Fitting of the center section finished

Here is the more organised post that I promised you. Several parallel things are being worked on, so I will try to make posts more topic orientated.
This one is about the center section (again). Well it is now finished. All the nutplates are in place and fairings are not only fitted to them, but also primed and ready for painting.
Slowly now. This is an image of the leading edge fairing. Can you spot the difference?

No? Well, we are quite good at what we do. The difference is that on the right side the hinge is replaced - fabricated from sheet aluminium to quite close tolerances.
The hinges were mostly cracked also on the left side.

Like seen on this image - see inside marked circle.

So fabrication of new hinge, fitting and riveting it to the fairing took about 6 hours. This is why restorations take so much time. At least those done correctly.

Brighter aluminum is a give-away for the newly fabricated part.

And here it is in primer.

So our stack of restored parts is getting bigger.

The last thing before taking the center section off the airframe for fabric covering is one last check that everything really fits. Now is the time to correct that odd nutplate or bend the fairing a bit more. When paint and fabric will be applied, then it will be much harder to correct any mistakes.
So...

Looking good with all the screws installed.

Yeah baby, yeah!

Now wait a minute. How about this hole between the centersection and the fuselage?

I mean you can see the light through!

And this was the moment. Mistery solved. We were never really sure how so much water could accumulate in the centersection. Of course it could not leave the aircraft, since it had no drain holes, but how did it get there in the first place? Remember this? At some time there were at least several liters of water pooled up the rear spar. I always blamed a faulty windscreen seal, but missed the obvious. This hole, which was designed into the aircraft is to blame that we spent a year rebuilding the center section. See the image below.

The hole is between two arrows. All of the water that is collected in the shaded area then flows directly in the center section. No wonder that there were several liters of it there!

So, am I saying that the designers were complete idiots? Not really (however I am saying that the guy that didn't put the drain holes fore of the rear spar didn't earn his paycheck that day). Maybe it was originally designed with a sealing tape was placed in that hole, but none is mentioned in the Maintenance manuals. However, this hole was indeed recognised as a problem, and a cover over this hole was designed when storing the aircraft.

See how the cover goes over to the center section?

The only problem is that I had never ever seen such a cover used. However it is a valuable lesson in the future operation of this aircraft. I consider this now a fleet problem with all Aero-3 aircraft. More on this at some later date. The bad news now is that we have to take the center section off again. Does no good for motivation. See you next time with fabric work being done.