On Aug 17, 1:49*pm, brianDG303 wrote:
On Aug 17, 12:21*pm, Todd wrote:



I ALWAYS self assemble my ASW-20b with a (1) man rig (20 year old
Cobra unit). *Works find and just about as fast 2 people. *Like UH
says, it will take you a few times to find the tricks but my technique
is:

0. Make sure fuselage if perfectly vertical!
1. right wing first. *need to find the correct height for your wing
stand. *I never change the height or location for the wing stand.
Before leaving the right wing, I pickup the tip (off the stand) and
gently rock fore/aft to make sure the wing is squarely seated on the
drag pins. *If it is not, you will never get the main pins in.
2. Left wing on. Same drill, make sure squarely seated *on drag pins.
I also "know" the approximate correct wing dolly height (Actually, I
almost never move my wing dolly height.
3. Crank fuselage ramp dolly jacks up/down to get (1) pin in (hard
part) then tweak jack for 2nd pin,

Total time *less than 5 minutes for both wings. *On good days, about 2
minutes.

Disassemble: *Nothing other than the ramp should have moved, so put it
back where it was and the main pins should slide right out. *I pull
BOTH pins at ONCE in one quick turn and pull motion. Total time to
pull pins and return both wings to trailer: 2 minutes 11.5 seconds
(approx)

ST

I'm not as good at rigging as the other guys, about 70% of the time I
rig my DG303 like lightning, about 30% of the time something is off
and it can take me some time to find it. I do have a spacer block I
use to make sure the trailer jack is the exact height every time and
witness lines scribed onto the wing dolly, as repeatability is the
key. Of course if you move the trailer to another location you start
all over if the slope of the ground is different.

DG gliders have a flat top to the instrument pod, so I've started
using two Black & Decker laser 'levels' attached to a thin sheet of
plywood. These are shimmed such that the dot of the laser hits the
leading edge of the wing about 10' out. With this system you slide the
wing into the fuse, return to the wing dolly and crank it up or down
until the dot shows on the wing, the wing then glides onto the pins.
When both dots are where they should be the pins slide right in or
out.

The laser I use costs $14 and looks like a red tape measure, part
number BDL220S. It comes with a lens attached to the laser that makes
the dot into a line and I remove that.

Brian

I'll second the vote for lasers. I did a few trials comparing
"eyeball" wing tip positioning with the precise alignment possible
with a laser. The eyeballs were usually 6" or more out of position.
A laser aligned wing just slips in perfectly every time.

A secondary benefit is much less stress on the root fittings. The
human reaction to assembly difficulties is to just "move it around a
bit" to try finding some "magic" alignment. If you KNOW the wing is
aligned and it still isn't going together, you'll quickly find the
real culprit (like the water dump valve) and fix it.

That's also a benefit of one-man riggers. With the wing balanced on
the dolly, there is little weight on the root so the wing fittings
just 'float' together with little force on them. You'll feel any
resistance.

Laser levels are cheap. It's not hard to design a simple jig fixture
that fits on the canopy pins to hold the laser level.