With the wings temporarily fitted to the fuselage, there are a handful of tasks to accomplish before removing them one last time. Careful planning will prevent too many on-off-on efforts – let's hope I didn't forget anything!
First up is the wing root faring, which will be screwed to nutplates all along the inboard edge of the wing. I was pleasantly surprised that the pre-punched holes lined up pretty well, although there is still some fiddling required (and watch the edge distance on the tank skin!).
The gap here is not perfect yet, but it's good enough to drill the fastener holes, which is my main concern. Once the wings are on permanently, I'll scribe and trim the edge of the root fairings to achieve a uniform gap into which I can install a rubber trim strip.
I drilled all the wing root fairing attach holes up to #19. The job of dimpling the holes and installing the nutplates will have to wait till the wings come off again.
I fitted the tank attach brackets, which required a few small tweaks to the bend angles, and drilled the bolt hole in each tank's mounting ear. When the wings are off I'll install a nutplate where this temporary bolt is:
