Covering the wings

I have started covering the wings and have just completed the left wing. 

The Avid Flyer wings are complicate to cover.The flaperon hinges are sticking out through the fabric as extended spars, the trailing edge is a wire and the only surface for gluing is the leading edge tube.

With the widest Oratex UL600 being 1800 mm it can not wrap the entire wing. I opted for pre assembling 2 sheets of fabric, one 1800 mm and one 900 mm, with a 15 cm overlap to make a wide enough sheet before attaching it to the wing structure.

The overlap by the trailing edge is glued (and the glue activated!) before covering the wing.

I cut holes for the flaperon attachments and had to start by covering the first 2/3 of both sides of the wing at the same time. The bottom sheet was glued to the leading edge tube, wrapping around it, and the top sheet then goes on top of it and an additional 10 cm behind the leading edge glued to the bottom sheet. The fabric is obviously also glued to the 1 inch wide cap strip of each spars (and the entire surface of the wing tanks).

A 2 piece reinforcement were added where the flaperon attachments goes through the fabric.

To make covering the first wing more challenging I also have the pitot tube, LRI probe and a trap door for a USB cable on the left wing. The red and black cable is in view of a future - eventual - wing tip strobe.  

With overlapping sheets that therefore need additional glue you have to add time for the glue drying but it is not difficult to finish a wing on a weekend. And when I say finish I mean it. No layers of paint to be applied.

I used 1400 grams of fabric (including the glue on the fabric) for the left wing. This means that even including the glue on the structure covering both wings will only add around 3 kg.

The right wing is ready to be covered but I'm out of glue at the moment so I'm doing the wing strut fairings at the moment...