It's a funny thing about this airplane building business.........

Sometimes you will rack your brain for days trying to come up with the ultimate solution to a problem. Sometimes it will lead you down a path where you end up thinking that thereis just no way to accomplish what you are trying to do. And then sometimes, when you least expect it, a light bulb goes off in your mind, and you finally realize the solution to your problem.

I have had many such moments while working on my plane, and I expect that I will end up having many more. For months I have been mulling over the best and safest way to make a modification to my leading edge to make a small portion of it modular and removeable so that I can interchange them with the "fun"one and the "normal" one. I have struggled with many safety-related issues, including introducing weakness in the structure at a critical location along the wing, and disruption of normal airflow at a critical point over the wing, and so on.

The other evening I thought I had come up with a sound solution that involved a small, built up leading edge section with some span-wise support baffles or spars. Ithought I had it all worked out - - right up to the point where I suddenly realized that my grand solution was going to result in a very small sliver of wing skin on the inboard side of the leading edge of the wing, right where it attaches to the fuel tank skin by using a .032 inch thick joiner plate. I realized this as I was staring at one of my many drawings of this modification. Sadly, I also realized that this probably was not going to work very well, and I headed off to bed with my head hung low, with a thought that maybe I was not going to be able to do this safely after all.

Then, right as my head hit the pillow, I had an epiphany. I know how to spell that fancy word because I have had several of them during the build, and you just have to get to a point where you at least have to know how to spell it - even if you don't fully understand how or why or when they occur. I suddenly realized that all I needed to do was take a formed sheet of .032 2024-T3 sheet, and replace one of the W709 wing ribs with one more W408-1 wing rib, and use this as a kind of undergarment support skin in between both ribs. I can then apply the top skin section directly over the supporting skin underneath,and screw it down with as many nut plates as are necessary to secure the entire thing to the leading edge of the wing.

There I was, all but ready to either face defeat, or succomb to fabricating a rather complex rib-supported small LE wing structure, when all I really needed to do is to replace the W-423 Joiner plate strip with one contiguous piece of .032 sheet aluminum between the two W-408-1 ribs. The hardest part will be forming the leading skin,but I think I have plan for doing that as well. The full "under sheet" of aluminum will slide underneath the leading edge skin where it can be riveted in place to the two ribs and the top and bottom wing skins. Then I just simply need to detach one leading edge section, and replace it with the other one whenever the need arises - completely and easily interchangeable.

Of course I will still need to build a mockup, and perfect my fabrication technique for bending the LE contour, but the important thing is that I now know that this is do-able, that I will not sacrifice strength (in fact I will probaby enhance it), and that I will not negatively affect the airflow over that section of the wing. It  will basically fit like a glove over your hand and just slide right into place - easy-peazy. All it will take is a properly sized piece of .032 aluminum sheet, two W408-1 wing ribs, and a healthy supply of nut plates.

I will eventually have pictures  that will show the process I am describing in the weeks to come. At least I now have a solid plan to make this happen, and that makes me very happy. You just never know how or when some of these things will come together. Sometimes it happens when you least expect it. All I can tell those of you that may be facing the same challeges with your build is that you need to adopt an attitude and a way of thinking that can be best-conveyed from a line from the movie Galaxy Quest: "Never give up, never surrender!!!" Just keep pluggin along and eventually you will figure it all out, even when you think that there is no chance that you ever will.