Just can't keep up and Fuselage delivery Saga

Despite my best intentions to document various things related to my attempt to build and fly my own airplane, I am coming to the conclusion that I just can't keep up. This year has been an absolute whirlwind of activity for me. I had an awesome time at Airventure this year, but with a new trailer and everything that was going on I just could not keep pace with it all, so there are no more "real time" posts of Airventure, despite my best intentions.

I will mention that while at EAA Airventure 2018 I did get word from Vans that my Quick Build Fuselage kit had arrived at their facility after being shipped to the USA from the Philippines, and that it had passed their inspection. Perhaps I have already mentioned that. Like I said - I can't keep up. After Airventure I then had a window of opportunity for the trucking company (Partain Trucking), to deliver my fuselage during the month of August. As long as it was delivered in August I was ready to receive it on any day at any time. If it could not be done until September then I would need to wait until after my return from Europe - a long awaited bucket list vacation that I had been planning for months.

As it turned out plans were in the works to deliver it to me in August, but then the truck driver injured his back and I was notified that there was no alternate truck or driver that would be available any time soon. So everything once again was put on hold until after my return from Europe. Fast forward to mid September. I suddenly get an email from the trucking company telling me that they were scheduled to load nd that my fuse would finally be on its way. I had received no communication from Vans about anything. When I called then to confirm, and to complain about the lack of communication, it seemed like nobody knew anything.

Anyway, on Saturday September 22, 2018, a big truck pulled up with my fuselage - after 5 months of waiting. I started this order on April 20, 2018. I am glad that it finally happened, but I am extremely unhappy with Vans and Partain trucking for their utter lack of communication with me about the entire shipping from process. Seems like Vans had the attitude that since I was not using their "standard" shipping methods that everything was up to me and Partain Trucking. Pretty pathetic as far as I am concerned, especially considering the amount of money involved in this whole affair. On that note, I have also seen recent evidence from other builders of what their "standard" shipper BDS freight has done to all but demolish various crated kits from Vans. So the bottom line is you are not any better off using one shipping or trucking company over another, and Vans does not seem very interested in communicating with you either, but they will certainly take your money.

So sorry to be sour about this, since this is supposed to be an exciting adventure, but there are always challenges with fulfilling any worthwhile dream, and I have certainly had mine with this latest effort. While the delivery went without any issues, and was actually kind of cool to witness, about 2 days later while conducting a much more thorough damage inspection I did find a couple of issues with the firewall - you know - that part of the plane that is subject to lions share of all the vibrations and shaking that an aircraft is exposed to. So that then required more phone calls and emails to the rucking company as well as Vans. Had to send pictures and wait for engineers to assess the damage, and then I would have to decide if I agree with their assessment or not. There was a blackish stain in the "stainless" steel firewall web, and a small dent and crease in the web on the lower left corner where "something" had obviously pushed in the corner a bit and caused another area to be creased slightly. To me, event though there were no punctures or cracks,  the damage was still such that it might cause that area of the firewall to fatigue more quickly than normal, and so I was concerned.

Vans engineers reviewed my photos and determined that the damage was "cosmetic" in nature and nothing to be concerned about. For the record this is about the second or third time I have had to question some substantially different material issue about something with my kit or parts that others don't seem to have issues with, and it just makes me wonder sometimes. At any rate, I did agree with them that the dent in the bottom corner is probably not a huge concern, because it is just an empty void part of the structure than only provides a mounting surface for the bottom forward skin to attach to as it wraps around the bottom of the fuse. The crease, however, does still concern me a bit. I will have to watch this area closely after I am flying to see what happens. They also told me the stain was not an issue, but they could not tell me what it was from or why I am unable to clean it off. I also received an email from Mitch Lock, the current president of Van's Aircraft, affirming what he told me over the phone regarding their engineer's assessment of the damage to my firewall. That will unfortunately be going in the safe deposit box for safe keeping.....

I'll post pics on all this tomorrow. For now, my advice to others is that if you want to avoid ALL shipping issues, then you need to make arrangements to fly up to Vans, rent a truck or trailer, pack the stuff up yourself and drive it back to your destination yourself. I am completely dissatisfied with all means of commercial delivery methods for this project thus far, but I have to resign myself to accepting that this is just a part of the entire process for completing this massive undertaking. To end on a positive note, the rest of the fuselage appears to be in wonderful shape, and I am glad that I did finally arrive.

The next biggest issue with the fuselage will be trying to figure out how to "easily" flip it upside down and right side up, which looks like I will need to do bout a half dozen times or more to finish up the remaining assembly steps for the landing gear and top skins, etc. Some fellow builders have purchased an engine rotisserie from Harbor Freight and fabricated some steel cross members that attach to the firewall engine mounts and to a plate that fits into the engine stand. The fuse in its present state only weights about 200-300 pounds, but it is awkward to try to find places to lift, hold and rotate the fuse by hand, even if you have several people to help.

Fortunately I don't have to deal with that just yet, because I now have to get back to my wings and get those done before I start the remaining work on the fuse.

Sunday Activities at Airventure

Saturday night into Sunday morning it rained and remained IFR. Just before noon the skies began to clear and the flood gates opened up with massive numbers of arrivals, just as I had predicted. I have a handheld air band radio that I can use un case of emergencies where the aircraft comms are lost, and I tuned to the arrival approach control and tower frequencies to listen to the non-stop instructions from the tower for all the arriving aircraft. At one point a Mooney was on short final and the tower folks noticed that his gear was not down and they immediately focused all their attention on him and kept repeating very quickly check your gear down check your gear check your gear. Apparently he got it down in time, but that was a close call. 

Mike Rettig showed up after driving up with his friend Jeff on Sunday afternoon, and I gave him the tour of the new trailer. Mike likes the air conditioner a lot, and frankly so do I. The sun finally came out in the late afternoon, and the temps warmed up and it got humid, as expected, so the AC was put to the test all afternoon and evening long. 

My next post will be about the Monday activities at Airventure, which is the official start of the week-long event.  It did not disappoint. The campground is all but full already and there are thousands of airplanes and people here. I took a bunch of pics that I will try to download of some things that are sure to amaze you. 

Oh, I did have one more P.S. entry from Saturday's activities at the local Walmart. After I got my groceries back to the trailer I was unloading everything and putting it away, and I reached for the final bag, which I thought only had a 6 pack of small cans of 7 up in it. Well, it turns out that the idiot moron behind the counter at Walmart (a young dumb college - aged kid that could have cared less about what he was doing as I stood there watching him, had put both a small bottle of Dawn dishwashing detergent and the 7up in the same bag! You can guess what happened. The 7 up cans compressed the plastic Dawn bottle and blew the cap right off it, spilling most of the soap into the bag and all over the cans of soda. I spent an hour cleaning up that mess as it dripped all over the trailer floor and elsewhere. I still plan to take it back to the store when I have time and get my new bottle of dish soap, and perhaps say a few choice words to the idiot that created the problem if I just happen to see him again. That was really the only major headache I have had since I got here, so I'll take what I can get at this point. 

More next time.... including info about Monday morning Airventure wake up calls, aircraft displays, meeting old friends, making some new ones, attending classes and forums, and more - it was a great day.

Saturday activities at Airventure 2018

I forgot about one more Friday arrival event that I wanted to tell everyone about. When I arrived at the check-in lanes, it was just cloudy, but I could see that up to the north things were looking rather dark. This always means that weather is on the way. Just as I got out of my truck an announcement came over the grounds alert and warning PA system, to tell us all that bad weather was coming and to seek shelter or “prepare yourselves.” I hurried up to the check-in counter and I was glad that there was nobody standing in line. So I was able to get my credentials and passes right away, before the storm hit. Just as I got back into the truck, it hit. One thing about the campground check-in process – these are some of the first EAA volunteers you will encounter, and they are prepared to handle just about anything. While filling out my vehicle pass I noticed that all the parking guides had mysteriously vanished from sight. But, a few seconds later I saw all of them returning with rain gear on – ready to resume their duties. Hats off to these men and women who braved the elements to help get me where I needed to go.

After the long drive on Thursday and Friday, and setting up the campsite and checking all the major systems for proper operation, I made it to the local Olive Garden for dinner – always a welcome end to the long travel days. Then it was back home again to sleep in my new queen-sized trailer bed for the first time. All I can say is that having a queen sized bed instead of a sofa to sleep on was a real blessing. 

Saturday morning arrived and was very cloudy and dreary and rainy – definitely IFR weather. This meant that the thousands of VFR pilots that normally arrive on Saturday and Sunday were going to have to wait until the weather improved. This is also a real problem for ATC, who will be overwhelmed with arrivals when the flood gates are opened after the weather improves. I felt sorry for them because I knew what was in store later on. This is when arriving at OSH can become very dangerous with so many airplanes in the air.

After waking on Saturday morning it was time to head out to pick up my media credentials, and then out for some breakfast and my annual Oshkosh grocery shopping for the week. Breakfast was at the local IHOP – good stuff!  I do the grocery shopping at the local Walmart, and it has also become a ritual of sorts for m every year. I basically buy the same supplies and groceries each year, and it pretty consistently costs me about 100.00 or so.

As I arrived at the Walmart parking lot, I heard this obnoxious sounding whine. I got out of my truck and as it finally wound down I realized that it was the severe weather and disaster warning sirens that were going off. IT was around noon so I am not certain if they were just testing, or if the alarm was for real. Either way, it gets your attention. Luckily I did not see any severe weather at that point and so I continued on my errands.

When I walked into Walmart, it was just cloudy. When I came out with my groceries, it was pouring rain. SO I had to make the mad dash to the truck and throw the bags inside (except for the eggs of course), and tried to keep from getting to terribly wet, which did not work at all. After that it was time to head back to the campground to put the groceries away.

While I was doing that, I was listening to the archived interviews from past EAA radios episodes that are broadcast on AM 1210 and FM 96.5 the weekend before Airventure starts. All of a sudden I heard the interview that EAA Chapter 301 president and friend Mike Rettig and many others gave to talk about an amazing volunteer effort to fulfill a dream for a brain tumor survivor by the name of Alex Cuellar to come to Oshkosh. Mike and several others were instrumental in starting a movement just before Airventure 2012 to get Alex up to Oshkosh. Amazingly all this work became a reality, and they were able to fulfill Alex’s dream. Unfortunately I think it was less than a year later that Alex finally lost his battle with brain cancer, but the work that Mike and the others did to provide him with one last wish was nothing short of extraordinary. This interview on EAA radio is absolutely fantastic, and can be searched for and heard on EAA Radios website. If you want to know what the true meaning of volunteerism is, I strongly urge you to take a listen to that interview. It brought back a lot of memories from that trip back then, and it was great that EAA decided to play that particular archive on Saturday. 

here is a link to a VAF post that started the whole thing out:
http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=85196

And here is the link to the EAA Radio archive segment at Airventure 2012:
http://spirit.eaa.org/airventure/radio/clips/2012/alex-quar.mp3

The rest of the day was spent trying to find places to put all my junk so that I could move around and re-acquire some table space. Not much else to do on a rainy day. I did however make my way to one of the camp stores just to see what they had. I was amazed at how much they actually did have. Just about everything you could think that you might need while staying at the campground at Oshkosh – they had it. Simply amazing. More about the Sunday events tomorrow……

Airventure 2018 - A daily blog

OK, so this is not going to stick entirely with the main purpose of this blog, but if you have followed my journey in past years, you know that the pilgrimage to Airventure  is a very important part of this entire airplane building process. Nowhere else on the planet will you get the much needed shot in the arm to help keep you motivated and moving toward your goal of building and flying your own airplane than at Airventure.

This year I decided to start posting what I hope to be a daily journal of this trip to give others an idea of what the ground travel side of this adventure is like. One of the “perks” I get as an EAA Chapter newsletter editor is that I am able to obtain media pass privileges that allow me to obtain a weekly pass to the Airventure grounds free of charge, as long as I fulfill my obligatory “media” duties by reporting Airventure activities back to the Chapter. This I decided t do that by posting to this blog as much as possible to capture all the interesting things going on.

THE JOURNEY

I have been taking my trailer up to Camp Scholler in Oshkosh since 2009, when I attended my very first Airventure. Not only does Airventure become the world’s largest gathering of airplanes for one week, but t also becomes the world’s largest campground for one week. It essentially becomes an entirely new city. There are tents and trailers and RV’s as far as the eye can see, and beyond.

Since my first trip in 2009, I have been traveling for 2 days to get there, stay the full week, and then I take two more days to travel back. The journey takes about 2,050 miles round trip. I break it up into two 500 mile segments, because I have found that I can only take about 8 hours of driving with the trailer on the back until I am rather fatigued. I always leave on the Thursday prior to the start of the event, which is always on the Monday of the last week of July each year.

I left and arrived early on the first trip because I had no idea what to expect for the first time, and I wanted to make sure I had enough time to allow for “issues” or delays. I have been doing it the same way ever since, and it has worked out well, so I have no reason to change the way that I do this. So Thursday, 7-19-18, I set out once again on my annual trek.

I had managed to check all the major systems on the trailer prior to leaving, but I had no time to organize and pack things correctly, since I had been racing to get  new tires put on and the hitch realigned the week prior to my departure. These were safety items that had to be done, as two of the tires on the trailer were not in good shape, and if the rig is not level, you put too much stress on one axel or the other and this is not god for the trailer or the truck.

I was leaving behind  record heat levels in Denver, and heading toward a rather disorganized monsoonal flow that had started up near Minneapolis. It was very strange and very abnormal to be cooling off as I headed further east toward Omaha, NE, my typical halfway stopping point for the day one part of the trip. The rig was handling just fine with no issues. Over the past few years I have found that I don’t like much of anything at all about Omaha – never have, even during my college travel days up to UND.  So I have been driving for about an extra hour to Avoca Iowa to get out of the valley and presumably away from some of the heat, as well as the roads.

For the record, Omaha has the worst road conditions in the entire USA, without question. My entire rig was just about shaken apart for the second year in a row. Never have I seen such horrible road infrastructure. It was so bad this year that I am now contemplating a new route – to stay away from Omaha entirely. Anyway, the rig seems to have survived, but things in the trailer were most certainly going airborne at times. Avoca also has a newer Motel 6 that was just finished a few years ago. It does not smell entirely like cigarette smoke yet, so I like to stay there for my overnight to take advantage of the AC.

The next morning I began my travels listening to the radio, and much to my surprise, the day before there were 3 major tornadoes in the Des Moines area, which was my next destination from Avoca, only 93 miles away. They caused major damage but no fatalities. This sent shivers up my spine because I had no idea this had happened, and I realized that had my travel plans been just one day off, I could have found myself in the middle of that mess.

One thing I have learned over the years – Iowa has some very violent thunderstorms. Monsoonal activity certainly does not help the situation. Luckily for me, I managed to avoid the situation, and just had low clouds, high winds, and some rain showers to contend with, but no tornadoes thank god!

From Des Moines on I-80 I go toward Cedar Rapids on I-380 until I get to the Highway 151 interchange, which is the diagonal highway that pretty much makes a straight shot at that point all the way to Oshkosh. I arrived at KOSH on Friday, 7-20-18, at about 5:00 pm Central time (oh yeah, you lose an hour from Denver to Oshkosh, somewhere near Kearney Nebraska.)  The campground has started adding more electric and hookup sites to the area that I have fond I like to camp at during the event, so the only way for me to stay in that area is to cough of the extra money for a hookup site – it’s 65.00 per day vs. 27.00 per day for a dry or generator camp site.

So I backed into my expensive patch of grass and set up home for the next week. I only had about enough energy left to go into town for some dinner, and they I came back and shoved everything out of the way on my new bed so I could have a place to sleep.  Turned on my new air conditioner and finally had a nice night’s sleep for a change.

IN the next post I will have some much more interesting stuff about pelicans and airplanes and EAA radio, and rain, rain, and more rain……. It’s not quite like Sloshkosh 2010 out here yet, but it ain’t very dry either. I am glad I got here when I did.

Where have I been since March of 2018?

I know, I know, where the heck have I been March – certainly not working on an airplane much. Crappy weather, house falling apart – same old excuses and interruptions. I did mange to order some prefabbed fuel pick up lines, Proseal, and a few other things, which also went through their own adventure during shipment. Apparently Fedex decided to all but destroy the original packaging from Vans. Admittedly this was rather package to assemble, because I had ordered a big can of Proseal, and I also ordered a replacement .032 x 12 x 3.5 foot piece of sheet aluminum for the leading edge mod on the right wing, since I screwed up the other one that I had ordered an eternity ago.

Even so, all Fedex had to do was put it on plane, then put it on a truck, and deliver it. Easy – right? Yes, until you factor in the sorting equipment in between each of those phases of delivery. Somewhere  in the middle of all that, a sorting machine got hold  of it and destroyed the packing. Amazingly, they did not seem to damage the parts – just the packaging. I knew something was up because my package did not arrive when I expected it to. When it did finally show up, the cardboard was mangled with packing tape, did not look at all like a Vans package, and had obviously been mangled or torn apart somehow. The only damage was a minor bend on one corner of the sheet aluminum that I ordered, but I also noted that Vans had cut it with the grain running the wrong direction.  A call to Vans took care of that, and a few days later I had the replacement part.

Vans wanted me to take pics of the packaging, which I did, and they confirmed that was not the way that it left their facility. Moral to this story s don’t  trust Fedex with anything. I wanted to use UPS but Vans talked me out of it because “they get a better rate with Fedex.” Next time I will use UPS.

A couple of other things have occurred since I last posted. I had wanted to get a new travel trailer, and decided that this year was the year for that to happen. I wanted something a little newer and larger, with built in air conditioning and a nicer master bed. Not hard to find a better bed, since I had been sleeping on the couch for years. While I was pursuing a new trailer, my truck decided to start nickel and diming me. Time to make a decision – so I spent the past several months researching trucks and trailers, and ended up getting one of each.

Then, as if that was not enough, I decided with all the delays in the plane build that I needed to bite the bullet again and order a quickbuild fuselage for my RV-8 from Vans. So, in the past few months I have acquired a new trailer, truck, and 75% complete airplane fuselage.  Oh, and I also spent the past 2 months trying to sell my old trailer, which finally did sell about a week ago.

To top it all off, work has been a nightmare – that’s about all I am going to say about that. So here I am, several months later, a LOT poorer, completely exhausted, and oh yes, I am writing this in Oshkosh Wisconsin after making the maiden voyage in my new-found ground-based travel machines.  I have been running non-stop for months now and I am completely exhausted. I only had time to throw everything from the old trailer into the new one wherever it would fit – no time to organize. More about the shakeout of the new rig and all about the Airventure 2018 journey in the next posts.

Leading Edge Mod Drilling the Last Set of Rivet Holes Begins

Yeah, yeah, it's been another 2 weeks since my last post. Another round of cold windy weather decided to show up, and I had to get my taxes done. I finally made it out to the garage tonight to pick up where I left off - Time to mark the additional required rivet holes, center punch them, and drill with a #40 drill, and cleco them. These are the holes along both sides of the removable LE section that secure the main LE skin just inside of each rib flange on each side of the bay that the edges of the removeable section will fit up against. These holes are spaced 3/4 of an inch away from the holes that attach each top and bottom rib flange to the LE skin (See pics below).

The holes are parallel with each of the rib holes on each side, starting at the very front of the LE and extending back about 4 or 5 more holes on the top and bottom of the skin. Their main purpose is to secure the trimmed edges of the main LE skin to the subskin, after cutting out the removable section, similar to the same way that an access panel's mounting bracket attaches to the skin.

The idea is that these rivets will secure the area of the LE skin that is near the cut out for the removable section, and keep it from flexing too much where the rivets that secure that ribs to the skin are attached, hopefully preventing the formation of any cracks or cause any structural fatigue or failures in this area, and to ensure that the main skin continues to sit flush next to the removable section to maintain a smooth flow of air over the entire assembly.

I measured and drilled 4 holes on each side of the LE for the bottom (for a total of 8 holes), and 5 holes on each side for the top (for a total of 10 holes). As I have reported before, the reason for this offset number of holes between the top and bottom of the LE is to ensure that the most stressed part of the skin around the LE is totally secured to the front of the LE. The curvature of the skin is different on the top and the bottom, so the number of rivets required to hold down either side's major stress points is also different.

The same thing is being done for the number of screw holes required for the top and bottom of the removeable section. The further back the skin goes, the less curving stress exists on the skin. This is primarily being done for safety, so that if for some reason any rivets or nut plate screws were to fail or come loose on the back side of the removable section, it would  not want to pop up all the way and act like one large dive brake or spoiler that will kill all lift over that section of the wing (and possibly kill me in the process by creating a situation where the wing can no longer sustain adequate lift to stay airborne, or worse yet introduce a stall condition that I am unable to recover from).

The idea is similar to when you stick your hand out of the window into the slip stream of a fast moving car. If you hold your hand parallel to the road, there is less drag on your hand, and the air will continue to flow essentially undisturbed over your hand. However, if you then take your hand and flip it up 90 degrees, then all that air hits the palm of your hand and forces your hand and arm to move backward very rapidly. By choosing to extend the removable section back far enough from the major bend of the front of the LE, I hope to prevent the same rapid drag effect from happening as much as possible. If I lose anything on the bottom of the LE this is less of a concern, because the net affect of this will be added lift and drag to the bottom of the wing, which is a situation that I think I will be able to deal with and continue to be able to fly the plane.

This is also the reason why all of the attach screws for the removable LE section on both wings will be checked thoroughly before every flight, to make certain that the screws are tight and secure, all rivets are still in place, and that this section of the LE is still nice and smooth and is retaining its proper shape from front to back.

The reason I need 5 new rivets on each side of the top of the LE, and only 4 on each side of the bottom, is due to the camber or curvature of the wing on the top, and straighter, less curved shape on the bottom.Due to the increased curvature, there is a greater distance over the top of the LE than on the bottom to get to that point where the bending stress on the skin starts to decrease. The bottom of the LE skin is flatter than the top, so it takes fewer holes or less distance between holes to reach the same point of decreased bending stress compared to the distance required on the top.

I finished drawing intersecting lines through the previously drawn lines to locate the exact point for each new rivet hole, used my center punch to mark them, then took my #40 drill and MANUALLY turned the drill bit with my hand several times to remove just enough metal to ensure that each hole was appearing exactly where I wanted it. Then I plugged the drill into the compressor and finished drilling each of the holes on each side of the bay through the outer LE skin and the subskin.

I am now past the point of no return on the modification. If I screw up now, the effort to fix the problem will be ugly and complicated, or may force me to abandon it all together and just build the stock LE after ordering new ribs and a new LE skin. So before I drill any new holes, I double and triple check everything, and make certain that this is what I need to do, before I do it. That is why this act of marking and drilling a total of only 18 new holes took me about 1.5 hours to complete.

Here are the pics - two of the bottom and one of the top, showing the new clecoes in the new holes, right next to the clecoes securing the skin and subskin to the top and bottom rib flanges:

Tomorrow I will mark and drill the skin attach rivet holes for the rear side of the top and bottom of the LE, shown more or less in the middle of each of the above pics. A pic of this next step when I am done with it will make it more clear.

Basically, with the rivet holes now created along each side, I now need to make similar rivet holes for similar reasons to secure the main wing skin to the subskin along the rear-most edges of the removable section. The big question about this was how many rivets to use, and how to space them out.

For that I am relying on information in section 4 of AC 43.13B that explains that a "patch" to an existing skin should use the same rivet pitch and spacing as other nearby rivets to ensure that the loads are carried similarly. This applies to the rivets along the sides as well as with the most-rearward attach points on the main wing spar. SO the rear-most rivets will align as much as possible with the same spacing as the rivets that attach the rear of the LE skin to the wing spar. I am trying to do everything here as recommended "by the book."

The last part of the hole drilling exercise will be to locate and drill the pilot holes for each of the nut plates that I will need to install along the sides and the rear of the removable section. I think I have resolved the number and placement of the nut plates to use, but I am still "visualizing' that a bit more before I start drilling those #30 holes to mark the location for each screw. More on that in the next post or two.

KPR.......

Note to Self.........

Hurry up and finish this plane so that I can be somewhere else that is warmer and less windy than here in Denver in the months of January and February. This month has just been the absolute pits. High winds, cold temps, illnesses, work crap - just the pits. So long February 2018 - don't come back any time soon!

As a result of all that I have not been able to do much on the plane until last night. I was finally able to do the file folder straight edge trick and confirmed that my suspicions were correct. This time the lines matched up almost perfectly - much much better than before.The real culprit does appear to be the measurements I took from the forward most rivet holes for each rib flange, which are about 1/16th of an inch offset from the rest of the rib flange rivet holes, due to the reasons I stated in the previous post. This caused my cut line measurement to be off by that same amount, resulting in lines that did not "connect" on either side of the LE skin very well.

By NOT applying ANY measurements from these forward-most rivet holes, and only using measurements from the other holes that are in alignment with each other, the connecting lines around the front of the LE skin all seemed to line up as expected this time. Glad that that mess is over. Now I am just waiting for some warmer weather so I can get back to the "real" work. Now that the cut lines are drawn again, I can mark and match drill #40 holes for the added rivet lines that will secure the skin edges near the cut line, as well as #30 screw holes for the nut plates that will provide the attach points for the modular LE part. Then back to fabricating more parts for the inboard fuel tank rib.....