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It's been a while since I've worked on the plane because I went to Mississippi for Erin's graduation from pilot training! I need to get to work on the right leading edge but there are these mystery holes in the left leading edge. There are seven holes in the very leading edge and there's what appears to be an access panel in the bottom of it. These aren't mentioned anywhere so I had to search and found someone who referenced them as the holes for the stall warning horn. I guess they started including these around 2009 but I don't want one so I'm just installing the access plate cover and plugging the holes in the leading edge. Here are the holes.   Here's the access plate reinforcer and cover. I drilled them, deburred them, dimpled them and primed them. After this picture, I riveted on the nutplates and then riveted the reinforcer to the leading edge skin.  Here is the access hole cover screwed in place.  Then it came time to plug the holes in the leading edge. I didn't want to dimple them now because I was worried about it damaging the shape of the nose so I countersunk them and drilled the out for a MK-319BS pop rivet. I used the deburring bit to countersink the holes because it was less aggressive than the countersink cutter and the rivet heads fit them better. Here the holes are already countersunk but the skin is so thin, this enlarges the hole as well so the rivets wouldn't really fit.  I remedied this by making my own little washers to go under the skin for each of the seven rivets. They look like this.  The washer gave the rivet something to hold onto and the heads are pretty much perfectly flush and secure. They aren't structurally sound but they are only filling holes so it doesn't matter...  I was very pleased at how the session today came out but a little irritated that Van's decided for me that I needed a stall warning horn and cut holes in my leading edge. This would be very easy to add if someone wanted the horn and for those of us that don't it would save lots of holes in our wing so I think they should leave the skin unpunched and let the builder add the holes themselves if so desired. Anyway, now I need to put the right leading edge together and sometime soon order up some landing lights and a pitot tube ($$) because now is the time to install those puppies when the leading edges aren't attached to anything and it's easy access.
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