Van's has a pneumatic rivet squeezer they rent for fabricating your own wing spars (needed for the big rivets). That is what I did. Anodized spars are nice too so I'm not advocating either. Assembling the spars is one of the few positive sweat equity options to save money, and that was the driver for my decision.
Manual vs. electric trim; no wrong choices on this one either. My ship is a simple, light weight, wood prop sport plane. My goal has always been fun and easy to maintain, with simple systems. Yes, I have a single ?do it all? glass panel unit. Originally I installed a quadrant with manual trim lever sandwiched behind. It worked very well, but there was play in the combined throttle and mixture linkages. The thick green cables are stiff and difficult to route, and the amount of throw in the throttle lever wouldn?t hit both stops on the carb (second hole on the arm). I saw photos of Tony Spicer's 3 and decided to go that route instead. This facilitated using the manual trim lever as originally designed. I agree with the RV herd that a quadrant is nostalgic and sexy compared to knobs, but they are way easier to install, virtually no play in the linkage, lower parts count, less expensive. Also, the cables are thinner and much more flexible, and certified to boot. A collateral benefit is increased room for my long legs on the side where the quadrant formerly resided. I think electric trim is a great option too, and the big green cable is heavy. You can hold off on both of these decisions for a long time, so keep your ?research? paddle in the water and enjoy the build. You will spend many wonderful hours hashing out these, and many more decisions, in your mind. That is the essence of the fun; planning and customizing YOUR airplane.
Trim
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Linear Mode
