22 of 27: May 2007
On the port wing, I discovered that the W18 plates were slightly misaligned, causing a slight gap between the outrigger assembly and the W18 plates. To make matters worse, this gap was tapered, starting at 1.2mm at the leading edge down to zero at the trailing edge. The likely cause is that the W21 plates were probably not assembled tightly enough and/or improperly clamped during curing. The gap seemed too small to warrant softening the epoxy and repositioning the W18 plates, but it could not be ignored either because attaching bolts may stress the W18 plates in the wrong direction.