.

I've seen some pretty large fillets and I don't know if that is necessary, because if you look at the built up ribs there is just enough adhesive used there to do the job. No golf ball sized fillets holding the cap strips to the ribs, so how much is really needed to secure the ribs to the spars?

Tongue depressor, popsicle stick, chop stick or what? I know some of you used your finger, which puts varies depending on your digits. Just wondering what the factory wings look like.
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In my case I used my new Hysol mixing gun to lay a bead on the spar. Then I slid the rib in place and rubbed it back and forth a bit to make sure to get good contact, then clamped the ribs as precisely as possible. I let that kick off and then came back with the Hysol gun and spread about an 1/8" bead all around each side.

As I feared from the beginning, the instructions have a flaw. After laying out the rib spacing on the spar, the 1/8" offset lines etc with a sharpie pen, you use a scotchbrite pad and denatured alcohol to prep the area before bonding. Then you get adhesive smeared over what is left of those lines and guess what you can see? Not much!

The front spar isn't bad because the rib only goes part way around. But for the rear spar I would need some kind of reference system. So I used my newly acquired 3/8" aluminum stringer tubes, and a random strip of wood I ripped off the edge of a fir board for a house project to create an alignment system.

I set three of the 3/8" stringer tubes next to each other and created a series of thin sharpie marks at 17.75" intervals to match the manual for rib spacing. I also carefully made marks at the same spacing on the strip of wood.

I slid two of the stringers into the wing where they'll eventually live, and clamped them to ribs #5 and #7 (which I bonded to the spars when I did my drag/anti drag tubes) at the trailing edge. I clamped the 3rd tube to those same ribs at the trailing edge tip, which gave me a great index at the trailing edge to assure proper spacing.
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I clamped the strip of wood to the lower cap strips so the marks would also line up with 5 and 7, and it turned out to be super helpful at keeping the ribs vertical.
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Once this cures the stringer tubes will be pulled out. I'll use the same exact tubes for the right wing, then I'll scotchbrite/etch/alodine them before reintroducing them to the wing structure.

In other news I sold my Citabria last Sunday
There's the old saying about the two happiest days of airplane ownership, but my first day was trepidation about jumping into aircraft ownership and the day I sold it I felt as if I were betraying a friend. It is a great aircraft that never gave me a bit of trouble and had performance which always left me smiling.

I posted it on Barnstormer's on a Friday night. My phone started blowing up on Saturday morning. The first person I responded to was from Bozeman, MT. He and his buddy were climbing in a rental car to come get it. The second call I returned was to a guy much more local. I wasn't going to sell the plane out from under the guys driving from Montana so I told him he could come see it, but he would have to wait until they'd had a chance to look at it.

The local guy and his wife did come to see it Saturday. He looked at the logs and we took a couple of laps in the pattern in some very gusty crosswinds. He went off to consult mechanics but he liked the plane. The guys from Bozeman showed up at 7:30am Sunday. We looked over the plane, the logs and the weather. Ceilings were a joke. The wind was just as bad as the day before (16G22) but at least they were mostly down the runway.

The plane was sold when we landed, and I don't mean to the insurance company. We did up paperwork and I got paid.

They had plans to drop off the rental car and fly it home, but here in Western Washington it's mother nature who gets the last laugh in February. They stayed another day waiting for improving conditions. I told them they could leave the plane in my hangar until the end of March, which should give them time to watch for a weather window and ferry the plane to Bozeman.

Like I said, I'll miss the plane. But I need the hangar space to rig my wings, do at least some of the covering and of course to park my Kitfox when it is done. It also puts some cash back in the bank for my panel, prop, etc.
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