The wing tips are provided per moulded with a very neat finish.

They are a very snug fit with small indentations to cater for the wing gussets. Just need to carefully and slowly trim a little of the trailing edge of the outboard rib to get the tip to seat nicely.

I also plan to get some small strobes in place so need to get these fitted soon before access becomes an issue.

My youngest, Sam, is back from Uni and always makes a point of getting up to the barn.

The other night it was final wing gussets needing Aerloite’ing in place … we were a couple of larger gussets short so Sam made a template out of one and made up 3. Once these were on and clamped he then helped with the multi handed job of swaging the inner aileron turnbuckles.

These have all been done single handed by me so far .. not an easy task with that huge crimper (STILL on loan from the very very nice people at Channel Island Aero Services (CIAS) … many many thanks for the long term use Bob, Bob, Graham …. nearly onto the last swaging … MUST be because I don’t have many thimbles left !

Planning now for the seating of the top wing. This will need a cradle or similar setup as I cant obviously use the floor mounted trestles that I have for the lower wing.

A couple of years ago we bought a few chickens and I built a walk in coop for them. Eventually, when they had stopped performing ‘Chicken Run’ type escapes over the fence into the next door field we could dismantle the coop and leave them in the garden. NOW – all that spare wood (that I just knew I would use someday !) has come into use as the cradle outer for upper wing support.

The aim is to provide multiple checkpoints so that the wing can be carefully settled and aligned and jigged to provide the (on plan) 0 – 1 Degree dihedral on the upper and 3 degree on the lower.

First step is to pre test the cradle one side without actually fitting wing and, if it looks good, build a matching one the other side so they can be done together in situ … don’t want any lop sided weights setting an adverse tilt !

Been preparing the wing leading edge panels which are Birch ply and need to be scarfed before soaking and setting in a jig to preform the wing leading edge curve.

This will make fixing them much easier without the natural ping of the ply trying to pull it off the ribs !

With 3 sections per wing and 4 wings and the centre section needs scarfe’s both ends that’s 4 per wing so 16 joints to prep. Makes your wrists ache !

Started to add the oil cooler pipe connectors last night …. have realised I need to plan which is flow IN and which is flow OUT so I get them the right way around !!

Next step – around the time of cowl fitting will be to work out where to locate the oil cooler matrix to get the best ram air flow.

I was planning on doing an Out of Africa lookalike but unfortunately Oratex don’t do Black ! So I asked them last week for some samples of Cub Yellow and Olive Drab (closest to Black).

Looks OK I think …. very traditional Olive colour …

So plan with be top decking Olive, Top cowl Olive with a sweep of Olive curving around the nose into the lower cowl … then yellow wings and remainder of lower half of body.

The spinner will be probably quadrant of alternating yellow and olive

May do wing tips Olive to match and decide on scallop leading edge of fin/elevators when I see what it looks like.

Reached the point where I can now refit the top cabane. This was a pretty heavy evening – with careful alignment of the holes put to the test as the cabane supports fed back through and slotted back into the existing fuselage framework.

Just the front two supports to seat back into their slots and then I can start to plan cable cross bracing and, eventually, top wings

Another thing I had been tentative about starting .. due to the ease of which you could very quickly mess up and nice piece of moulding !

Started off by drilling a test hole (using the clever guide marks that TLAC provide). Then dropping a thin plastic rod down to check centring in the receiving hole.

Then widen and slowly open up – as Paul says – its easy to take a small amount off each time than to re-add once removed !