May 02, 2024     fwd avionics accesspanels finished - (3 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Pulled these panels off, rinsed off the mold release, and did some final adjustment for the thickness of the gaskets by sanding down some high spots in the pro seal with an 80 grit sanding block. Slow going to take that pro seal down thinner without wrecking it, but it all worked out okay in the end, just took a while

  Apr 29, 2024     fwd access panels - (3 hours)       Category: Fuselage

When you install the optional fwd access panels, Vans suggests that you use kitchen Saran Wrap as a mold release and mold gaskets in place out of Pro Seal. I wasn't happy with how many wrinkles/grooves the plastic wrap induced in the finished product, so I scraped all the old pro seal out and had a do over.

This time I used PVA mold release agent on the panels for a much smoother finished product. I installed these on the 19th, then left town a couple of days later for Oregon to do transition training with Mike Seager. Also had Kid 2 come into town for a visit, so Today (4-29) was the first time I had a chance to revisit.

Pretty much went as I had hoped- I scraped off the squeeze out with a sharpened popsicle stick, then pulled the panels up and trimmed the inner edges to match the nut plate rings. I've got one spot where I didn't have the panel snugged down quite enough and teh gasket is a bit thick, resulting in the panel riding high by about 1/32" or so, but hopefully it will compress down over time. Either way, I don't think it's noticeable and I'm just gonna live with it for now.

  Feb 21, 2024     Fuel sender wiring - (12 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Over the last couple of days I cleaned up some wiring including routing and securing the fuel sender wires and the wire bundles where they route laterally in front of the spar in close proximity to the fuel lines.

The capacitance fuel senders require power ground and sense wires, which are all in a shielded twisted triple, but in this instance the braided shield isn't utilized. The wire is routed through a standard outboard passthrough grommet in the fwd 1/2 of the spar box, then go outboard in front of the spar web.

I glued a strip of caterpillar grommet on the sharp skin edge, sleeved the wire in snakeskin abrasion protection, and of course it also has the braided sleeve under the insulation, so it's quite well protected from abrasion.

Where it makes the bend around the skin edge, it's held in place by a dab of RTV, then a couple of wire tie mounts glued to the skin with E6000. Even if the E6000 give out at some point in the future, it cant really flop around into anything important because in true belt and suspenders fashion, I also stood it off if the fuel vent line with a couple of adel clamps.

In the cabin, the wire runs that run laterally in front of the spars are segregated from the fuel lines by adel clamps. Per print and industry standard, the wire run are above the fuel lines, but when they get to the sides of the cockpit area you are forced to transition them lower because thats where the spar grommet is located.

This caused me some difficulty because I've got a lot of wires in these bundles plus pitot and AOA lines, all of which have to fit under kick panels but still have to be separated from the fuel lines.

I played with this for a while and tried a few different solutions before deciding that none of them were as bulletproof as just using adel clamps carefully positioned to firmly securing everything so that there was no chance of chafing against a fuel line or the kick panels that will eventually cover all this up.

You can't really tell in the pictures, but where the wire bundles cross over the fuel lines there is about 1/2" separation. This is the bare minimum for wires and fluid lines. It would have been a lot easier if vans had designed this differently, but at this point I've got this area rock solid with zero chance of anything getting together that shouldn't.

  Feb 07, 2024     Installed OAT probe - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Installed and pulled the wiring for the OAT probe. Per instructions it needs to go in free air, out of direct sunlight, and out of the exhaust or prop slipstream. This sure looks like the same probe that goes on the G1000 Cessna and they violate that all sorts of ways by sticking it on top of the cabin. Then again, they can get away with putting comm antennas only about 18" apart up there as well, even though Garmin says they need to be 4' apart. It must be nice to have a legion of electrical engineers available when you're laying out an installation like that.

Anyway, I installed this probe under the left wing, aft of the fuel tank near the inboard inspection panel which should satisfy all these requirements. The wiring consisted of a shielded twisted was then pulled via wing conduit into the cabin where it jointed up with an already existing wire bundle run through the center tunnel and up the aft face of the firewall to a cannon plug listed in my interconnect drawing as Aux Connector 1.

I had to pull up the boost pump pallet from the tunnel so I could secure this wiring with the bundles that already ran under there, so that took a while. Not hard, just takes time.

I pulled the free end up out through the avionics access holes that Kris Holt had helped me get the covers un-stuck from a few days ago. Because I have that access, I was able to pin the wiring by standing next to the airplane, rather than having to lay under the panel, awesome!

Ops check indicated within a few degrees of what my apple phone was calling current OAT, as well as CHT and EGT so I believe this is good to go.

  Feb 02, 2024     Un-stuck fwd access panels - (4 hours) Category: Fuselage

Kris Holt popped by the hangar today. Kris is an IA/A&P and a field service engineer for Lycoming who I got to know when I did some pt 141 prog checks for him, and then took him over midstream to finish up his PPL training when his first instructor left for the airlines.

I Gare him the nickel tour of the project and we did a good bit of hangar flying, but honestly, not much else.

While he was available, I did have him help me get these panels off.

Basically, these fwd inspection panels allow for easy access into the area fwd of the sub-panel so you don't have to stand on your head to get to the avionics. Vans now makes an optional kit for these, and I had installed them back then.

Per instructions, you are supposed to make gaskets out of pro seal, then screw the covers on with a layer of kitchen Saran Wrap to act as a mold release.

I did that, let it set for like 3 days, then took it all apart and life was good until it wasn't. I put those panels back on and when I tried to get them off again they were absolutely stuck solid. I was using a SEM kit of B2 so I have no idea why, but evidently my pro seal wasn't completely set up and they had gotten solidly glued down.

Anyway, I got underneath they panel while Kris heated them up with a heat gun and we finally got them unstuck. This is somewhat important because unless you grow another elbow and a wrist that bends the other way, thats really the best decent access to things like the CO sniffer and the avionics forrest of tabs. It wouldn't have been the end of the world if we couldn't have gotten them up, but this sure makes life easier.

  Dec 06, 2023     Moving day!!! - (10 hours)       Category: Fuselage

I'm counting this as 10 hours because I took a lot of time researching and scheming the best way to go about moving the fuselage the 10 miles or so to the hangar.

I know a lot of people have hired a roll on wrecker to do this, but was extremely uneasy with the idea of relinquishing control of my very expensive baby to somebody else. I explored the idea of using a car hauler trailer but soon discovered that for all the low ones with a dovetail, the inner fenders were only about 82" wide. My main gear to the outside of the axle nuts is 86".

I thought about loading it backward, but there was a pretty good chance that I might have to either crawl into the tailcone to remove a comm antenna or risk dragging it as I went up the ramps. I'd have to build a center ramp for the tail wheel as well as cover the heavy ribs on the main ramps with plywood because they're a ladder style made from spaced out angle iron for cars and skid steers and stuff. If I loaded it forward I'd have to devise some method of getting the mains past the fender wells. Compounding all these issues is the fact that without the wings and empennage on it's extremely nose heavy. Overall, I decided that there was just too much stuff to try to modify to make it work.

Keith Rea recommended Happy Hooker towing here in Wichita, so ultimately I choked back my inner control freak and gave them a call. They were very accommodating and it turns out they've moved quite a few airplanes.

The Driver, Durawn, was super cool and had it loaded up and secured in 20 minutes or so. He was able to drop the tilt bed within just a couple of inches of the garage door which was awesome because then we didn't have to worry about it running away down my sloped driveway. He pulled it up with the winch while I steered from the back with a tow bar. Even with that giant truck we only had about 8" or so of extra width outside of each main.

He had it offloaded at the hangar is about 10 minutes. Honestly, the thing that took the longest in the whole process was me doing a 16 point turn in the garage prior to him arriving in order to get it pointed in the right direction for rolling it up on the truck.

This move has been the single most stressful part of the whole project. I had visions of it falling off the truck or tipping over on its nose or something. This was made worse by the fact that Van's went into chapter 11 bankruptcy a couple days ago. Selfishly, I had the lingering thought that if I had some kind of oopsie it wouldn't just be a matter of rework, it might be months before I could hope to get replacement parts. I feel bad for having that concern because in the bigger picture, the entire community is on edge and VAF is full of people who are potentially losing thousands of dollars in deposits or even full payments for kits that haven't shipped yet.

Anyway, it all went smoothly with no problems at all. Now it's pretty much just a matter of putting all the big chunks together, pulling wires for the lights, final fiberglass on the tips, etc. etc. etc. Actually, now that I think about it, the list is pretty long, but it's all very exciting because each step is a finish step, not something that lead to the next in a never-ending series of baby steps. Yay!

  Dec 02, 2023     aileron tube boots - (1 hour)       Category: Fuselage

Hey, Thanksgiving happened! Had a good time here in Wichita with the in-laws, then drove down to Branson to visit family there.

A while back I bough an aileron pushrod boot kit from somebody on vaf. It's been setting on the shelf for a while yesterday I installed the flanges that go in the lightening holes in the fuselage. It took about 20 minutes to put these I'm going to hold off on the rest off the kit so it won't be in the way when I'm putting the wings back on.

I don't have much at all left to do before moving to the hangar, but we got 8" of snow here while we were gone and in Kansas they spray brine all over the roads prior to a snow forecast to anti-ice them. No way was I attempting to move the fuselage in that mess.

I've got a line on a rental trailer that's wide enough for the main gear to fit between the fenders and thankfully it rained a couple of days ago to wash that salty crap off the roads, so hopefully next week I can get the fuselage moved, although I have to say the idea of that is making me a bit nervous.

  Nov 19, 2023     Windscreen fairing done! - (20 hours)       Category: Fuselage

I spent a few more days finishing this up. Simple duplicolor rattle can hi-build primer to identify defects that you wouldn't otherwise see. Then a bit of glazing putty for a few pinholes that escaped the epoxy top coats. Wet sand, repeat.

I finally got this to a good contour and surface quality, so last night as soon as I could get some help tp position this without making a mess, I went ahead and permanently attache dit via the sikaflex process.

Yesterday was the perfect window for tis because it was 60% humidity and 65 degrees, with forecast for 3 days of rain starting last night. As you may recall, humidity is what causes sika to cure, so once you get it applied, the more humid the better.

Larry Larson mentioned in his Kitplane articles that he almost glued his canopy shut with this stuff. I've been been using clecoes in 4 strategically placed holes to position this consistently, during fabrication, so it seemed to me that there wasn't much benefit to trying to glue this on with the slider canopy closed.

I masked and prep sanded the faring with 60 grit, and masked and scuffed the windscreen and aluminum fwd skin with red scotch bright. Then prepped everything with sika aktivator and primer per the allowable time windows.

I only applied Sika 295UV to the airplane side, and then smeared it out to what I though was a thickness that would allow full coverage but not be so thick that it would cause problems with smooshing the fairing down more or less flush.

Sika recommends a certain gap to allow for expansion, so when I taped off the airplane to do my initial wet layups for this faring I had intentionally bridged the gap at the windshield base to leave a little gap there that I could fill up later with sika. Now I laid a thicker bead in there.

I estimate the thickness of sika that I ended with to be probably .25" at the intersecting line of the windscreen to fwd fuselage going, transitioning to maybe .010 at the edges.

I finished it off with a fillet all around to seal the edges, but due to some reshaping after removing the edge mask, I ended up with several areas that had to be corrected and trued up after it dried, so this morning I went back and accomplished that with nothing more than patience and my fingernails.

As we know, the 295UV won't stick well anywhere that primer isn't first applied, so I was able to get everything without drams, but it does soften that cheap rattle can primer, so I've got several spots on the fairing itself that should probably be hit with some scotch bright or wet sanded with 400 grit and touched dup to make it pretty, but ultimately, the stuff will all have to be done by the paint shop anyway, So I may just leave it for now.

Once everything is set up good and hard I'll have to go back and fill in the cleco holes, but for the most part this is done and I'm really, really, glad this is done.

  Nov 14, 2023     windshield fairing continued - (20 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Over the last few days I've continued to plug away at the windscreen fairing. I've also been working on the wheel pants. More on that in a separate entry.

For the fairing- I mentioned in my last log entry that Keith Rea told me that his started about .10" thick aft the aft edge and he leaned on it and cracked it, necessitating a couple of more plies to fix it prior to paint.

Based on that input, as well as the fact that I had a lump where the side skirts nested at the aft lower corners, I decided to make mine a bit thicker. First, I applied a skim coat of micro everywhere. In order to get a better transition from the sides to the lumps at the aft corners, the micro was squeegeed into shape with a rigid piece of aluminum, rather that my typical flexible bondo squeegee.

In order to get the fwd radius right, I used a couple of different radius sanding blocks. The smaller radius in the center was accomplished by means of a sanding block simply made by wrapping a piece of 60 grit paper around stack of 3 rolls of 3m blue painters tape still in the cellophane wrapper. Specifically, this was about a 5" radius.

This transitions to a shallower radius where the windshield base starts to wrap around the fuselage sides was accomplished by using the curved back side of a hard rubber sanding block that I happened to have. I don't know the exact radius, but looking around the shop for something that might work, I happened on it and it seemed about right. I'd guess that its probably about a 10" radius.

I then applied another 2 layers of 7.5 oz Eglass, and another skim coat of extremely runny micro, just to give me something to sand without getting down into the glass.

One that had dried, and the edged were trimmed and sanded down to final size, I once again block sanded everything to get the fairing into its 100% final shape.

I then applied two coats of neat epoxy. Once that dries, I'll block sand one more time, then hopefully I'll be ready to slap a couple of coats of hi build primer on this and call it done.

  Nov 08, 2023     Windscreen fairing - (20 hours)       Category: Fuselage

I started this a few days ago, but when you work with fiberglass there is a lot of down time where you're waiting for epoxy to dry so you can sand most of it off and start over :)

Nothing new here, I laid out trim lines on yellow frog tape, covered everything with mylar packing tape and gave it a healthy dose of turtle wax as mold release insurance.

I then laid up multiple plies of 8.5 oz cloth taking care to include extra plies around the hoop. This area takes some abuse with the canopy sliding under it as well as potentially people grabbing that area to climb in and out. Vans print suggests you should shoot for a .080" thickness in this area and an overhang between 1/4"-1/2". I ended up with about .10" thickness and split the difference on the overhand and went with 3/8".

I gave this a skim coat of micro, then pulled it off the plane and rough cut to size with an abrasive disc in my dotco. after that, I crept up on the final dimension with 60 grit on a long sanding block.

I've got a few low spots in the fwd radius and I wasn't happy with the way the aft corners looked. They have to stick out a bit back there in order for the side skirts to nest under them when closed, and the lump that induces looked funny.

I added another skim coat of micro today and will attempt to get this to a more aesthetically pleasing shape tomorrow.

The part that goes from the aft corners fwd around the windshield base is only about .070" I originally reasoned that since the sika is holding the windshield on there's nothing structural about this it just needed to be thick enough to not have the paint crack over time, but I'm now rethinking.

Keith Rea told me today that his aft hoop was originally about .10" thick and he cracked it getting in and out during phase 1. He had to add a couple more plies before it went to paint. Based on that, and the fact that I'm trying to reshape this a bit, I think once I get a final shape I'm happy with I'll go with a minimum of one more ply over the whole thing. That will beef it up a bit and also encapsulate the micro layer.

To be continued!

  Oct 20, 2023     windscreen install continued/cowl brake line cleanup - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

It's been about 60 hours since I applied the sika, so I figured it was dry enough to come back and finish it. So, this morning I pulled the spacers out of the windshield frame. Per my test from a few days ago, installing them over dry primer was no problem at all, they slid right out with a little tug from a pair of needle nose pliers.

I the taped off the area again on both front and back, and reactivated the existing sika glue and primer with aktivator.

Interesting side note- This sika aktivator is $25 for a 1/2 pint bottle, and it smells like it's nothing more than denatured alcohol. I have no idea if you could use alcohol for this and save yourself 25 bucks, but I think I might experiment a bit with leftovers after this air all done.

At any rate, once I had all the appropriate areas smeared with aktivator, I waited the prescribed 10 minutes for it to flash off, then applied a generous bead of new sika.

My experience trying to use popsicle sticks at that base led me to just create the fillet on the forward side with my finger and many changes of rubber gloves. On the back side, I smoothed everything out with a bondo squeegee.

Tip- when I originally ordered my supplies for installing the canopy skirt, the 10 oz tubes of sika were back ordered, so I got enough 3.5 oz tubes to do that job. I had one left over and it's MUCH easier to get one of those up on the fwd side of the windscreen than a huge caulking gun

After that, I was looking around for something else to do, and decided to address an issue I noticed a while back.

I'm putting the lower cowl on by myself, and if you do it that way you cant help bumping it on the gear legs a bit as you get it in/out of position. It had cut through the fusion tape holding teh brake lines in that area as well as cause quite a few scratches in the upper gear leg powder coat.

I started looking at this to see what was actually hitting and came to the conclusion that it was the bottom end and/or rivet tail for the vertical cowl/firewall piano hinge. I think I could have eliminated this if I'd terminated that hinge probably 1 loop higher up.

I cleaned up the scratched area with scotch bright and alcohol, then touched it up just with a bit of white rustoleum applied with a model brush. To keep it from happening again, I applied a dab of clear E-6000 adhesive to the bottom edge of the piano hinge and the nearest rivet tail. That stuff dries to an RTV like rubbery consistency, and I think that it will cushion any sharp edges.

Also, the Vans plans calls for attaching the brake lines to the gear legs with nothing more complicated than electrical tape. I find this to be an extremely hillbilly design, but electrical tape is indeed pretty tough at least when it's new, so I reapplied fusion tape where it had been damaged, then applied a couple of wraps of electrical tape over it at each location.

  Oct 16, 2023     Glued in Windscreen - (6 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Jeez this is a messy job. But nothing really new about this process. as far as masking and prep I basically just followed the steps in Larry Larson's kit planes articles again

I slid the canopy closed and positioned the windscreen so the aft edge was flush with they leading edge of the canopy. In order to do this, I used pieces of split hose spacers and small aluminum tabs & clecoes. Oops! When I riveted on the forward skin, I forgot that I was using two existing holes for these tabs and accidentally riveted them, so in order use the center two tabs/clecos I had to drill out those two rivets.

Once I was happy with how it was laying, I marked the location of the spacers on the fwd edge of the canopy, because any marks on the windshield bow would be lost during the Sika prep process.

I took it all apart again and I scuffed all the mating surfaces with red scotchbright, then followed the application steps for activator and primer. Note- I wanted to prime the entire roll bar at once, but was unsure if the vinyl tube spacers would stick to the primer one it flashed off, so I did a test piece and using scrap and it was no problem at all, so I did the entire roll bar.

Since I was working by myself, I figured that trying to lay down a bead of sika and then drop the windscreen down on it would lead to a big mess. Instead, I positioned the plexiglass dry, briefly slid the canopy closed and positioned the hose spacers per the marks I had previously made on the canopy leading edge.

I then clamped everything in place and applied the Sika glue. Since I now had a bunch of spring clamps holding it in position at the roll bar, I was able to remove a few clecoes at a time without it shifting significantly and raise up the fwd edge enough to lay a bead in there little bit at a time. I worked my way around the whole lower edge that way, then squirted a bead into the aft edge, skipping the area where the hose spacers and spring clamps were holding it.

On the inside base at the fwd edge of the glare shield, I had envisioned smoothing a nice radius with a popsicle stick, but the ergonomics of that just didn't work out well for me, so after a couple of false starts, I just used my gloved finger. I got a pretty good result, but also got some smears and drizzles of sika where I don't want them. fortunately, one that stuff dries you can peel it off anywhere there isn't a primer base for it to stick to.

I'll give this a few days to get good and hard, then come back and fill in the areas where the spacers are, finish the fillets etc. and then clean up.

One other thing I might mention; The top center didn't really need any spacers, but I didn't want he plexiglass to be in direct contact with the roll bar. It just seems like thats probably one of the higher stress areas because of repetitively cinching down the canopy latch. Seemed like maybe a minimal space there might be desirable to give the joint a bit of ability to flex, so I used a piece of weed eater string as a spacer there for that purpose.

  Oct 12, 2023     canopy handle - (5 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Just to circle back to something I mentioned in my last log entry; After looking at this again, I determined that the reason the canopy is hard to open from outside is a result of two things.

When I fabricated the delrin blocks that the aft canopy frame pins nest into, I took a great deal of care to make that a very precise fit, on the assumption that the holes would wear a bit and loosen up over time. Also, when I'm lifting and tugging at the canopy lifting tab I installed on the aft l/h corner, it's pulling the canopy back and up as intended, but it's also shifting sideways a tiny bit and that motion is binding up the pins in the blocks.

I'm able to open the canopy by alternately pulling the. aft corners up and aft, but who wants to walk back and forth around their airplane 2 or 3 times just to get he canopy open, at least for a few hundred sequences until presumably everything loosens up?

So, after thinking all that through, I went to Lowes this morning and bought a brushed nickel cabinet pull that seemed like would suit the lines of the airplane.

You cant see the canopy frame from outside the canopy due to the sikaflex process, so step one of the installation was to center pilot holes from the inside. I started with #40 and gradually worked up to #21, but in spite of careful measuring and use of drill blocks, they were slightly misaligned and I needed to upside them to #10, which is a pretty sloppy fit for the #8 screw the handle takes. More on this in a bit.

I didn't want any stress on the plexiglass at all, so on the outside I upsized the holed in the plexiglass to .310 with a flat end reamer I had handy. This size is still small enough to be covered entirely by the footprint of the handle ends, but big enough to leave room for a bushing sleeve in there.

I went to my favorite aviation supply house (Ace Hardware), and changed out the cheap cabinet hardware for some stainless screws and washers. The length I needed was about 1 3/8" and the closest Ace had was 1.5". Once I got them home, I carefully shortened them on my bench disc sander a bit at a time until they were the appropriate length.

I fabricated bushings out of a scrap piece of aluminum tube that were long enough so that when the screws are tightened down from inside, the bushings bottom out on the steel frame approximately .020" before the handle feet touch the plexiglass.

I bent a couple of stainless fender washers via my bench vise to make them into saddle washers that conform to the round tube shape of the canopy frame, the better to center the screws in the slightly oversized holes.

Once everything was ready and a trial fit had shown that it all fit properly, I prepped the holes with sika activator and primer via q-tip then inserted the screws, slipped the bushings over the screws and seated them down in the .310 holes in the plexiglass. I then filled in the gap between the o.d. of the bushing and the i.d. of the hole with sikaflex, installed the handle and screwed everything down tight.

The sika primer is only on the inside of the holes, so once this is all dry, one of two things will happen; Chances are high that a bit of sika got inside those tiny bushings during assembly and if it is holding tight enough that I can't get those screws out. I'll call it good enough for government work and move on. However, If I can get the screws out I'll remove the saddle washers and screws, then fill the holes in the tube with epoxy flox and reinstall the screws with smaller washers.

Lots of work for a simple handle. If I had it to do over again, I could have saved myself a lot of work by just laying this out before I installed the canopy on the frame.

  Oct 11, 2023     Canopy skirt - (6 hours)       Category: Fuselage

With the super tracks mod, The canopy slides far enough aft that I could have installed the internal canopy braces without removing the canopy. The inside of the skirts had already been painted white in that area with a simple application of dupli-color rattle can white with that in mind. Unfortunately, you could see the sika squeeze out and a couple of areas where there was sika primer showing through the lightening holes along that lower edge.

I decided I didn't want to spend every flight looking at those globs through the lightening holes, so last night I pulled the canopy, flipped it over on a well padded shop bench, and cut/sanded off the globs.

Sika says that their stuff can be painted, and it's almost impossible to get the dried primer off without using aggressive "mechanical means" so I wasn't concerned about getting it all removed, just sanded to a cosmetically appealing profile so I could apply touchup paint.

I was afraid to use acetone that close to the plexiglass so after sanding the surface smooth, I wiped everything down with alcohol. Either residue from that, or perhaps something in the sika primer, didn't agree with my rattle can krylon, because both sides popped up with worm tracks in several places.

I thought that maybe I just hadn't cleaned the surface well enough, so once it dried, I removed the crackled paint with a combination of sanding and scrubbing with scotchbright. then again scrubbed everything with alcohol. Darned if the same thing didn't happen again!

On round 3, I started with a light coat of duplicolor primer to seal the sika primer then top coated with krylon rattle can semi-gloss white and it finally came out nice.

The fiberglass skirt is so stiff I didn't see how it could have shifted so I decided to just go ahead and rivet on the canopy braces with this upside down and off the airplane. I first riveted the braces to the frame, then back drilled through the braces to the skirt for the lower rivets. I then countersunk and installed the rivets with a squeezer.

Prior to installing the skirt braces, the skirt fit was so good along the sides that I couldn't slide a piece of paper in the gap. The gap across the aft fuselage deck had started out the same, but after bonding it together last week I ended up with a gap back there of about 1/16". I attribute this to my applying the sika too thickly back there and not really having a way to pull it down and force more squeezout the way the clecoes did along both sides.

In retrospect, I think if I had wrapped a ratchet strap around the fuselage back there and cinched it down, I could have gotten this tighter in that area.

At any rate, I was gratified to see that once I had the skirt braces riveted on and the canopy re-installed, the fit hadn't changed a bit. The gap along the back isn't a big deal, it's symmetrical side to side so it looks like it should be there, and it's just about a perfect width for a piece of light weatherstripping/anti-chafe which will create a better draft seal that a tighter (but not airtight) fit of fiberglass laying against fuselage skin.

If you look at the pictures below, you can see that the upper rivet line still has copper clecos installed. I'm on the fence about whether to install rivets in this holes or just fill them in with epoxy. The Sika will hold that skirt on for eternity, but on the other hand, it's not like it's a lot of work to countersink and install some pop rivets. I can't really see a downside to it other than potentially teh paint popping off the rivet heads years on down the road.

I'm going to sleep on it and make a decision on that in a day or two.

The only other thing I'm thinking about is whether to add a pull handle in the aft center of the canopy. I added a pull tab on the right rear corner when I was putting this all together, but it turns out that when you pull on it, it pulls the canopy sideways and binds it up a bit. It's pretty hard to get the canopy open by pulling just on that one corner and I think it would be cake if I could pull and lift from the aft center.

I've looked at this on VAF and several guys have installed a chrome cabinet pull back there and it turned out really nicely. If I can figure out how to do this without running the risk of cracking the canopy I think I might go that route.

  Oct 04, 2023     finished canopy skirt - (12 hours)       Category: Fuselage

I've been working on this off and on for several days now. Yesterday I final sanded the canopy skirt including a couple of coats of high build primer that then got sanded down to fill in some scratches and pinholes. I also painted the inside white where it's behind the canopy braces because this area is very visible but it would be a real pain to paint after everything is assembled.

This morning I prepped everything for sika, But that process is pretty time sensitive so I didn't really take any before pictures.

Roy Aycock came over at lunch to help with this. He got here just as I was waiting for the primer to flash off, and he offered up a second set of hands to smear on the sika after the recommended 30 minute wait, then maneuver the skirt into place and help with creating fillets at the transition between skirt and plexiglass.

The skirt will need to set for a couple of days while the sika dries, but after that I'll pull the cloches out and fill the holes either with chicken rivets or just epoxy them over. I haven't decided which yet.

  Oct 03, 2023     fuselage vertical closeouts - (6 hours)       Category: Fuselage

I'm planning to get the canopy skirt glued on in the next day or two, and once that happens, I won't be able to open teh canopy for a couple of days while the sika dries, so it seemed like a good Tim ego wrap up a couple of things in the cabin while I could still get in there.

To that end, I match drills the inside of the canopy horizontal rails for the lower skirt braces, then I finished the brace angles. I don't remember the part numbers of these things, but they are the long strips with all the lightening holes in them that go right above the canopy roller tracks and tie the lower portion of the skirts into the canopy frame and make the skirts more rigid.

I was able to do this sitting inside the airplane with the canopy closed, but I forgot to get any pictures.

I then final deburred and primed the braces, and will paint them white to match the frame.

I also final installed the F-704K vertical cap strips.

NOTE- for anybody who might be reading this; Way back when, I followed the example of other folks by beefing up the armrests. Specifically, I added another piece under the lower horizontal flange so that they hopefully wouldn't bend if people use them to lever themselves up out of the cockpit.

This now caused me an issue, because the extra flange was in the way of one of the rivet holes common to the vertical cap strip and the F-704 C&D center section vertical members. Fortunately, I was able to get in there with a wedge shape and pull at an angle and got the rivets to set without issue. However, I could have saved myself the hassle if I'd just tapered that extra piece to give myself a bit more room

  Sep 28, 2023     cowling oil door - (3 hours) Category: Fuselage

I wanted to finish out the are around the oil door to make it truly a flush fit. I had previously filled in most of the gap and sanded it more or less flush, but still had some finish work to do.

I had some epoxy mixed up for a different task so I used a bit of excess to mix up a slurry of micro then troweled it into the gap around the edge of the oil door. The next day after it got good and hard I sanded it down more or less flush.

As is, the border around the door is about 1/32" higher than the surrounding cowl, which is something I think I'll let the painter deal with.

I though for a bit during prep about the best way to get a consistent gap around the edges of the door and ultimately it occurred to me that rather than screwing around with trying to epoxy ups to tape lines or whatever, there was an easier way- I made the door a bit overside with respect to the flange underneath, and once the surrounding surface was final sized for basically a zero gap, I took the door to my bench sander and 3M grinding wheel and took off about 1/32" all the way around.as verified with scrap of .032" used as a no go gauge in the gap.

I feel like this came out really nice.

  Sep 27, 2023     continued canopy skirt - (30 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Well here we are two weeks since the last entry. I started sanding to previously laid up fiberglass skirt and just wasn't happy with the shape at all. I had a hump on one side aft that was the result of a slightly proud canopy frame in that area, combined with the edge of the .030 vinyl that I was using to bridge the gap between fuselage and canopy.

Sigh, after spending a few hours sanding this down to see if I could live with it, I just bit the bullet, scrapped it, and started over.

The new and improved plan had me looking for something thinner that the previously sourced .030 vinyl to cover up the gap between the canopy and the fuselage so that I could build up wet plies in place without excessive sagging.

Thought that perhaps poster board or craft paper might work so I went to Michaels craft store and discovered, wonder of wonders, they have mylar sheets like engineering prints used to come on in the 1960's. They're with the poster boards and are listed as "plastic posterboard" I picked up two sheets in case I needed extra, but one sheet was enough. to do the entire canopy skirt area with a bit left over.

It's only about .010" thick, and a bit more floppy than the vinyl I tried first, but by stretching packing tape tight and working it down wit a squeegee to get the air bubbles out I ended up with a nice flat surface to work with that seems to have minimum variations.

Once that was all prepped, I laid up I think 4 layers of 7.5 oz glass, they a skim coat of flox, then a 5th layer, then a layer a peel ply. The next day I sanded to a rough shape, then laid up another 3 layers of cloth, then a skim coat of micro, then two coats of neat epoxy.

The goal was to end up with a surface thick enough that I could get a final surface finish without getting into any of the plies to a significant degree.

As we all know, this kind of layup gets opaque when you sand it, so threw was a certain order of operations that made sense at this point. After, it was good and hard, I transferred all my edge cut lines that were visible on the tape underneath, then popped the layup off the plane and trimmed the edges.

This was done by cutting to just outside the lines with my 90* die grinder using the same abrasive cutoff disk that vans sent to cut the canopy. I final sized it by sanding up to the line with a sanding block and some 80 grit.

I took several iterations to get this just right, trying it back on the airplane after each. The most critical area for me was where the lower fwd edges joggle up to match the canopy rails. There can't be any overlap here of the skirts to the canopy decks or they will rub and bind up as you open the canopy, but if you cut too much away, you'll have a big ugly gap there thats going to be difficult to seal up. So in that area you have to take away just enough, but not too much, if that makes any sense at all.

I wasn't happy with the fit between the doghouse area and the plastic plug thats supposed to side on the aft canopy rail and close up the air gaps back there. Since I'm doing this out of fiberglass and can make it any shape I want, I scrapped the aluminum doghouse form I had used and after appropriately protecting with tape and turtlewax for mold release, I filled the gaps with a slurry of flox.

I had also prepped the area around the oil filler door on the upper cowl, so before my leftover epoxy started to set, I did a layer around the door to bring it up close to flush. Later on I finished that out with a skim coat of micro. Waste not want not, but more on that in a separate entry.

Once the skirt was cut to size and the doghouse area was fitting the way I wanted, I drilled through into the holes that already existed in the canopy frame side rails while I could still see them.

I then clecoed the skirt in place, made sure everything was still taped up good so that I wouldn't scratch it, and sanded everything to final shape with a couple of sanding blocks with 80 grit.

At this point I've got everything just about perfect I think, although it's hard to tell until you gt some primer on it, because the sanding marks tend to hide low spots etc.

I have to accompany my wife on a multi-day work trip at this point, so when I get back I'll hit this all with a finer grit finishing paper and then some high build primer to finish it off. Boy I hope I'm about done with this.

  Sep 14, 2023     canopy skirt - (5 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Since I had wrapped up all the prep work yesterday, today was just hammer down fiberglass layups.

I used 7.5 oz glass and US composites 3:1 epoxy. I know that some people are in love with the West Systems products, but you'll also find several folks who have had problems with it. I've used US Composites epoxy quite a few times on boat projects. It seems to hold up well and I've never had a problem with it blushing or failing to get hard as nails. A while back I posed the question on VAF to see if anybody had ever used it on their RV project. Several people had and said that they've had no problems over time, so I decided to stick with what I know.

The 3:1 product has about a 20 minute pot life, and a set time of 3-4 hours, depending on temperature. In case anybody is reading this for tips, pot life is the amount of time you have to work with it after mixing before it starts to set. Set time is the amount of time you have to add another layer on top and still have it chemically bond with the previous layer.

The way I mix this is with calibrated pumps that screw into the jugs similar to how bathroom liquid soap pumper works 3 pumps of epoxy, 1 pump of catalyst fills a red solo cup about 1/2 way. Stir it with a popsicle stick for about 20 seconds it's ready to go. Thats also about the amount I can work with in 20 minutes so it works out well.

I pre-cut all the fiberglass into strips of 7"x 42" for the sides and 7"x 24" (approx.) that wrap from the back corners up around the turtle deck.

For the first ply, I wetted out the glass on 3 mil plastic strips to apply them more easily. Just stick them in place, squish them down thru the plastic with a squeegee, then peel the plastic off. Ezee Pezee. For subsequent plies, I just stuck the dry glass onto the sticky layer that was already there and wetted it out in place with a 2" paint brush from the Dollar Store. I took care to jostle this around so that they seams were staggered to ensure a stronger finished product. At the end of each layer I threw away the brush and grabbed a new one due to the previously mentioned pot life.

I might also mention that in for the dog house around the canopy slider track I had just taped the metal dog house from Vans kit in place and taped over it as part of my prep. Larry Larson said in his Kit Planes article that doing it this way would result in the finished hole being too big. In his case, he used that component at a mold to form a smaller doghouse mold out of a soda can.

I see his point, but in my case a trial fit showed that the white plastic piece that slides on the track and is supposed to nest in the doghouse when the canopy is closed is actually already too big to fit in the Vans doghouse. It would need to be sanded down significantly. I think using the existing dog house as a mold and having the hole larger by the thickness of that original piece will result in less sanding shaping on the plastic block, but will still result in a tight fit.

At any rate, I covered the doghouse area with several plies cut on the bias to encourage them to conform to the curves of that part. Each layer in that area overlaps or underlaps the end of the pieces that wrap up the fuselage sides.

I applied 4 layers of 7.5 oz glass this way. After the 4th layer, I covered the layup with peel ply and squeegee'd it out.

Tomorrow I'll remove the peel ply. If I have any high spots I'll sand them down as much as I dare. Then I'll fill any low spots with a thin flox mix, cover that with a 5th layer of cloth, and then more peel ply and squeegee it into something approximating its final shape.

  Sep 13, 2023     More canopy skirt prep - (6 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Sometime it seems like stuff that looks so simple ends up taking forever. I spent the day prepping for canopy skirts, which is a continuation of what I was doing yesterday.

I needed to devise some way to bridge the gap between the airframe and the canopy on both side rails and aft by the turtle deck.

First I tried to just bridge the gaps with packing tape, but I really wasn't happy with the results. Basically, the gap is too big for packing tape to remain taunt and not sag. I know guys have solved this by smoothing out the sags with modeling clay and whatnot, but that seems iffy at best. I thought about this for a while and decided to see if I cold find something semi rigid to bridge the gap.

I ended up down at the Yard Store, and was able to score a roll of .030" vinyl. I thought it might be a little bit thicker than ideal, but the it occurred to me that since I'm bonding this on with sika, it might be nice to have an extra .030" under there for expansion of the Sika.

Cut the vinyl to fit, taped it in place, and then covered the entire area with 2 layers of mylar packing tape. I made sure my masking job was up to par and then waxed everything with 2 coats of turtle wax for a mold release.

I had an 0600 check in at work this morning, and by this time it was after 6:00 pm and I was getting pretty tired, so I elected to wrap it up for tonight. I'll start applying fiberglass plies tomorrow.

  Sep 12, 2023     prep for canopy skirts - (6 hours)       Category: Fuselage

I started this task by going back and reviewing Larry Larson's excellent Kit Plane magazine articles, as well as several build logs on VAF. By the time I had a plan together it was time to pick up RJ and run him across town to work, so I stopped on the way back at Lowes and picked up some frog tape and other supplies. The frog tape is so that my sharpie lines are more easily visible. The whole area will be covered with mylar packing tape and mold release before wet layup.

When I got back in the shop this afternoon, I taped and masked a large portion of the fuselage, then after quite a bit of careful measuring, layer out sharpie lines in the final shape of the canopy skirt.

The plan is to bridge the empty gaps with plastic sheet and mylar tape, then layup 5 plies of 8oz fiberglass oversized. Once it cures, I'll transfer the existing sharpie lines directly through the layup, pop it off the airplane, trim and finish sand, then permanently bond it back on with Sikaflex.

  Sep 12, 2023     sealed baffles - (2 hours)       Category: Fuselage

This is hardly worth an entry of it's own, but I just wanted to capture the finished product re how I closed out around the prop governor.

At this point, I believe the baffles are complete other than cutting and installing the rubber seals. I'd like to just drive ahead and knock this out so that I can scratch this off my punch list, but as I mentioned in another entry, the daily temp dropped about 20 degrees ver the weekend, which is the signal that fall is right around the corner, so I'm putting this in the parking lot for a few days to work on the canopy skirt, then windshield installation.

When working with plexiglass, the hotter ambient temp the better to minimize the chances of cracking something, so I want to get the windshield in while we still have some 80 degree days in the forecast.

  Sep 11, 2023     oil door - (2 hours)       Category: Fuselage

I needed a tiny bit of epoxy to glue in the striker plate that the latches engage with on this, so I sat it aside for a bit until I needed to mix up epoxy for smoothen else. last week I fiberglassed in the upper cowl cooling ramps. so I took care of teh striker plate as well.

Today I finished riveting the hinge to the door and installed the hinge pin. It has a nice smooth latch operation and fits flush with the surrounding surface. The next time I'm in fiberglass mode I'll fill in the recess on the exterior cowl that surrounds the door for an overall flush fit. Should work out nicely.

I wanted flush rivets in this, and while .032 is technically okay for countersinking a -3 rivet, it's just barely. I went with NAS oops rivets which just have a -2 head and require a much smaller countersink. Since they don't have as much strength under a tension load due to the small head I went overkill with 7 rivets on 1/2" spacing. Came out nice.

  Sep 08, 2023     More cowl work- upper cooling ramps - (32 hours)       Category: Fuselage

The upper cooling ramps on the RV7 are designed with an aft prop governor in mind, but I'm installing an IO390 which has a fwd governor.

The baffles kit I have for the RV14 describe a method of cutting out a stair-step shaped hole in the l/h baffle to relieve interference with the governor and then backing it up with a piece of close cell foam.

Nothing wrong with that I suppose, but it seemed prone to eventual air leakage around decaying foam etc. I'm having to do some modifications to the baffles anyway, so it seems like I could likely do better.

I worked on this with lots of mock ups and trial and error over several days. Based on what somebody else on VAF has had success with, I elected to cut out a bigger concave scallop and then back fill it with fiberglass. I then fabricated an additional baffle piece that will allow for installation of rubber baffle material over the top of the governor to match.

I used blind rivets to affix the new baffles pieces around the governor so that they're easy to drill out if I need to remove the governor and then installed an extension on the upper edge of the inner r/h baffle where I needed to change the shape to better match the inlet ramp there. The gap between the baffle pieces and the base of the prop governor is about 3/16" so it will require drilling out some pop rivets to take this apart if I need to remove the governor, but I went with this tight clearance because it allowed my to just fill that gap with RTV instead of messing around with baffle rubber there.

If I had this to do over, I don't think I'd use the RV14 baffle kit for this particular installation. They went together nicely and fit the engine like a glove, but they required trimming and adjustment in odd places in order to make them fit the cowling. Trimming is no big deal except when there were pre-punched holes in exactly the wrong place, but I don't like having to add flanges and whatnot. It would have been nice to have the RV7 IO360 baffles that I could have just trimmed down to size without having to add anything.

As part of this same process, I also started fitting the fwd baffle rubbers and have the lowers fitting pretty good. They are acceptable as is and should be just about perfect once the engine sags a bit.

I'd like to just press on and hammer out these baffles, but the temp dropped from the 90's to the 70's over the weekend, which seems like a sign that fall is right around the corner. Based on that, I'm going to hold up on this and shift over to canopy skirts and then install the windshield and windshield fairing while I still have a few hot days to keep the plexiglass happy.

  Aug 31, 2023     oil door - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

As I mentioned previously, the fiberglass oil door provided in the kit is too thick to sit flush in the recess cast into the factory cowl. I can think of several ways to fix this, but ultimately the simplest seemed like it would be to just make a thinner door out of aluminum.

I cut a new door out of .032 from my scrap pile, hand formed it to the correct contour, and match drill to the hidden hinge I had previously bought from somebody on VAF.

Once I was sure it was going to work, I made a paper template for the cutout shape needed for the Harrell latches I ordered from Wicks, and then spend an hour or so trimming and filing them to shape.

I built a strike plate to go on the latch side, and will bond it on the next time I mix up a batch of epoxy. I'll also need to fill in the gaps around the edge of the door with some micro for a nice flush fit

  Aug 29, 2023     started cowl oil door - (2 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Cut the oil door to shape, cut out the hole in the cowl, trial fit door. I don't think the recess in the cowl in quite deep enough for this door to sit flush. I'm going to play with this tomorrow and make sure I understand what's happening here, but I suspect I'm going to have to figure out how to make the flange deeper or maybe just make a thinner door out of aluminum.

  Aug 28, 2023     reshaped l/h cowl inlet - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Much shaping and sanding of flox and micro to get to a better fit between the upper and lower cowl halves at the left hand outer corner.

I believe this is basically in its final shape onto outside, and the part you cant see inside has good smooth transitions per Vans print. It still needs some pinholes filled but thats about it for this area.

  Jul 27, 2023     cowl/baffle interface. - (6 hours)       Category: Fuselage

had a couple of errands today so I ended up in the shop for about 6 hours chopped up in chunks. worked on the engine dehydrator a bit since I now have a humidity sensor to plumb in. More on that tomorrow.

Other than that, I installed the cowl, measured, took it back off, rinse, repeat. the inlet openings don't fit to the baffle ramps well at all, and I'm also going to have to narrow the inbd ramp sidewalls, as they are both about 3/8" too far outboard.

There is a process in the rv14 plans for building up a flox dam where things are lining up and then sanding a new inlet profile. Even though these look really bad to me, once I rolled the conical radius corner pieces, they are pretty much within the dimensions taht are in the example photo in the plans, so I guess thats not awful.

  Jul 17, 2023     Center cabin vertical closeouts - (3 hours)       Category: Fuselage

This has been on my list of little tasks for a while now, so while I was waiting for the alt air base epoxy to set, I match drilled prepped and painted the closeouts that cover up the vertical spar box members.

I prepped and painted them, but my last can of "good" primer is pretty old and it's throwing drops in the work piece. Once it dried I cut/smoothed the runs out, then covered it with a second coat of good old duplicolor gray. It's a bit lighter than my sherwin Williams gray, but since I'm eventually installing interior side panels I just need something that won't show bare aluminum through the edges of teh side panels and this will fit the bill.

  Jun 28, 2023     Misc - (6 hours)       Category: Fuselage

While I was waiting for paint to dry own the baffles, I went back and reinstalled all the avionics, cabin fresh air vents, windshield brace, defrost fans, etc. Other than labeling the panel and installing an interior, pretty much the only big thing left in the cabin is to install the vertical close-out covers over the central spar box vertical members.

  Jun 18, 2023     Wretched Cowling pt V - (6 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Installed horizontal sky bolts down both sides. In my case, a spacing of 3" worked well and will hopefully make the whole thing a bit more robust, but in combination with the reduced spacing along the firewall it means that I'm coming up one fastener short. I'll need to order another one from skybolt to finish this up for a total of 37.

Due to backdrilling/locating from the outside first, there wasn't any drama with hole location. I did notice that the side gap shifted slightly as I cinched everything up. The port side got a bit tighter and the starboard side opened up a bit. Aft toward the firewall, we're talking maybe a 64th" so I suspect just loosening and shifting the cowl might be enough to take care of it, but both sides symmetrically open up as they move fwd.

When I had this trial fit, I had a nice symmetrical gap of about 1/32" all around, other than it was maybe closer to a 16th as it wrapped around the cowl cheeks on both sides. Now it appears to be about 1/16" on the fwd sides transitioning to almost 1/8" on the cheeks.

I've got to remove/install this several more times as I work on the piano hinges on the vertical firewall seam and the screws that go across the bottom. If these gaps remain consistent I will have to close this up a bit with fiberglass. I'll save that for when I'm in fiberglass mode working on canopy skirts.

Downloading pictures for this entry also shows in glaring detail how I managed to get off a rivet head and cut it with a squeezer on the port side when I was riveting the flanges on. I'll have to drill that out and replace as well.

One more work session to wrap up details, then I'll call this done for now and come back to it after I get another fastener.

  Jun 15, 2023     Wretched cowl IV - (10 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Clamped the lower cowl in place with sheet metal clamp sand a ton of painters tape. Then back drilled through the piano hinge halves from the inside with a 90 degree dotco.

Once I had the lower in place with piano hinges on the aft side and clecos into the prop fixture on the front, I spent a couple of hours opening up the horizontal seam to a consistent gap on both sides. I started by running a metal double sided nail file in the seam, then finished up with a piece of adhesive sandpaper stuck to a piece of .020 aluminum. This resulted in a gap of about 1/16" overall. I still need to trim back where the lower butts up to the firewall flange, but it's good enough to get the fasteners in.

Once that was done and I was confident it wasn't going to wiggle around, I spent quite a bit of time laying out the pattern for the horizontal line of sky bolt fasteners on both sides. I ended up with a 3" spacing which seems like it will work out nicely, but required that I trim 1/2" off the Flanges.

Skybolt says that you should elevate the flanges .20-.25 so that you cant see through the seam, but that would end up with the rivet line only having about .25 e.d. on the fiberglass cowling, which doesn't seem like much. I fudged this another 1/8" and ended up with an overlap of about 1/8" and a e.d. on the rivet line of about 3/8"

I trimmed and laid out the holes in the flanges and used them to back drill the cowlings from the outside. This was an easy way to do it, but if you go this route you have to take utmost care to use a drill stop and make sure you know what's back there, because it would be really easy to hit something vital like a valve cover.

anyway, got everything trimmed, fit etc. will drill the grommet holes in the upper cowl tomorrow, cleco everything together, do any final edge adjustments and hopefully wrap up this part.

I know I'll need a bunch of fit/finish work to make this pretty, but I'll be happy to just have it functional and ready to go for now.

  Jun 14, 2023     Wretched cowl III - (7 hours)       Category: Fuselage

located holes in aft upper cowl for sky bolts per intersecting straight line method. Got clecos in every other hole, then stepped them up to full size incrementally, checking often with a mirror and flashlight to attempt to keep them centered in the sky bolt flange openings.

The skybolt receptacles are free to slide back and forth maybe a 16th" so you have a little wiggle room if they aren't perfectly centered. I did have one that was going to be a little iffy along the longitudinal axis so I used a floating skybolt at that location which allows the same movement along that axis.

Many iterations of off/on/off with the upper cowl to get to this point, but everything fits quite nicely.

Two things that have helped with this whole process; The rental fixture from FlyBoys that gives you lots of places to drill/cleco too at the nose bowl and my self leveling laser.

I splurged on the laser when I was truing up the fuselage and have found several other uses for it as well. In one of the pictures below, you can see how I'm using it to make sure that cowl is dead nuts level.

Note the horizontal beam intersects the cowl cheeks at the same place on both sides, and the vertical beam hits the end of the prop fixture right on the centerline, as well as hitting the canopy latch post in the center of the roll bar. In between it hits the cleco thats engaged in the center sky bolt location. Thats about as perfect as I can make it.

  Jun 13, 2023     Wretched cowling II - (14 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Once I had the split line between upper and lower cowl defined It allowed my to locate the sky bolt flanges that I'm using along the upper cowl/firewall flange.

one thing I forgot mention last time regarding the cowl split line. My original plan was to trim the split line so tat it would be parallel to the longeron line just for aesthetics, but I didn't have hardly any extra to cut off so it was a case just true the edges up and you get what you get & don't throw a fit. I think I took about 3/8" one side and almost nothing off the other.

Anyway, back to the sky bolt experience; Skybolt suggests 3 1/2" maximum spacing for these and thats what the flanges are really designed for. Based on where my cowl split Ines are, that was going to result in the second one up pointed right at the upper engine mount bolts. I think that they probably would have cleared, but I know some guys have reported interference issues here. Skybolt mentions that you can adjust spacing to account for tis if necessary.

Also, some people have issues with the cowling pillowing between the fasteners when the cowl is pressurized, and the sky bolt literature recommends a reinforcing strap adjacent to the firewall fasteners.

So, for a couple of reasons, I elected to modify the spacing. This took absolutely forever. What I ended up with was a 3" spacing for the first two, then 3 5/16" for the rest up to the centerline. Good clearance, symmetrical spacing, and overall just aesthetically pleasing and a nice tight spacing that will hopefully prevent any cowl pillowing.

There were a couple of places where this spacing required modifying the flanges by cutting off the overlapping feature so that the spacing would come out right and still work with the rivet holes in the firewall flange. Wherever that happened, I added strap doubler under the flange to pick up extra rivet holes and really tie these together.

Ive got this entire assembly trimmed, countersunk etc as required and it's all clecoed back together. Tomorrow I'll rivet this all together.

  Jun 07, 2023     wretched engine cowling - (30 hours)       Category: Fuselage

This entry covers work from the last week or so. I spent probably about 10 hours of touch labor on this and at least twice that long pondering, researching what others have done, measuring, and trying to decide how the heck to cut this thing to the proper shape without overdoing it.

Vans instructions are pretty rudimentary, but basically, the upper and lower cowl halves come oversized so you can trim to fit. The problem is taht year really isn't a straight edge to Strat from, so you're left trying to get some sort of reference to start from.

Of utmost importance is to make Sur ethat teh 2 halves fit as well as possible at the spinner back plate, both for teh gap from teh spinner and with respect to being an actual circle behind it.

rather than making a tool for this, I rented the one offered by FlyBoys. It's a milled shaft that bolts on the crank flange and a circular plate that slides and locks down on it. You adjust it to the proper distance, lock it down, mate the cowl halves to it, and trim the edges to fit. Seems eeze peeze, but the two halves don't fit together very well, and in fact aren't symmetrical side to side.

In my case, the spinner bowl sticks forward from the inlet openings about 1/8" more on the pilot side than the passenger side. This caused me all sorts of havoc trying to get it as close as I could, knowing that it's not going to be perfect and that I'm going to have to live with an asymmetrical gap or build up the starboard side.

Note- per whirlwind, the aft edge of the spinner backplate is 1.6" fwd of the fwd face of the flywheel. I believe in trust but verify, so I measured everything and that seems to check out, so I set up my fixture to leave approximately a .25" gap there per Vans instructions. I also set the cowl vertically so that the spinner would be about 1/8" high to account for eventual engine sag. This is also per vans instructions.

What followed was several days of careful fitting and trimming, including sanding down one the width of a sharpie line at a time. I've currently got the upper cowl fit with about .032" gap to the firewall flange and the lower fitting with just a .032 gap to sand down at the firewall and cowl split.

I hope to have all these seams finalized tomorrow and start fitting hinges and sky bolts after.

Holy cow this has been a job.

  Jun 04, 2023     Avionics access panels - (6 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Finished up these access panel openings. I riveted the nut plate flanges on wet with pro seal, then made gaskets of pro seal with turtle wax and Saran Wrap as a mold release.

I let these sit for about 3 days before pulling them apart and cleaning them up. there are some streaks in the pro seal where it evidently didn't completely mix, which is odd. This came from a sem kit and I mixed the snot out of it and shot it out onto a piece of cardboard and then applied it with a Popsicle stick. At no time did I see anything that would indicate it wasn't completely mixed. The sem kit was in my tool box in the garage one rthe winter and went through several freeze/thaw cycles, so I don't know if that has anything to do with it. At any rate, It looks good enough for gaskets, I'm just glad it wasn't a fuel tank.

  May 30, 2023     finished fwd fuselage skin - (3 hours) Category: Fuselage

Masked off the cabin and engine, the painted the upper glare shield area with good ol' rust oleum flat black from Ace hardware. 3 coats will hopefully be somewhat durable, but if it starts to look beat up I'll cover it with felt or vinyl for something. It would be a bear to repaint this after the windscreen is in.

The fwd edge of the black paint was carefully masked to the edge of where the sika fillet for the windscreen will abut. Thats one reason it took 3 hours- I wanted to make sure I didn't have any unpainted area at the windscreen base, but also wanted to make sure I'm not trying to stick the sika to rattle can paint.

I guess I forgot to take. picture of it, but you get teh idea.

  May 30, 2023     finished riveting fwd fuselage skin - (3 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Nate came over and we busted out all the remaining riveting on the fwd fuselage skin. Feels really good to get that particular job done.

  May 22, 2023     yet more fwd skin riveting - (5 hours)       Category: Fuselage

I was looking around for something to do today and decided that I could do some more solo rivets on the fwd skin if I got a little creative.

I pulled out the G5 on the left side, and the top 3 rows of breakers on the right. I already had the auto pilot controller out, so I had a bit of room panel center as well.

By removing this stuff and getting creative with a couple of different bucking bars I was able to get everything down to the longerons from immediately fwd of the panel all the way fwd to the sub-panel bulkhead, which still has 5 rivets on each sides to be done. Other than that, it's just longeron rivets, which my brother in law is coming over to help with tomorrow.

re-installed the G5 and the breakers as well as a few switches along the top of the panel. I'll wring this all out tomorrow to make sure everything went back together properly.

  May 20, 2023     continued riveting fwd upper skin - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

4 hours over a couple of days to shoot a dozen rivets seems like a lot. What happened was that I was having a heck of a time figuring out how to install the rivet by the red arrow in the first attached picture.

The aft lower edge of the fwd canopy deck skin curves back under at that point and there is only about 1/4" of access to get a bucking bar up in there.

I experimented with all sorts of solutions, bucking bars taped to random pieces of steel etc. I managed to cold work the first rivet that I installed to a point that it got hard before a good shop head formed and I had to drill it out.

I went to VAF and to Vans tech support to see what other people have done here. Several people suggested a cherry max, several more suggested using a cold chisel as a bucking bar, lots of creative solutions.

After sleeping on it, I realized that the root of the whole problem was the aft lower corner of the fwd deck skin encroaching within about 1/4" of the longeron under there. That corner is just hanging in space and not really doing anything. Rathe than trying to cobble together some kind of exotic bucking bar solution I ultimately just took a dremmel with an abrasive wheel and cut that corner to a taper so that it's more parallel with the longeron.

Now I has about 1/2" access under there, which was enough to get a 3/8" thick L shaped bucking bar up in there.

I continued riveting fwd all the way to the instrument panel. I also removed the auto pilot controller and a few other things along the top of the panel to allow better access in there, but I think I'm about done with what I can conveniently rivet solo, so I'll likely move on to something else until I can get a riveting partner to finish this up

  May 18, 2023     fwd fuselage access panels - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

I left the nut plat rings out of these holes until now so that the hole would be a bit bigger while I was reaching through there with a bucking bar.

I think I may have mentioned in a previous entry that I added a .032 spacer ring between the under side of the skin and the nut plate ring so that the nut plates would be recessed a bit further.

The reason is taht I've seen a bunch of these where the cover is pillowed between the screws, and I thing that the reason might be that when people are making the gasket out of wet pro seal, they likely crank the these down too much. I wanted a bigger gap so that I could have a thicker gasket with bit more cushion and hopefully I can minimize pillowing.

At any rate, I buttered the nut plate rings and spacers with pro-seal, riveted them on. I had previously smeared a bit of boelube in the nut plate threads with a q-tip to prevent pro seal from sticking in there.

I had also previously coated the access plates with a film of turtle wax to act as a mold release.

I laid down a bead of pro seal on the nut plate ring flange, covered the whole thing with Saran Wrap, and then screwed down the access plates through the Saran Wrap until they were flush. In a couple of days I will attempt to take this apart and hope that I have a gasket in there.

  May 16, 2023     inspection peepholes - (2 hours)       Category: Fuselage

There is an inspection panel on each side of the tailcone under the horizontal stab that provide access to the elevator bell crank and pushrod assembly.

On a lot of aerobatic airplanes, there is a window in that area so you can visually check that linkage durning preflight.

That seems like a pretty good idea, so I've had this idea on my mental list of small projects that can be knocked out in a a couple of spare hours.

I laid out and drilled holes in each of the access panels that are about 1.25 inches. I say "about" because I cut these with a metric unit that I had in my tool box and I want to say the actual number was 38mm, which is pretty much the same thing. fabricated a lense out of some scrap 1/8" lexan I had in the shop, and a backing ring from some scrap .025 aluminum.

Attached everything with 4 squeezed rivets and a dollop of firewall sealant to make it more or less waterproof.

Note- I didn't notice until after I was done with this, but the firewall sealant I'm using is #m fire barrier 2000 and the fine print on the tube says don't use on polycarbonate, which I believe includes lexan. It seems to be sticking okay, but I don't know if it will get cloudy or craze at some point.

The nice thing about this project is that it will be super easy to redo if it doesn't work out.

  May 16, 2023     started riveting fwd top skin - (3 hours)       Category: Fuselage

I started by checking the entire skin to make sure it was positioned 100% correctly, then I un-clecoed both sides and fwd edge until I could fire seal the center section fwd flange.

I then started riveting from the center outward and fwd, bucking through the avionics access holes and through the gap on each side where the sides were still loose. As I worked down both sides I continued to apply fire seal to the fwd flange. By using this process, I was able to get all of the lateral rivets down to about 5-6 of the longerons before it got tight enough that I couldn't get my hand in there any more.

I then finished fire sealing the firewall flange and clecoed all the remaining holes.

  May 12, 2023     sealed firewall passthroughs and tidies up a couple of other things - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

I've been kicking this down the road in case I discovered I needed to route something else through there, but at this point I'm getting ready to install the fwd top skin, so it's time to clean up some of these little tasks.

sealed up the wiring passthroughs with a plug of red RTV on each end. The way these are designed, there is a 'jelly roll" of fire barrier cloth that takes up the majority of the space. The RTV plug is only about 1/2" on each end, so that at some point in the future somebody needs to open this back up, they won't be digging out a solid plug of RTV.

I also added a couple of nut plates and adel clamps on the fwd ribs. One to support the pitot/static lines & antenna coax, and the other to support a largely redundant ground wire that goes from the firewall stud to the forrest of tabs.

  May 12, 2023     fabricated the inner canopy skirt braces - (3 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Just had time a bit of time and this was on may mental list as a quick small project. These are fabricated and deburred, but I haven't match drilled them to teh canopy frame yet, nor have I match drilled the holes to the skirts. I'm going to fabricate fiberglass skirts and I'll hold off on those two steps until thats done

  Nov 12, 2022     cooling fan & gps antenna layout - (2 hours)       Category: Fuselage

laid out and fit/drilled the glare shield for avionics cooling fans and the VFR GPS puck antenna. I would really like a chassis punch at some point, but until then I continue to cut holes like this with a fly cutter in an electric drill

  Nov 01, 2022     Trimmed windshield - (16 hours)       Category: Fuselage

This entry represents 3 afternoons of work.

I won't rivet on the fwd skin until the engine is hung and I can determine control cable routing and firewall penetrations for the IO390. However, I want to be able to cut holes in it for defrost fans, VFR GPS antennas and wiring for the LED strips that go under the glare shield. Therefore it makes sense to locate the windshield so I can see where to cut the holes and route stuff. Also, I want to get he windshield trimmed to its final shape while I can still get the shop warm and not run the risk of cracking it.

Therefore, even though I'm not installing it yet, the last few afternoons were devoted to warming the shop up in the afternoon sun and working on the windscreen before winter hits here in Kansas.

Lots of people have had difficulty with not having enough material left over on the aft lower corners if they follow Vans instructions and cut the lower edges of the canopy before they make the big cut. I got this heads up last year when I was researching the canopy on VAF, so I had made the big cut first, the set the windshield blank aside still full length way back then.

The print doesn't give any dimensions whatsoever for the windscreen but the side view shows that the lower edge sort of butts up to the upper aft edge of the skin where it swoops back to the roll bar. So, I went to VAF and asked what people have had success with in regard to how much the windshield should overlap the skin in that corner.

I got answers back that ranged from "none" to "as much as you can get" Larry Larson pointed out that the skin tapers in as it goes up so you should strive to cut high enough that you can suck the Plexiglas in and the fiberglass fairing with have a smooth transition over it.

So, I did an initial trim that wasn't much more than cutting off the mold lines, set it in place, looked at it, and discovered a problem; With the aft corners clamped in place, the sides were pooched out enough that I could stick my fingers in the gap on both sides. I don't know if this is just the normal shape of the canopy blank, or if it spread out while sitting in my hot shop all summer long. I had a couple of strips of duct tape holding it together to prevent it from sprawling out, but I can see how it could bow in between them and cause the gap. If I ever do another one of these, I'll take better care to make sure the lower edges don't have an opportunity to develop a bow while in storage. At any rate, This needs to be addressed.

This started two additional afternoons of trimming, measuring, clamping, and then doing it all over. This has turned out to be one of the more complicated fitment processes of the whole plane. Absolutely nothing on this is at a constant angle to anything else, and the fit of the lower edge is challenging because it curves in two directions at once. The windshield curves back and down, and the skin obviously curves down laterally at the same time.

I laid down a tape grid pattern on the skin to help with symmetry, but ultimately it was just a bunch of trial fit, then trim some more.

I try to include as much info as possible in these entries in case it might help somebody else in the future, but in this case, I don't have much detail; In order to minimize the gap on the lower edges, I ended up with about 1/8" overlap at the aft corner, transitioning to about 3/8" overlap fwd where the skin starts to swoop up. I also found that the best fit was to slide the entire thing aft about an inch from where it seems like it should lie and trim that much off the original Big Cut line. The tape grid was helpful for initial trimming for symmetry, but eventually I ended up stripping it off and just referencing rivet holes fir final adjustments. I ended up using 10 clips to hold it down tight-ish to the skin. The two closest to the center lines pick up existing rivet holes through the skin and underlying bulkhead. The rest are through new holes in the skin, including 3 on the aft sides to suck in the remaining gap.

Overall, I'm happy with how it turned out. I checked with a radius gauge and straight edge and don't think the clips will sit too proud to get a good fairing radius, although I may chamfer the edge of the Plexiglas where the clips sit so they will ride a little lower just to make sure. The biggest gap to the skin is about 1/8" which is easily bridged with Sika.

I will say definitively, that the canopy and windshield is without a doubt the least fun part of the whole project. You have to dress the edges after every trim to eliminate stress risers and potential catastrophic cracking while maneuvering the Plexiglas. All that trimming and sanding takes forever, even with cutoff discs, flapper wheels, vibrating sanders, and other arcane instruments of mass construction.

Dust gets everywhere. In your hair, in your ears and eyes, all over the shop. I hate it. I also had the heater running full blast even when the afternoon temp hit 70* and while the Plexiglas loves it when it's over 80* in the shop, me not so much.

I'm glad this is done.

  Nov 01, 2022     canopy latch & mounting blocks - (2 hours) Category: Fuselage

Forgot to take a picture, but I went ahead and drilled the external latch handle to the main canopy latch. Tapped the hole for a #8 screw, countersunk the head and installed.

  Oct 17, 2022     dimpled fwd skin - (2 hours)       Category: Fuselage

months ago I had match drilled the upper skin then set it aside while I dug into the avionics install. Today I dug out the DRDT-2, dimpled all the holes and clecoed it in place.

It may seem like a strange time to come back to this, but it's mid october and getting cold here. We're supposed to have a couple of days in the 80's end of this week, and my plan is to trim the windshield to fit while the shop is hot. looks like this will be the last opportunity Ill have for this for a while and I need to have that skin fit in order to trim the windshield to it.

  Sep 07, 2022     flap motor and position sensor. - (24 hours)       Category: Fuselage

So this entry represents 3-4 shorter sessions over the last few days. I realize 24 hours is a bunch for something so simple, but I'm including a realistic estimate of research hours, as well as time spent going to two different local hobby shops looking for an appropriate linkage setup for the POS-12 sensor. There was some rework of the mounting bracket to allow for a more protected wire run as well.

Google research revealed several people had used model airplane parts to fabricate a pushrod to go between the flap center weldment arm to the POS-12 sensor. The first local shop I went to was in the process of packing up for a move to a different location and didn't have anything that would seem to work for me, so ended up going to a different smaller store and he had exactly what I was looking for. He also asked me what it was going in and wasn't surprised at all when I told him because I wasn't the first person to source model airplane parts from him for a "full scale"

Several old threads on vans indicated most folks went one of two ways on this; Either put the POS-12 high up on the center pillar with about a 10" pushrod to minimize the angle change, or mount it lower down on a bracket that holds it at about a 30* angle to the vertical.

I was inclined to go with option 2, but the exact angle this needs to be mounted on is dependent on the length of the pushrod. I wanted to get the sensor low enough that it would be relatively easy to remove either it or the drive motor without one interfering with the other, so that meant a mounting location that utilized about a 6" pushrod and approx a 20* mounting angle. The angle bracket I fabricated has a short leg of about 1/2" and a long leg about 2". I just adjusted the angle of the longer leg until I got the POS-12 sensor arm planar with everything else and then match drilled it. Like I said, it ended up being about 20* in my case.

Everything was aligned and traveling smoothly, but I was having a heck of a time figuring out how to route the wire bundles up through there without them potentially chafing on the edge of the bracket or being in danger from the screws for the side covers. After trying several different solutions, I ended up enlarging the hole in the aft center floor panel where it's under the vertical center post and running wiring up through there from the center tunnel. I also remade the POS-12 bracket in such a way that I could put a couple of snap bushings in it and run the wires under it.

The bushings are offset in such a way that the wires are out of reach of all nut plates etc.

Wire bundles run, pushrod on, motor wired up, pushrod safetied, everything torqued, secured ops checked, and otherwise wrapped up.

Also wrapped the wire bundles under teh fuel pump pallet with snakeskin that came from spruce while I was out of town last weekend. Sweet!

  Aug 29, 2022     brake lines in cabin - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Fabricated and installed the rest of the nylon brake lines.

Also installed the output lines from the pilot pedals to the parking brake valve. These are custom braided lines from TS flightlines, and were made 13" long for the custom installation.

I really like the quality and robustness of the braided lines. I know the nylon lines have been used by literally thousands of RVs with no problems, but they look kind of hokey and flimsy. If at some point they end up leaking, I'm going to yank them out and replace them all with braided lines.

Finished up the day by giving the tailcone one final once over and then installing the aft baggage bulkheads. That's such a simple thing, and it may have to come back out for something or other, but it makes such a difference visually to have that closed out. Looking back there and seeing a finished and closed out baggage compartment makes it seem like I'm almost done!

  Aug 24, 2022     fuel plumbing - (6 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Way back in the day, I fabricated fuel lines that go from the valve to each tank. People complain about how much of a struggle this is and they're not wrong. The only way I could do it and get them halfway decent looking was to unscrew the bracket from the front of the spar that the kick panel screws to, slip it on the fuel line, then screw it back on.

Well, I made beautiful fuel lines, patted myself on the back, then set them aside for later so they wouldn't get damaged. When I got ready to pull wire bundles, I completely failed to consider the assembly order that needed to happen, and discovered that once I got wiring pulled through all those brackets, I was completely unable to get enough slack to move the brackets enough to re-install the fuel lines. Sigh.

After looking at his for way to long, I bit the bullet and went the same route as many before me; building these in two pieces with a union splitting them, so that you can feed the two halves in individually and accomplish the final flare with them in place.

I feel really stupid that I did that, but it's done, they're in, and everything looks like fits without conflict. FYI- the picture below makes it look like the fuel lines and wire bundles are rubbing, but they aren't. there's probably 3/8"-1/2" separation. However, I'm a belt and suspenders kind of guy and I'll incorporate some standoffs in this arrangement during final assembly of the fuel system. I would do it now, but I'm confident that at least the outboard segments will need to be loosened and slid out of the way when the wings are trial fit. I will cut the outboard end to final length and flare it in place at that time.

  Aug 09, 2022     F-746 fwd engine control bracket/ boost pump cover - (8 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Way back when, I had installed this bracket with screws and nut plates instead of riveting it on. I did this because It looked like it would be a real hassle to locate nut plate son the lower flange for adel clamps for the control cables later, especially since a big wire bundle runs right above there.

Well, wiring is in, and I've been kicking this can down the road for a while now so I decided to deal with it today.

I may regret this, but I'm going to try to cram 5 knobs on the stock F-746 aft control bracket, and had pilot drilled for this earlier. The big knobs are 2 7/16" on center, which is essentially Cessna spacing, an date ones on the ends (alt intake air and oil cooler air) are about 1 9/16" laterally outbd from the big knobs. They are also spaced up a little, so actual spacing is more like 1.75"

This is obviously pretty tight, but I think I can get away with it because the cables I'm using for those secondary controls are basically heater control cables with small knobs that don't stick out nearly as far as the primary knobs. Anyway, I'm giving it a try and if it doesn't work I'll have to move them somewhere else.

So, with that dimension fixed, I felt like I could probably space nut plates for Adel clamps on the same spacing on the fwd one.

By removing 4 screws, I was able to drop the Xponder rack a few inches and slide the xponder out, which gave access to the allen screws holding the F-746 fwd. Removed this bracket, dimensioned and installed nut plates for future adel clamps and reinstalled.

Ops checked xponder and it lights up green on the display, which is what it was doing before, so I guess we're good.

The following 5 hours were spent re-designing the boost pump cover. Basically, I've got a couple of big wire bundles in that tunnel. Lots of people have difficulty with the radius of a big bundle rubbing where it makes the transition to the vertical at the firewall. I suspected this might be an issue for me too and I wasn't disappointed.

You may recall that I'm going with an EFII boost pump and I kept it flat enough that I din't feel the need for the Van's doghouse. Instead, I made a cover that stuck up 2.5" above standard for the aft 1/2 of the tunnel. Well, long story short, I've decided that the simplest way to deal with this potential wire chafing issue is to just extend that tunnel cover all the way fwd.

I disassembled the previous solution and remade the support structure, but ran the angles all the way fwd so I'd have something to attach the front part of the still to be fabricated cover to. This is a work in process, and I don't have any pictures yet.

I've got a big piece of .040 sheet that I'm going to make a new cover out of. I'm using .040 because it will the stiff enough that somebody can put their feet on it without squashing it, or I can bolt a fire extinguisher, oxygen bottle, or maybe some cup holders on top of it.

They just got a nice sheer/brake in the shop at work, so I'm going to finish up the supporting structure next time and also bend a new cover on the big brake so that I can get nice crisp bends.

  Jul 01, 2022     Started Cabin Lighting - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

planning to put an LED light strip under the crossbar that the seat backs rest against. In my case, all the cabin lights run through the GAD27 via 3 rotary dimmer pots that I bought prewired from Stein. So, I ran wiring from the appropriate aux connector in my wiring diagram and tested the strip via panel mount dimmer switch.

Didn't work. What the heck?

I got out a meter and definitely had power to the rotary switches, and continuity all the way to the GAD27.

Later, in an introspective moment, I realized that every time I have a problem with something like this my default position is to think that there's something wrong with the wiring or hardware because thats what I've been comfortable with my whole life. I automatically reach for a meter or whatever. Now that I'm running everything through an interface,I'm going to have to unlearn that habit. It seems like more often than not, it's just a setting defaulted the wrong way or something.

Went into config mode on the PFD and sure enough, there's a tab for cabin lights and a setting to turn on the 3 channels for the rotary dimmers, as well as select which switch you want to control which output, if you want the brightness to be linear or pop on all at once etc.

All good....But I'm a technological dinosaur.

  Jun 27, 2022     Naca Vents - (1 hour)       Category: Fuselage

I've got a 1/2 size sem kit of pro seal that I was planning to seal these in with. But, I've been holding off because I know it won't take ether entire 1/2 size stick, so I wanted to wait and see if I had any other pro-seal jobs so that I could do it all at once and not waste the extra. Finally decided that it needed to be done, and I don't have any other pro seal jobs in the forceable future.

These had been clecoed in fora while now, with all the mounting hardware already done, so it didn't take very long at all.

  May 20, 2022     floor rib repair - (2 hours)       Category: Fuselage

During assembly, they have you modify the center two floor ribs to accommodate the control stick assembly. A while back, I noticed that the WD-610 control column was rubbing on one of the ribs where you fabricate and install the F-716B access plates.

I had removed the access plate and relieved the rib slightly to eliminate the interference. All good, but then before I reinstalled it, I stupidly crawled into the tailcone to do something or other rand slightly bent the top of the rib with one of my feet while squirming around. Not much, but it definitely bowed it.

Probably no big deal, but since that's the rib the aileron trim servo screws onto, and in that same general location. Installing that servo deforms the stiffiner thats stamped in that area anyway, so since I had also tweaked it with my clodhoppers it seemed prudent to reinforce it. To that end, I fabricated and installed a doubler that covers the previously flexed area and also picks up the servo attach points.

  May 02, 2022     brake line passthroughs - (1 hour)       Category: Fuselage

Been gone for about a week for family time (Disney baby!) So I wanted to just ease back in with something simple.

Located and drilled the passthroughs for the brake lines in the center rudder pedal support. There really aren't any dimension given for these, so you just have to follow best shop practices. Fortunately I didn't get carried away with lightening holes in this piece way back when, and had enough meat left in the correct location to be able to drill these without compromising anything.

  Apr 14, 2022     brake plumbing - (6 hours)       Category: Fuselage

My electrical work took a hard left into brake plumbing. I'm trying to determine mounting location for both a fuse box and voltage regulator and wanted to make sure they wouldn't interfere with brake plumbing, so elected to get an idea of what that might look like.

I installed the T on the reservoir as well as the elbow fittings on the master cylinders, and the hard lines from the parking brake to the firewall bulkhead fittings.

All of this didn't take the 6 hours that I've logged, but I spent at least that long spread out over several days, looking for the stupid nylon T that the plans call out as coming off the reservoir.

Long story short- Vans changed the part. I verified it with Tech Support. The fitting in the picture below is what now screws in from the cabin side. I have to admit I'm a little frustrated by this. I looked through every bag, box, I toolbox in my shop, thinking that I had hidden this fitting from myself sometime over the past year. I must have looked at this thing a dozen times, assuming that it was a pitot/static fitting.

Anyway, to be continued.

  Apr 04, 2022     supertracks finished, installed comm antennas - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

My Brother in Law Nate came over today for a few hours. Nate is and A&P IA and a Caravan Instructor at Flight Safety. He's seen the project before, but not for a few months. It's always nice to have a second set of eyes look over the project. Also nice to catch up over a cup of coffee in the garage.

ince I had a second set of hands available, I took advantage of it and finished up the super tracks installation. When I built the fuselage, I incorporated the RV8 slider spine so I wouldn't have to install the spice/extension that comes with the kit to the shorter RV7 track.

Now that we have the rest of the installation done, I can slide the canopy to it's full extension and determine how much extra track I can cut off. Turned out that 3 7/8" cut off the aft end of the RV8 track was just about perfect. Was able to use an existing rivet hole in the aft end of the track for a #6 screw.

Once dimensions were determined, I crawled in the tailcone and Nate backed me up with screw driver from the outside. Removed the spine assy, cut to proper length, prepped for the screws that hadn't already been countersunk for the previous temporary installation etc.

Re-installed spine and checked for proper operation. all good.

Before Nate went home, I got hime to act as antenna holder and went ahead an installed the comm antennas on the belly. Forgot to get a picture, but its really cool to be able to check some of these jobs off my mental list.

  Mar 29, 2022     Cowl hinges & random fuselage stuff - (10 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Researched and ordered a bunch of stuff from Spruce and B&C. ring terminals, welding wire to make battery cables, stuff like that.

As far as actual work on the plane, I did the final trim on the lower firewall cutouts for the main gear leg sockets and installed the piano hinge sections to the vertical firewall flanges for the lower cowl half.

I spent long time determining the length and position of the hinges, because vans doesn't really give you a dimension for these. Looking at drawing 28, the rivet callout is longer in that area starting with the 6th rivet down from the longeron, so I suspected that the top of the hinge terminated there. I went down to the basement and measured the cowl & determined that it's exactly 17.5" tall, which falls right between teh 5th and 6th rivet blow the main longeron, so that was nice confirmation.

I had also asked for input on VAF and several guys warned me to not install those hinges before I was fitting the cowl. The concern is that later cowl trimming might somehow cause this to be an issue. I honestly don't see how this is a problem because you don't attach the other half of the hinge to the cowl until after its trimmed to fit.

I guess the only thing I can see possibly being an issue is that if the hinge is too high it might interfere with the horizontal hinge line at the seam between upper and lower cowl halves. However, Vans installation drawing for the cowling does have a note on one of the detail views that says to just butt these hinges together, so I don't think that it's going be an issue. There were also several guys on VAF also said that they had done it ahead of time no problem.

Based on all that, I decided to go ahead and rivet these on, so I don't have to do it later after the engine mount is installed. Time will tell whether I regret this or not, but I don't see how it will be an issue.

That ate up pretty much the whole day, but I had a little time left over, so I did the final trim on the flange cutouts for the main landing gear legs. I had marked these for trimming when I had the engine mount on and just hadn't gotten around to it.

I also knocked out a fun little project, which was to spruce up that ugly all thread that holds the fwd end of the canopy track. It's nothing special, just scrap piece of fuel line cut to length and slipped over the all thread. when I finish up the million other things I have to do, I'll cap this with a chrome acorn nut.

  Mar 28, 2022     ADSB Antenna - (2 hours)       Category: Fuselage

I went back and forth about where to install this darn thing. If I followed all of Garmin's limitations for min distance between components, the only solution would be to have a couple of antenna magically flying in empty space about 6' off the fuselage.

Long story short, I asked Levi at Midwest Avionics, where he suggested I put this antenna and he said as far away from comm antennas as possible. I asked about just aft of the firewall near the fuel vent because other people have reported good luck at this location and he was concerned about a conflict with it being too close to the engine sensors. However, SteinAir does a ton of RV panels with both Dynon and Garmin panels and they have a diagram with suggested antenna locations. They definitely suggest the fuel vent adjacent location.

I decided that was probably the way to go, so I went ahead and installed it there with a small .032 doubler. The skin is .040 there, so I don't feel the need for a huge doubler. I haven't match drilled the belly skin to the doubler yet. My plan is to get into flight test and confirm that I don't have any problems with this location before I poke a bunch of extra holes in the floor there. If it doesn't work, it will be relatively easy to patch up the holes, and if it does, I'll permanently rivet on the doubler at that point.

  Mar 28, 2022     Supertrax - (7 hours)       Category: Fuselage

If you look at these log entries strictly in chronological order, it seems like I'm jumping around randomly, but there's somewhat of a method to my madness.

In this case, I really don't want to have to crawl back into the tail come any more than absolutely necessary. I'm going to have to get back there to route the canbus wiring, install the elevator servo, install the aft comm antenna, and work on the spine for the slider canopy.

It's getting to a point that I need to start wiring, so I wanted to get the canopy slider ready to go at the same time.

During initial canopy fabrication, I had temporarily installed the RV8 slider spine with just a couple of screws. The Supertrax comes with a 10" spine extension for the RV7 spine, but I knew from VAF that the RV8 spine was a nice solution, because it starts out longer and eliminates the need for the extension. I had ordered those components with the finish kit, but was unsure how much I could trim off the aft end, so I left it full length until now.

So, in order to make the tailcone crawl in only a couple of trips, the first domino that needs to fall at this point is the complete supertrax installation.

If you've watched the video on the FlyBoys Accessories website, you know what this is all about. I found the installation to be just as straightforward as I've been led to believe. Lot's and lots of measuring and laying out, but no surprises.

For the fwd screw, I went with screw location "B" per the instructions, and for the screw in the trigger guard area I pulled the hole fwd and outbd as much as possible, given the constraints of the trigger guard. Both of these were done with edge distance on the underlying gusset in mind. By taking this into consideration, I was able to get 3/8" E.D. on that gusset at the aft location and significantly more on the fwd one.

Note; The plans warn you that you will likely need shims at the screw holes to elevate the tracks to match the existing Van's straight tracks, and they give you a bunch of .025 shims to use as needed. I ended up needing 2 shims at each location, and I trimmed them to the exact footprint of the new track, so they are all but invisible now.

They give you an approximate dimension as a starting point that has the fwd end of the new track 3" fwd of the fwd edge of the existing stop block. It worked out well on my installation to located it exactly 3 1/8" fwd. In my case, both sides are identical.

I trimmed, rounded, filed, smoothed, etc. the tracks to try to eliminate opportunities to catch clothing on them, especially since the fwd end is basically right at your outboard shoulder when seated. I also cut the aft end at an angle to match the profile of the tailcone skin.

On the aft supports, the instructions and the only video have you use 2 pan head #8 screws and lock nuts on the bottom end and one on the top. They include this hardware in the kit.

I reasoned taht this kit is designed to be installed on existing aircraft, ofter by people who don't have fabrication tooling within arms reach, so I elected to do it a little differently.

I installed a nut plate in the track rather that having to deal with a nut for that screw, and I just riveted at the lower location.

Works good, and I was able to determine that I can cut about 2" off the aft end of the spine track. Now all that's left is to crawl back there and put a wrench on it to take those two fasteners out, cut it off and reinstall. cool

  Mar 24, 2022     parking brake valve - (10 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Designed and fabricated a bracket for the parking brake valve. This turned out pretty sweet if I do say so myself.

One think that will ruin your day really quickly is to land a taildragger with the brakes on, so to guard against that hazard, I'm locating the push cable in an out of the way corner to the left of the G5 where it's impossible to accidentally catch it on your clothing as your fidgeting around in the airplane. Since the G3x has discreet inputs for CAS messages, I also incorporated a micro switch that will trigger when the valve arm is in anything other than the full down and open position. Basically, with the arm fully down, it hits the switch and turns off the warning. Anything other than full down allows the switch to trigger a warning.

According to Matco, the valve is in the center of the "transition area" when it's perpendicular to the valve body. 27 +/- 5* up and it's locked, 27 +/-5* down and it's full open. I designed the mount to have hard stops that limit travel to 45* in each direction, so that should be plenty and allow for any cable slop or wear.

The large wing sticking up on the mount is there to allow for attaching the cable. Once I determine cable routing and eyeball where to put a mounting screw and adel clamp, I'll trim off the excess.

I spent pretty much all afternoon yesterday bending and cutting scrap to mock this up, and had to take a couple of cracks at it today to get it right. The only fly in the ointment is that I didn't have any screws small enough to fit the mounting holes in the micro switch, and in my trip to the aviation aisle at Ace Hardward, the only hardware they had that fit the hole and also had an allen head (so I can get the darn thing apart again if it ever fails once the mount is riveted to the firewall) was metric. In case it comes up at some point, the screws take a 2.5 mm allen wrench.

I had originally thought that I might just nest this inside a piece of angle, use the vertical leg of the angle for limit stops and micro switch attachment, and bolt it directly to the firewall as I've seen others do.

I elected to do it this way for a couple of reasons; 1- the hat section raises the valve up enough that there's no interference with the terminal spades for the microswitch. 2- immediately on the other side of the firewall in this location is the RV10 oil cooler plenum. I have no idea how hot the firewall is going to get in that area, but whatever it is, I didn't want that heat transferring into the brake valve, so the hat section allows for an air gap between the valve and the firewall.

At this point, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

I also got another shipment from Stein that had all my specialty switches in it, so I drilled a bunch more holes in my panel. They include; TOGA, revisionary mode, cabin and panel lights, defrost fan, co-pilot PTT.

I'm going to have Lemke interiors in Germany build my interior and I will be including seat heaters. They come with the switches already wired, so I reached out to Robert Lemke and he was kind enough to provide dimensions for the switches, so I also drilled the holes for them, even though I (hopefully) won't have them prior to first flight.

At this point, my panel is more air that aluminum, but I believe that I've got everything located and drilled with the exception of USB ports. The best (cheapest) solution recommended by my Avionics guy takes an 1 1/8" hole and at this point, I simply may not have room to put these on the panel. At least not in a location that makes sense.

They weren't in my original plan, but the wiring was a freebee when they made up my avionics harness, so I figured why not. I'm going to think about this some more, but I may incorporate them up under the panel somewhere or just skip them entirely.

  Mar 23, 2022     rebuilt parking brake valve - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

I acquired a used Matco PV-1 parking brake valve a while back, and the other day while I was playing with it I noted that the action was a little stiff. I decided that rebuilding it was probably not a bad idea, so I ordered an overhaul kit from Matco for $19 and did surgery on it today.

The snap ring on the end that holds the camshaft in place is so small that of course my 30 year old snap ring pliers wouldn't fit, so last week I went to Lowes the and bought a decent set of channel lock brand that came with interchangeable tips.

In prepping to rebuild this valve, I realized I didn't have anything on hand to lube the new O-rings. I popped by work to see if I could score a few drops of 5606 from the guys in the shop.

That's why I logged 4 hours for this entry. The actual job only took about 20 minutes, but the travel time and hanging out during an engine change on a 182 ate up a significant portion of my afternoon.

Our DOM told me that instead of 5606 he uses Dow #4 for stuff like this, and he loaned me a tube. It has the consistency of vaseline and a little dab on the end of a Q-tip was all I needed.

After I got the valve back together, I started playing around with a mounting solution. I think I have something that will work, but that will be a project for the next log entry.

  Feb 08, 2022     Engine mount - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

I've heard several people complain about having problems with this, like the mount being warped, or the pilot holes not lining up or whatever, but it turned out to not be a big deal, at least in my case.

Loosely clamped the mount to the firewall with a 2x4 and some furniture clamps. I could see the pilot holes through the mount at all 4 corners so far so good. Drilled port upper to 1/4" and put a temp bolt through it, then fine tuned the location.

Marked the two middle lower locations through the mount with a sharpie. Then pulled the mount back off, checked marks for edge distance in underlying structure.

Reamed 1/4" hole up to .370 for AN6 bolt. then reinstalled mount, snugged up that bolt and clamped with furniture clamps etc to really lock down the position. Checked with digital level between spar center section and mount cross member. got them to match within 0.1 degree (tightest tolerance inclinometer will measure).

Drilled all holes with a cobalt drill bit and lots of boelube. That bit was 3/8" but it was obviously slightly undersized. Reamed final size with a .370 reamer for a nice snug fit. Installed bolts as I went. No problem.

I needed a .020 shim under the port side center lower mount, which is addressed in the build instructions, other than that, everything seems nice and flush. I've got to go back and trim the lower flanges where they will interfere with the MLG legs, but for now, this is good enough for locating battery, oil cooler etc.

  Dec 02, 2021     canopy latch & mounting blocks - (6 hours)       Category: Fuselage

This entry is two days worth of work. Yesterday I assembled the main canopy latch, including a preliminary trim of the hook portion that engages the pin on the roll bar. I don't have the print in front of me and don't remember what they actually call that thing, but you get the idea.

Final assembly requires a nylon washer on the exterior between the plexiglass and the exterior latch, and it wasn't in the parts bar with everything else. I had taken parts out of that bag previously, so I don't know if I lost it at that point or what, but I spent a while tossing the shop looking for the darn thing and never did find it. Pretty sure I can find a delrin washer that will work at Ace Hardware if it doesn't turn up. I still have to trim the handle shaft to the proper length, then drill and tap it for the exterior handle.

Today I fabricated and installed the aft canopy mounting blocks. These delrin blocks have holes drilled in them to engage the pins on the canopy frame and the are parallel to absolutely nothing. The instructions tell you basically to lay out both these angles with a straight edge, but the print also calls out the angles as 5* and 23* respective to where the pin initially contacts the block.

Ultimately, I decided that I had just as much chance of getting this right by following the print as by trying to mark a straight edge on twi different axes, is I borrowed a good drill press vise from work this morning and set up my drill press to the angles that were called out on the print.

Did a trial run with a wooden block on the right side and it dropped right in, so I drilled the delrin, then readjusted the table for a mirror image on the left side. It took a couple of tries, but eventually I got a result I was happy with in the wood block, so I drilled the delrin for that side as well.

Took everything apart, final sized the holes, countersunk where appropriate, and installed. After that, I noticed that when I engaged the main latch, the canopy aft blocks are snug enough that it was pulling the roll bar aft slightly, even with the fwd brace in place. Specifically, I could see the instrument panel flexing because it was actually pulling everything aft.

This area will obviously be a lot more rigid when the fwd skin is installed, but I'm not crazy about all that flexing, so I filed out the latch hook a little more and it seems to be a lot better. If not, I'll likely have to make another latch because I'm pretty close to teh minimum dimension for that hook and can't really enlarge it much more.

Overall, a good couple of days :)

  Nov 23, 2021     canopy continued. - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Cleaned up some wayward sika from the canopy frame. spoiler, if you don't d a good enough job masking, that primer is almost impossible to get off, whether the powder coat under it is scuffed up or not. The only way I found to remove it was with scotch bright and elbow grease. I was able to get rid of it where unwanted without wrecking the powder coat, but it took the shine off of it and you can definitely tell :(

It looks okay, but I'm thinking I can wet sand it with some 1000 grit and hopefully give it a more uniform look. That's a project for a different day, I'll likely just live with it for a while and see if it bothers me.

After that, it was time for the rubber to meet the road and see if it fit the fuselage.

I had walked away from the canopy last Tuesday, when we went out of town. This worked out well from the standpoint of giving the sika a week to dry, but I had thought about this thing every day and wondered if it would fit, and what I would do if it didn't. In fact, I had obsessed about it so much that I was more than half convinced that it wouldn't roll in the tracks, or would sit proud at the tailcone skin or something equally horrific.

I was delighted and more than a little surprised to discover that it fit almost perfectly on all counts. Rolls nicely, blends into the tailcone and roll bar nicely; the works!

I had used the outer side skirts to squeeze the plexi sides into the inner skirts while the sika dried, so I decided to push my luck and cleco them back in place to see how well they fit. So far, I've been planning to follow Larry Larson's process to make all the skirts out of fiberglass because I've seen way to many of these pooch out at the aft lower corners on finished airplanes, but darned if these don't seem to fit pretty good!

Every other hole has a pop rivet in it currently holding the inners in place, but I'm tempted to drill out some pop rivets from the inners and try to use the outer skirts per plan.

I'm legit thrilled with how well all this seems to be fitting at this point.

  Nov 16, 2021     Canopy continued. - (6 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Big day today- Bonded the canopy to the frame with SikaFlex.

That process is well documented, plus once you start the clock is ticking, so I didn't get any pix in process, but it went about as expected.

  Nov 11, 2021     empennage lower fairings - (3 hours)       Category: Fuselage

The shop was pretty cold again this morning, so I turned the space heater on near the canopy and moved on to something else for a while. Today, that happened to be the lower empennage fairings. I've been meaning to get to this for a while so I can be one step closer to pulling the empennage off.

Way back on drawing 28, it tells you to rivet the lower tailcone skins to the longerons. When you get to this step, you discover taht you should have left some holes empty that are common to this fairing. Maybe there was a note on the print or instructions that I missed, but I sure don't remember seeing anything about this back then. At any rate, I drilled out the appropriate rivets,clecoed on the fairings, them measured and trimmed for the gap seal.

Vans doesn't give you any dimensions for trimming here. There is a section view in the print that shows what the finished product is supposed to look like and a note that if you want to skip the gap seal you can just make the gap 1/32"-1/16" here, but I don't like the idea of leaving a crack there for dirt and mud daubers or whatever to get in there.

I measured the seal and determined that a gap of 1/8" would fit, but I erred on the side of caution and tried to get this as close to 3/32" as possible. I reasoned that if I got it a little large it would be about right, and if it was 3/32 it wold be a nice snug fit.

Teh plans call for you to drill and tap the mount holes for #6 screws, but I'm inclined to just rivet them on. I don't really see why they would ever need to come off again other than perhaps if the seals get worn out and need to be replaced. On the other hand, If I rivet them during final assembly, there will end up being paint on the rubber edge seals and no paint under them, so if they shrink or whatever, you'll be able to see a paint gap on either the fuselage or the lower side of the horizontal.

I'll give this some thought and come back to it later.

  Nov 11, 2021     canopy continued. - (3 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Once the shop warmed up this afternoon, I sanded the fwd edge of the canopy to 220 grit and clamped it to the frame off the plane. I had previously measured the width of the frame front and back, and sure enough, clamping the canopy to it caused it to spread out a little bit. People have reported significant deformation with this issue which makes the canopy hard to open, but mine was only spread about 3/8". Not bad, but still enough that it would likely cause the rollers to rub the outer sides of the canopy tracks and make it hard to open.

I spent some time with ratchet straps and whatnot and squeezed the frame about 3/8" narrower than it's previous resting position, then put it all on the airplane. It was noticeably tight and hard to move because it was obviously too narrow, but when I clamped the canopy to it, suddenly it was perfect.

By then it was time to wrap up for the night, so I left it on the plane with the bows clamped and taped & the side skirts clecoed on to keep it from sprawling out. I really believe this thing is ready to finish sand the edges to 400 grit and glue it together if I can get another warm day, which won't be tomorrow, because its only supposed to be in the 40's.

  Nov 10, 2021     canopy continued. - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

The day started with a small victory; Yesterday I broke off the threaded portion of a threaded drill bit in my 90* drill motor while drilling the hole in the roll bar to roll bar brace, leaving the threaded portion stuck in the head of the drill.

This morning I was able to carefully drill down into the broken piece with a #30 bit in my drill press, then remove the piece with an eze-out. My favorite dotco is back in business!

Trimmed the excess material off the lower end of the brace per print. Cleaned up and painted the raw edges.

I also continued working on the canopy latch assembly. I filed about another 1/16" off the tube it rides in on the canopy frame and at this point it is aligned vertically so that the latch engages the post on the roll bar nicely. The plans have you drill a couple of 1/16" holes in the latch for attaching a spring, and I didn't have a 1/16" bit. Had a #50, but thats a little bigger than called for. It would have worked, but seemed a little shoddy, so I ran to Ace and was able to pick up a #54 bit which is a little smaller than the 1/16" called out, but will look prettier on the finished product, so that's what I went with. I also did some preliminary marking on the latch to show where the engaging notch will eventually need to be enlarged to in order to engage the roll bar pin properly.

Carefully trimmed the fwd edge of the canopy back to the dimension I had marked yesterday (3/32 fwd of the fwd canopy frame bow) with a 120 grit flapper disk in my angle ryobi. I then smoothed out the rough edge by block sanding with 120 grit.

I ran out of time, so that was it for today. Next time I'll finish all edges to 400 grit to get rid of any residual scratches and hopefully eliminate any stress risers that might lead to future cracks, and then move on to final fitting of the canopy.

I will be so glad when this canopy is done.

  Nov 09, 2021     canopy continued. - (7 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Scampered back and forth between several tasks today. The shop was only about 60 degrees this morning, so I aimed my space heater at the canopy and while it was warming up I occupied myself by countersinking the inner canopy skirts, then prepped & painted the inside surfaces white to match the canopy frame.

Temporarily installed the fwd canopy brace then drilled it to the sub panel structure and roll bar. During drilling, I manages to snap off a drill bit in my dotco. The bit didn't break on the flutes. Instead, it sheered off at the threads, leaving the bit easy to get out of the hole because I could just put a wrench on it and unscrew it, but the threaded end is broken off flush in the drill motor, so I'm going to have to drill it and try to remove it with an eze-out. Darn it, but hey, at least it isn't an engine stud or something.

Marked the lower end of the brace for trimming off the excess at a later date.

Assembled canopy latch and evaluated it for fit. As part of that process, I spent close to an hour looking through the various hardware bags for the clevis screw that holds the hook and handle assembly together. Finally found it mixed in with some AN bolts that I had dumped in an organizer tray. Evidently not very organized!

There's a note that tells you to adjust the latch assembly up and down to get good engagement on the roll bar post by either adding shims or trimming off the sleeve t that it rides in on the canopy frame. In my case, I needed to trim off the sleeve by about 7/16" to get it at the correct height. I cut through the powder coat with a close quarters tubing cutter to get a nice square end, then carefully cut it the rest of the way with an abrasive wheel on a dremel. Trial fit indicates that I can probably take another 16th or so off of it, so I'll file it down a little more in a day or two.

The plans have you do all this after you have the plexi permanently attached to the canopy frame, but it seems like access is better and the potential for canopy damage due to shavings and flying sparks is less doing it now. Hopefully it won't cause any sort of problem down the road to go out of sequence like this.

When I drilled the hole in the canopy for the latch post to fit through, I got it slightly off to one side of centerline I had drawn on the canopy. I'm not sure if I didn't get that line exactly in the center or what, but the canopy just seemed to want to fit best with it positioned that way, so that's where I drilled it and the contours all seem to fit nicely. However, I was concerned that the weld bead in the frame might be rubbing on the edge of the hole, so I marked where the suspect interference was occurring, then enlarged the hole slightly with a sanding drum in my dremel.

In Vans original design, there is a metal strip running down the centerline of the canopy and it covers up this hole. I'm gluing the canopy to the frame rather than using rivets, so this strip isn't needed. I'm pretty sure that the handle would hide this slightly oversized hole, and I've seen several slider canopied that don't have anything but the latch above the plexi, but I'm thinking that I will bond on a small aluminum plate in this area to protect the plastic because it seems like it would be really easy to scratch the canopy here by hitting it with something while operating the latch or even rubbing dirt into the plexi with fingertips or whatever. After the plexi is bonded to the frame I will see how high the handle is sticking above the plexi and make a decision at that time.

  Nov 08, 2021     canopy continued. - (5 hours) Category: Fuselage

Another trial fit and more trimming. At this point, I've got the final dimension set and sanded to 220 grit on the aft and both lower edges.

I've got to trim the front edge to the correct dimension referenced to the fwd canopy bow, final sand all the edges to relieve stress in the plexi, and account for the frame spread that the canopy will cause when fixed in place. Once all that's done, this thing will hopefully be ready to permanently glue to the frame.

I haven't enjoyed this whole canopy experience, but I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel!

  Nov 07, 2021     canopy fit continued - (8 hours)       Category: Fuselage

This entry covers several short sessions spacers out several days apart. I was out of town last week and have been pretty hit or miss for the last several days. Trying to move fwd on the canopy, but also trying to work on it only when the shop is around 70*. Which is getting harder to get to consistently here in November.

Drilled at attached the rollers to the canopy frame, created 1/8" spacers out of some clear tubing from Ace Hardware ($1.49 for a foot off of the bulk spool, sweet!), and clamped the canopy with the spacers to the frame.

Marked, taped and cut the canopy to the aft dimension and approximate final dimension at the horizontal square tubes. I had also match drill the side skirts and supports. The next step will be to clamp all that together for a final trim, which I hope to get done tomorrow.

  Oct 24, 2021     canopy trim continued - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Yesterday I trimmed the aft edge of the canopy to match the aft bows with about 1.5" or overhang. The print calls out for 0.5-1.0" here, but I'm intentionally cutting everything oversized and will do a final trim to fit later.

Robert August called while I was polishing up the edge and wanted to go to the Kawasaki dealership and go bike shopping so I stopped there for the day.

This afternoon, once the it warmed up a little, I trimmed the sides to approximately the level of the bottom of the side bows.

The canopy is amazingly floppy after all this trimming is done. I clamped it to the frame upside down on the table top hammock and it seems to be spreading the frame out in the front about 3/8" and about 5/16 in the back.

Smoothed all edges to 220 grit, then got Kriya to help me flip the canopy over onto the frame on the plane.

I think I need smaller clamps to hold this together in this orientation and verify how much the frame is spreading, but once that's done I'll be able to do a final trim on the canopy and then hopefully wrap this part of the project up

  Oct 22, 2021     Roll Bar installed - (3 hours) Category: Fuselage

Yesterday I got the disposition on the nicked longeron back from Vans. As expected, it was blend sharp edges to eliminate the chance of cracks and build on.

I forgot to get any pictures of this, but I dressed the area with a small round jewelers file and then re-installed the roll bar.

The aft bolt on each side is a AN4 and its a major pain to get a nut on the back side. Anybody who's tried this knows what I'm talking about. Basically the lower flange of the aft deck is in the way of getting a socket in there of even getting your fingers on it effectively.

It seems pretty common for people to notch the lower flange to get a socket in there, but I felt like I should be able to come up with something, so I worked on this for about 3 hours with offset sockets and glued together washers and whatnot. I finally ended up getting them by taping the lower stackup together, fishing it into place with my finger tips, then aligning it with a wire stuck through the hole from above until everything was centered, then feeding the bolt gently onto it from the top.

  Oct 22, 2021     The Big Cut - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

I'm trying to get the canopy work done before it turns cold here in Kansas, and today was the day. Started by going to home depot and buying some boards, because I've finally exhausted my supply of scrap lumber..

A couple of days ago I trimmed off up to the mold line with a dremel saw max and the wheel that Larry Larson recommended in his excellent kit planes article. It worked fine for that up on my shop tables.

For THE BIG CUT I felt like I'd rather have it low enough that I could get to the center without standing on a stool so I built a small pallet and did it on the floor.

The pallet was made from 1x4" pine across a couple of 2x4s. I ran a few strips of duct tape across the bottom of the canopy to keep it from splaying out and padded the edges with scraps of the foam that the canopy frame was padded with as shipped from Vans.

After the pallet was complete, R.J. helped me flip the canopy over onto it. Easy access to all areas for cutting, but the trade off here is that with it sitting this low I knew I would have a problem getting the saw max all the way to the edge.

I laid down 3 layers of blue tape on each side of the cut line to make a sort of ditch or cut guide and just cut it with the Vans's supplied disk in my 90* die grinder.

Made about 4-5 passes, starting at the edge, running up to the center, then switching sides. After I judged it was mostly through, I started cutting all the way through at one edge, went up about 6 inches, clamped the edge, then went to the other side.

After I got both sides started, I went through in the center about 3" on each side of centerline and then duct taped the cut line so it wouldn't sag when the two halves got close to coming apart. I went back to the lower edges and cut them about 4-6" at a time, alternating back and forth and duct taping as I went.

It was about 70* in the shop, but the afternoon sun had been shining in through a big window directly on the canopy for a couple of hours so it was probably a little warmer than that.

No drama, but I'm glad it's done!

  Oct 20, 2021     first canopy cut - (8 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Not a lot to show for a solid 8 hours, but a successful day nonetheless. I started by reading and re-reading the build plans. I've also spend untold hours online reviewing build logs of other people who have already accomplished this step. The canopy is crazy expensive and I don't want to get this wrong. I also ate up a lot of time waiting for help to move the canopy. It's so awkward that I didn't want to try to move it by myself.

I started with something simple; cutting the surplus off the ends back to the mold lines. this was actually pretty easy in that I was able to just push my two build tables together and set the canopy upright on them with the end I was working on overhanging the edge by a few inches. good access and very stable.

The cuts went well with the dremel saw max and the cutting disk recommended by Larry Larson in his excellent kit planes article. I spent about an hour after each cut polishing the edges first with a vibra tool with 60 grit, then by hand with some 220 grit on a block. got all the saw marks out, but it took a long time.

Got a friend to help me lift the canopy off the tables and then engineered a hammock between them so that I could lay it upside and have it somewhat stable. I got this idea from the same kit planes article, Thanks Larry!

The hammock is just an oversized making blanket with a couple of sheets rolled up on each end, but you can see in teh picot below that I also ran a couple of ratchet straps around the contraption in case the blanket were to pull loose from the tables, sort of a belt and suspenders approach.

we flipped the canopy upside down and moved it back to the table, then trimmed the edges to the mold lines following the same process I used on the ends.

I didn't get a picture of it, but after much measuring and eyeballing, I drilled the hole for the canopy latch. The instructions are pretty vague here and basically just say to locate the hole by drawing a centerline on the canopy and then positioning the frame for best fit along that line. In my case, that turned out to be with the aft canopy bow about 2" fwd of the aft edge of the aft canopy mold lines. Started this hole with a regular drill bit it a electric drill turned down low and brought it up to full size with a unibit.

Everything had gone well to this point, so it seemed like a good place to quit for the day.

  Oct 15, 2021     Rudder stops - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Had a limited amount of time, so punched outa project that has been on deck for a while; rebuilt the rudder stops.

The original ones are fabricated from angle to a specific dimension called out on a print, and previous builders have reported that in many cases they are too short and result in too much rudder travel. I had been forewarned about this and intentionally left the original ones a little long, planning to trim them to fit when I hung the rudder.

Unfortunately, they were still quite a bit to short, so I had to make new ones, that were about 3/8" longer than the print in order to get the specified 1 1/8" distance from teh inbox trailing edge of the elevators.

This was very much a process of starting big and taking them down a little at a time, clecoing in place, then checking travel, then taking them off and grinding down a little more. I managed to botch one of the new ones and while the swing was correct, the angle where teh rudder horn hits it was off so it wasn't contacting along the full width. I didn't want to point load the rudder horn by just having it hit in a small area so I scrapped and replaced that one as well.

One thing to note if you have to do this; the horizontal leg of the stop can be longer if needed, but the vertical leg can't be extended past the aft edge of the bulkhead or it will hit the rudder spar as it swings to full deflection. Thats tehreason for teh odd shape of the finished product.

  Oct 12, 2021     Engine is shipping! - (2 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Big day the other day- last Thursday Jeff from Thunderbolt emailed me that my engine was ready to ship. Due to Covid, my location Bank of America is understaffed and the lobby is closed. So Friday I had to go to a branch in north Wichita and wait around for about an hour to see somebody to wire the final payment, so that was a couple of hours out of my day, but it was time well spent.

Jeff sent me a couple of pictures, and I've got to say that I'm stunned with how pretty this color combo turned out.

  Oct 12, 2021     slider rail - (3 hours)       Category: Fuselage

measured a bunch, then drilled the slider rail to the top of the fuselage in two places per instructions.

Went to install the allthread to the front end and discovered that I had installed a rivet in the bulkhead frame at the location it's supposed to use. Drilled out that rivet, upsized the hole and installed allthread per print.

At some point during this whole process, the left aft corner of the frame has sprung out about 1/8" so that it's no longer recessed from the edge of the fuselage the requisite 1/16", but is sticking out by about that same amount. It's a complete freaking mystery to me how that could happen, but tomorrow I think I'll get out the C-clamps and wooden blocks and try to beat this back into submission again. I'll have to be careful since the tracks and rail are now drilled to the fuselage.

everything else is still good, and the frame retracts with just light finger pressure, Sweet!

  Oct 11, 2021     canopy frame continued. - (6 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Cleaned up the shop a little bit, and then finished match drilling the canopy roller tracks.

It's a real hassle to roll the canopy frame back and forth with these clecoed on. You can't install clecoes up from the bottom because the lower flange of the canopy deck is in the way, and with them put in from the top, the rollers hit them. At this point I don't see any reason to not bring these up to full size, and put some screws in temporarily to make it more convenient to play with the canopy frame, so I went ahead and did that.

The aft most fastener requires a spacer between the aft canopy deck and the underlying structure, so I fabricated those as well.

It's difficult to get nuts on the bottom of the screws that hold these in place because of the previously mentioned lower flange of the aft canopy decks. I know that some people have cut notches into the lower flange so they can get a socket in there, and others have abandoned the washers and nuts in favor of a thin aluminum strips with nut plates installed.

I don't want to start cutting up that flange because I believe it adds quite a bit of strength in that area, and the whole nut plate strip idea, while clever, just seemed clunky to me if I could figure out a mechanism to get nuts in there without dropping them all over the place in the process.

I fumbled around with this for probably close to an hour on one screw by fishing a washer into position on my pinky finger tip and holding it in place with a magnet on the screw head, then doing the same with the nut. Much hardware was dropped during this operation and at that rate, it would take me a full day to get them all installed. I thought about accepting defeat and going the nut plate route and even cut a nut plate strips out of some .020 shim stock I had laying around, but ultimately decided that I wasn't going to let this beat me.

Ultimately what worked was to grind down a socket to make it short enough to fit up in there, then tape it to a bent screwdriver and hold the nut and screw in place with a magnet stuck to the screwdriver shank.

I was then able to position the nut & washer by looking down through the hole, stick the screw in, and tighten it enough to get it started without tearing the tape that was holding the socket onto the screwdriver.

Once it was started, I was able to get on the nut with a box end point wrench (remember point wrenches?) and snug it down. Total install time, about 3 minutes per screw.

If I had a welder, I would make this socket contraption permanent and eliminate the need for the point wrench altogether.

Put in 3 screws per side, which is plenty to hold the tracks for now and allow the frame to roll without having clecoes in the way.

  Oct 10, 2021     canopy frame continued. - (9 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Spent several hours yesterday and several more today working on the canopy frame. Honestly, I'd like to say that I discovered some secret sauce that make this a piece of cake, but it was just a long slog of small adjustments until it was finally right. At one point, I had this thing wobbling like an Applbees table without enough coasters under the short leg, but I finally got a fit I'm happy with, and it rolls with light finger pressure.

When i did the first trial fit of the frame the other day, the front bow match the roll bar surprisingly well, but the tube the overhead main latch rides in wasn't aligned with the post on the roll bar. This is one of several places that the instructions call out as being something to check for, and considering that latch pulls the canopy snug to the roll bar, it seems like if it's out of alignment there's the potential for it to pull the canopy sideways when latched.

I asked the question on VAF and somebody confirmed that could be a problem, so in my initial adjusting on this, I had slowly but surely added and subtracted curves in various places around the front bow to work this area more into where it should be. The result had been good in that respect, but one side effect was that the front bow wasn't as symmetrical to the roll bar as one would have hoped.

So, yesterday I attacked this whole thing again. I screwed some radiuses 2x4 blocked into a table top and leaned on the frame in various spots to add curve. I also made some short radiuses blocks that could be used with a C clamp to remove curve.

I ended up using both these methods to get the front and back bows in the ballpark, then used a couple of ratchet straps to pull both bows together to get them to the correct dimension with respect to the side skins. This wasn't a one and done process, but took several hours with lots of pondering where to bend, off measuring and trial fitting to see how much was enough, etc.

Finally I was able to get it level at all 4 corners, symmetrical to the roll bar, and with all the various points at about the right dimension to the fuselage skins (inset 1/16"). I say "about" because while the front and rear corners of the frame are inset the correct amount, the midpoint on each side is in more like 1/8". I believe that this is something that I can deal with during fitting of the canopy skirts, and everything else fits so well that I'm not going to try to tweak them outboard more. Especially since they are square tube and I have a sneaking suspicion they would be quite a bit harder to bend without kinking than the round tube that comprises the rest of the frame.

I've included a couple of "before" pictures that show the front bow misaligned with the roll bar. The way the fuselage is oriented in the garage right now I had to take those pictures from out in the driveway. There's no "after picture" because by the time I got this wrapped up it was dumping rain outside and I didn't want to open up the garage door. You'll just have to take it on faith for now that it fits a lot better :)

I trial fit the frame to the plane, everything looked good so I went ahead and drilled a coupe of holes in the tracks to hold them in place with clecoes.

Once I had an idea of the height of the bent portion of the track at the turtle deck, It seemed that the rv8 track parts I ordered with the finish kit would work without a ton of modification, so I went ahead and assembled the longer track and taped it to the fuselage.

Based on an internet search, the super tracks mod ends up with a track extension that adds about 10" to the aft end of the RV7 track, so I cut the RV8 parts to add 11" of track. At some future point, I'll add the rest of the super tracks kit and then trim it to final length once I determine what that actually needs to be.

I finished off the day by making sure that the frame will slide through it's full range of travel without binding up or hitting the fuselage somewhere.

I spent so long on this that I ended up playing with it for about 1/2 hour, simply because I could hardly believe that it actually worked.

I still haven't gotten a disposition back from Vans re the longeron I nicked last week, and there's an outside chance this I might end up with a doubler or something that would effect the roll bar height, so I'm about as far along on this section as I can go prior to getting that resolved. I emailed Sterling last Friday and he told me that Engineering reviews stuff like this as time allows and that it might take a week or two. I'm hoping that it's on the shorter end of that estimate, because I'd really like to get this whole thing wrapped up rather than have to come back to it later.

  Oct 05, 2021     Canopy frame - (9 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Fabricated and positioned the roller tracks, assembled the rollers, drilled aft canopy slide and took a bunch of measurements.

Almost everyone talks about how much bending and tweaking the canopy frame requires to get it to fit right. I know that some of it has to do with localized warping and twisting from the welding process, but I honestly think that some fo it has to do with manufacturing variation of the fuselage as well. Throughout the fuselage build, I've done my utmost to make sure everything is laid out and assembled as precisely as possible, with the hope that it will help with the canopy fitting.

Temporarily installed the roll bar and was gratified to see that it's pretty close to vertical. One of the feet isn't perfectly flat compared to the other one, so there will need to be a little bit of shimming to get it to lay on the deck nicely, but it's pretty close.

Based on that, I went ahead and did a trial fit and rough trim on the windshield brace. I put it in place and eyeballed it, then ended up taking about 1 1/2" or so off of it with a hacksaw. Guys have run into issues with this ending up too short after windshield shimming, but I think I've got plenty of margin to play with, given how plumb the roll bar already appears to be.

Drilled the aft slider to the frame. The print isn't super clear here, but basically it's supposed to be positioned as you can see in one of the pictures below when it's match drilled. That chaos of clamps, rulers, and popsicle sticks is what was required to make sure it didn't creep out of position while I was match drilling it.

After that, I made the slider track per print which took quite a while. There is some hand forming required, then drilled for rivets, double countersunk, deburred, and primed as appropriate. Once the primer dried, I went ahead and riveted this together per print.

In measuring the location of the slider tracks, I determined that the inside vertical faces of the tracks are 41" apart. I'm going have to refer back to the instructions, but I believe this is in the ballpark that Vans calls out and it almost exactly matches the rollers in the canopy frame at this point...Sweet!

I did notice during all the measuring that the fwd posts that the rollers plug into are not the same length. One of them is 1/4" longer than the other, so hopefully the frame is riding high, because some trimming is going to need to take place to even them up.

  Oct 05, 2021     windshield rollbar - (2 hours)       Category: Fuselage

I made quite the goof on Saturday. I'm embarrassed and mad at myself, but I confessed on VAF so that the next guy who screws something up doesn't feel like he's alone in the world.

For the slider canopy, you start by laying out and drilling some #40 pilot holes on the aft decks. You then position the "feet" of the roll bar correctly above them, then match drill up from the bottom, then upsize the fwd holes for AN3 bolts and the aft ones for AN4.

There's a note on the print that specifies that these bolts are to be as close as possible to the main longerons without actually touching them. If you lay out the holes with 100% precision, you will have 1/32 margin to play with as you bring them up to final size.

Due to the difference in bolt size, the starting dimensions are different fwd/aft. Even so, it should be super simple to lay these out. The front layout is even a super easy to read 7/8"

So, long story short, since there really isn't anything hard about laying this out, I was obviously not as vigilant as I should have been. I was reading my scale upside down and managed to get off 1 tic mark, so I drilled the left front pilot hole at 6/8", instead of the 7/8" it was supposed to be.

I was worried about that 1/32 margin, so I hit that wrong dimension very precisely, which means that I punched a #40 hole exactly through the edge of the main longeron, and took a perfect 1/2 circle out of it about .050" deep (1/2 the diameter of a #40 drill bit). Not even enough to completely eliminate the radius, but certain parts of that longeron are a big load path and there's structure running every which way in that area, so I don't have a good sense of how the stress load paths are running i.e. is this an embarrassing annoyance, or a big deal that will require a doubler in there.

Once I realized what I had done, I was able to relocate that hole to the correct location, drill the other 3 in the right spot and continue on with the trial fit of the roll bar and canopy.

I emailed pictures to Vans and Sterling emailed me back this morning to let me know that Engineering is taking a look at, and as soon as they have done their engineering voodoo to see if it needs anything other than "use as is" he'll let me know.

Regardless, I dusted myself off and continued on with fitting the canopy frame, to be continued in the next entry


UPDATE- I got my response back from Vans yesterday (10-21-21). Given the location and the minimal size of the nick, just blend the edges and build on, with the standard caveat about keeping an eye on it for cracks.

I blended with a round jewelers file. Here's a cut and paste of the email from Sterling at Vans;

Hi Terry

Finally heard back from engineering, see their comments below.

Sterling

Given that he is in between holes and the defect is so small, have him clean up the damage to remove any sharp edges to prevent crack formation and build on. He should add that as an area to inspect during condition inspections though to ensure no cracks start to form there. I understand that may be difficult given the other parts there, but it at least should be remembered.

A doubler across that section would be another way to really make it the stiffest part of the whole run, but I don't think that is necessary here given the size of the damage.

  Sep 17, 2021     naca vents - (2 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Fabricated and match drilled backing plates for the naca vents out of .032 scrap. (fyi- This software wants to autocorrect "naca" to "nacho" just so you know :) dimpled rivet holes & countersunk naca flanges to match. Clecoed everything together. I'm just going to leave these clecoed for a while, It might be handy to be able to pull those back out when I start stuffing radios in there.

Seems like I'm starting to defer a lot of stuff until I get the avionic and engine

  Sep 16, 2021     substructure reassembly + Naca vents - (6 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Dimpled & installed nutplates on the flanges for the fwd access panels. I elected to dimple for these nutplates vs. using oops rivets to countersink. I can see that at the rate I'm using nutplates, I'll run out of oops rivets if I keep using them everywhere and I don't want to have to buy more.

Having said that, it looks like you could knock this simple little thing out in about 5 minutes, but it takes a while to dimple the screw holes to #8, the nut plate holes for a -3, and then dimple and install 32 nutplates.

Next up, I riveted the F-7108B angle and the F-7109 plate to the F-7108A center rib.

Just a heads up for whoever is reading this, but I followed the instructions here and it was a major pain. I believe there's an easier way to do this.

Heres the situation: during the initial assembly, it' super easy to put this together because you can cleco in the F-705 sub panel, then drop the big end of the center rib down into the slot, then slide the rib fwd until the big end is at the firewall. you can then slide the F-7108B angle in from the aft, epee peezy.

When it comes to final assy, the instructions have you rivet this all together on the bench, at this point the horizontal leg of F-7108B and the lower flange of the rib are not parallel, so they won't easily slide into the horizontal slots on the center bulkhead. The instructions literally say "bend the center bulkhead until you can slide it together, the guy who designed it swears it's possible"

I fought with this for about 20 minutes, thinking there must be some way that I could flex it that I wasn't thinking of that would make it easier, but it just wasn't working. I was afraid that I was eventually going to crack or permanently deform the center bulkhead, so I got a cup of coffee and stared at it for a while, then enlarged the horizontal slots by about 1/4" each. I then sat on the floor with it held between my knees and was able to flex the two sides of the bulkhead in opposite directions enough that I could insert the assy at a weird angle and get it in place, then I clecoed the whole dangly mess into the airplane all at once.

If I had it to do over, I would assemble it in the same order I put it together for match drilling and just rivet it together on the airplane.

Once it was in the plane, I realized there were 3 rivets I should have left out because they are common to the F-7103C angle as well, so I drilled those out and clecoed that angle in place. That whole contraption fits together like one of those bent wire puzzles I used to play with as a kid.

Clecoed the instrument panel in place, and installed the seats for fun. Now it's starting to look like an actual cockpit!

I had a couple of hours left in my day, and in looking around for a 2 hour project, I landed on installing the NACA vents. The instructions call for gluing them in place with either proseal or RVT, but also mention that you can throw a few rivets in there for a belt & suspenders approach.

Looking at build logs online, I've seen guys use clamps and magnets and all sorts of innovative solutions to clamp these in place while the sealer is drying so they don't have any rivets. Seems like a lot of work for not much return unless you have oshkosh trophy aspirations. The whole plane is put together with rivets, so what's the big deal with sticking a few in here? Plus, If they ever have to come out for some reason, it's a lot easier to drill out a few pop rivets and deal with some light weight RTV that to unstick something that's glued together with pro seal.

Having said all that, I carefully laid out and drilled #40 a rivet pattern that ensured 5/16" edge distance on the plastic flange of the vent, then back drilled the vent through the skin. I still need to dimple, fabricate something to go behind the flange so the pop rivets don't pull through etc. but I think they are going to look pretty nice when done.

  Sep 15, 2021     more fwd deck stuff - (8 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Finished installing the lower angles for the instrument panel. I found that the best way to do this was to drill and countering the holes for the nut plates, then rivet the angles in place, then finally, to install the nutplates after. If I had installed the nutplates first, I think that they would have caused some problems getting access to rivet, especially on the vertical angles, because they are bent quite a bit more than 90* by doing it this way, I was able to access them with a squeezer, no problem.

When I was disassembling the upper fuselage structure for deburring, i realized I had missed match drilling the 6 holes on each side that are common to the F-902 bulkhead and the F-7105B sub panel, so I went ahead and did that before I took it apart. Then I took a few minutes to make sure I hadn't missed anything else.

There is a rivet common to the F-902 bulkhead and the upper longeron that's hadn't been installed yet. On drawing 23, when you're building the forward section, there is a note that tells you not to install this rivet until the sub panel structure is drilled. I don't know why, because it wasn't in the way or anything. I'm guessing that there's something on the tipper canopy that would cause this to be a problem, but on the slider, it wouldn't have been a problem to put that in when I was building the rest of the forward section. I installed that rivet on both sides.

Took all the various pieces of the upper fuselage structure apart, deburred everything, smoothed all the bend radii with a jewelers file, and cleaned up all the edges. dimpled where required, and installed nutplates on everything. There were a couple of nutplates I left off for now because it looks like they would be in the way during skin riveting, so I will come back to them after the fact. Took quite a while to finish up, but everything is ready for final assembly with the exception of the F7108A. During the cleanup, I primed the F7108B angle due to it not being alclad, and I got the primer on pretty thick. It was so humid today that it's taking a long time to dry, so I'll let it dry over night and rivet together that sub assembly later.

finished up the day by dimpling all the mating holes in the firewall using a dimple set in my 3X rivet gun.

  Sep 14, 2021     Fwd upper skin etc. - (7 hours)       Category: Fuselage

I wasn't happy with the r/h lower instrument panel angle. somehow I mis-located it when I drilled, and it was about 1/8" fwd of the other side. The panel tightened down on it just fine, but I was afraid that I would be able to see a bow in the instrument panel in that corner once I peel off the blue vinyl, or that it might cause some other problem on down the road. The time to fix it is now while it's ll just clecoed together.

The holes were already match drilled in the supporting structure, so just relocating the angle wasn't an option, but I was able to use the old angle to match drill a new one with the holes at minimum edge distance from the fwd edge of that leg of the angle (.219 per mil spec) which had the net result of relocating the other leg aft an appropriate amount and that pretty much eliminated the issue. At this point, the difference between the two sides is only 3/64, which is as close to perfect as I'm likely to ever get.

Now it was time to get back to the fwd skin access panels. After thinking about it, I decided that the reason so many of the panels I see on completed airplanes are pooched up between the screw heads is likely because guys lay down a thick bead of pro seal with some plastic wrap to make a gasket (following the instructions) and then 90% of it gets squeezed out when they crank down on the screws to get them somewhat close to flush, but it can't all ooze out, so it causes the bowing.

Based on the thickness of all the respective sheets, the panels are flush with the skin without any gasket material at all in there, so any way you look at it, gasket material will make the covers sit proud.

With that in mind, I went ahead and fabricated some .025 spacer rings that will go between the skin and the nut plate rings to make the rings sit .025 lower than the surrounding skin. The idea is that when I make the gaskets, I can just tighten the screws until the panel is flush with the surrounding skin and that will leave me a nice .025" thick gasket to keep water off my precious avionics, while allowing the panels to be more or less flat between the screw heads.

A while back, I was getting ready to install the upper fwd tailcone skin and noticed some damage on it, so I ordered a new one. The damaged one has been on deck to be cut up for something ever since, and it's .025" thick, so it was perfect for this. I traced out the nut plate rings from the kit and cut out a chunk with the air nibbler that I recently got at harbor freight for this kind of thing. It makes nice cuts without distorting the surrounding material like shears can, and it's a ton faster than a hand nibbler, but holy cow, does that thing make a mess! It ejects tiny little aluminum toenail clippings as what seems like mach 2, and they go everywhere, but there's something very satisfying about using it.

Once I had a chunk of manageable size, I cut to the exterior line on my band saw, then match drilled to the nut plate rings from the kit. This allowed me to position the covers and trace the interior cut line so the finished product will be the same size as the hole in the skin. I then rough cut the interior hole, again using the air nibbler to get close, then snips, then took a 1/2 round vixen file and finished by carefully filing away the sharpie line I had traced earlier.

This was a ton of work for something so simple, each one of these simple little spacer rings took more than an hour to make, but the end result will be worth it.

A trial fit revealed a couple of places where I needed to take a few thousandth more off, but eventually, I got them as perfect as I'm capable of making without CNC equipment. Once I was happy with how everything was fitting, I took it all back apart, which is typical, but still seems like a step backward.

I had some time left in my day, so I deburred the access panel components and interior of the skin then prepped and primed those components.

  Sep 13, 2021     Sub panel and fwd structure - (7 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Knocked out a bunch of little stuff today. Drilled the sub panel lower angle for mounting control cables. Then match drilled the instrument panel lower mounting angles by clamping them in place, then drilling them to the panel and holding the panel in place longitudinally with some wood blocks clamped to the side rails. for reference, the correct location worked out to be 5" from the aft face of the panel to the seam between the two sections of side rail.

Then I match drilled all skin to substructure holes full size.

Before removing the skin to finish drilling the panel angles, I went ahead and installed the optional fwd access panel kit. I had ordered this a while back and was on the fence about whether it was worth it to actually install it. It brings up the possibility of water intrusion if it isn't sealed up right afterward, and i've seen some on completed airplanes that were bowed between mounting screws or didn't fit right because the holes were kind of a hack job.

After thinking about it a while, i decided that the access they afford during initial install was worth the potential downside, and if I was careful, I though that I could probably get a good result.

I just followed the kit instructions for the layout, cut the initial hole with an air nibbler, and then crept up on the cut line with a sanding drum in a dotco, then finished it by hand with a 1/2 round vixen file. It took about two hours to cut the holes and finish them to the tight tolerance I was shooting for, but the result was really nice.

I'm thinking about fabricating a .025 spacer to sandwich in there so the mounting ring will set a little lower and allow an extra .025 for a gasket formed out of pro seal (used per plan) or RTV. I'm thinking that not having enough gap in there is what causes the pooched appearance I'm trying to avoid, due to people cranking down on the screws and causing them to bow up between teh screws due to not having any room for sealer in there. I'm going to sleep on that idea and come back to this. As well as remove the skin and finish match drilling the lower angles.

  Sep 08, 2021     F-7103C-L&R - (1 hour) Category: Fuselage

Didn't have much time available today, so I just knocked out a couple of small things. Nothing really worthy of a picture.

Cut the majority of the threads off of the hardware store bolts that I had used in assembling the center section. Tomorrow I will grind down the remainder of the threaded end and burnish them to use as drift/rig pins for the initial wing mate, which will hopefully happen in about a week.

I also went ahead and installed nutplates on the F-7103C angles. As previously mentioned, I don't see how you can accurately locate the angles that attach the bottom corners of the panel to the fwd deck unless it's precisely located by being clecoed to the fwd skin, and that can't happen without these angles. I didn't have enough black clecos to pin this together through the holes for #8 screws, but a copper cleco with grab onto a #8 nut plate, so I installed the nutplates. That way I can have the panel in and out easily as I'm laying out the supporting brackets.

  Sep 07, 2021     F-7103C-L&R - (2 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Found out mid morning that my 92 year old uncle passed away last night. I'm 55 now, so my parents and their peer group are of the age where it seems like somebody is dying every week. That was on my mind, so I only accomplished a couple of relatively simple tasks, then spent the rest of the day on non-airplane stuff.

I fabricated the F-7103C-L&R angles and match drilled them to the panel per print 24. I took my time and crept up on the correct location and depth of fluting to get them to conform to the curve at the upper edge of the panel as closely as possible.

I also deburred the F-7103B-L&R attach angles. I can't find anywhere in the build instructions where it tells you to install these, but thinking thru it logically, I don't see how you can correctly locate the F-721B & C flanges that attach the base of the instrument panel to the canopy deck unless the bottom corners of the panel are positioned correctly fore/aft by being clecoed to the skin via these angles.

Also discovered that the F-7108B angle is sticking up past the rib/skin flange on it's aft end. Marked it for trimming later.

Next time I will re install the skin and hopefully finish up this sub-structure.

  Sep 01, 2021     Fwd Upper deck & sub panel - (5 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Clecoed the supporting structure together, including the F-7107 left right and center ribs. Fabricated and match drilled the F-7108B angle. Fabricated F-721C angle, F-721D & F-7108C angles and F-7109 plate. Match drilled F-7109 plate and F-7108B angle.

The instructions are extremely minimal at this point. In regard to the F-7108A fwd fuselage rib, they basically tell you to cleco it to the firewall, but neither the rib or the firewall are pilot drilled. I suspect this is because they substructure here is pretty different on the tip up vs slider canopy, so it wouldn't make much sense for them to punch holes in the firewall that is common to both models if they are only used on the slider.

So anyway- I pondered tis for a while to make sure I wasn't missing anything, and sure enough, a careful inspection of drawing 24 revealed that this rib has 6 rivets thru the flange & firewall, vs. 5 on the left and right ribs. No idea why, but you can clearly see 6 holes in the iso view top right of print 24.

So, I laid out and drilled 6 holes in the rib flange to #40, then installed and clecoed everything together including the skin to ensure that it was all located properly. I stood on my head under the panel the measured and referenced about a million times to make sure the fwd end was plumb on the firewall, then match drilled the top hole with a 90* drill and clamped the bottom through the firewall cutout.

Removed the skin and match drilled the firewall to the other holes. due to the angle at the bottom of the rib, I wasn't able to get to the lowest hole with the angle drill, but I was able to get it by flexing a 12" drill bit around the lower flange.

Once all 6 holes were drilled to #40, it was a simple matter to final size them from the forward side of the firewall with a #30 bit in a standard air drill.

FYI- I see a lot of people complaining about how hard it is to wrangle the fwd skin into place to get clecos installed, and they are not wrong. I fell back on a trick I learned in the Cessna factory and threw a couple of ratchet straps around the whole thing to encourage it into place. basically, got as many clecos in as I could, then pulled the straps moderately tight, NOT SKIN DESTROYING TIGHT then started on the aft end and put a cleco in every hole along the longerons. Doing it this way made it cake.

  Jul 25, 2021     finished tailcone riveting - (1 hour)       Category: Fuselage

Kriya was home and available today, so we went to church this morning and then when we got home I threw on some shop clothes and got into the baggage compartment to buck the last of the tailcone rivets. I'm happy to say that this is the furthest I've had to get into the tailcone to date. Basically just shoulders deep in order to get a bucking bar on the about 10 longeron rivets on each side and the skin to bulkhead rivets around the sides on the F-707 bulkhead. Kriya once again shot like a boss and I bucked.

  Jul 23, 2021     Fuel boost pump - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

I think I may have line of sight to how I want to install the EFII boost pump. After looking at a ton of installation pictures online, I've decided to try to flat pack this. I believe that I can position this so that I will only need to raise the tunnel maybe 2" which will hopefully allow me to still have a fire extinguisher mount and maybe even a cup holder on top. This will likely take several days to mock up and implement. Hope it works!

  Jul 22, 2021     seat belt anchors - (1 hour)       Category: Fuselage

In my quest to not have to crawl back into then tailcone, I needed a couple of long handled wrenches to tighten the seat belt anchors. This was solved simply by taping the appropriate combination wrench to a length of PVC.

Didn't get any pix in action, but I was able to permanently install the mounts and cables with this setup by leaning over the side of the baggage compartment.

  Jul 21, 2021     Fwd Upper tailcone skin - (7 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Riveted everything on the f-7112 skin that I can reach solo. My arms aren't quite long enough to do them all. What you see Clecos sticking out of is what I need a rivet partner for. Also, at the top of the F-6111 skin reinforcement channels it gets too tight to get in there with any of my normal bucking bars. I've got one that I think will fit, but it's not something that I want to try solo, so I'm holding off for those as well. Hopefully we'll be able to get that finished up this weekend when Kriya comes back from a work trip

  Jul 19, 2021     Fwd upper tailcone skin - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

The order that you rivet the fwd upper tailcone skin to the substructure is critical. There is a rivet at the aft centerline that has to be shot before you install the rib, otherwise theres no way to buck it. It's so tight in there that I don't really see a way to even get a blind rivet in there if you do it in the wrong order. I shot about 6 or so rivets along the skin seam, then installed the rib.

All went well except I goofed up one of the -4 rivets that are common to the F-707 clip and the fuselage frame. I tried to squeeze it and clenched the tail. Of course, the second rivet was worse, so I cried uncle before I made it worse and installed a cherry in that location. I shot the other one and it went fine.

  Jul 17, 2021     Aft upper fuselage skin - (6 hours)       Category: Fuselage

I think I've got provisions for everything run in the tailcone which is important, because I have zero interest in crawling back in there after the fact. So I'm excited to say that now is the time to close up the tailcone! I was able to reach 90% of the rivets on the aft skin by myself, and Kriya shot the rest while I stretched and was able to get my tungsten bar on the back side by standing on a stool and leaning over the longhorns with my head stuck back in the tail.

  Jul 16, 2021     Fuel boost pump & ELT coax - (6 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Been a while since my last entry. In the interim, Kriya and I spent a week on vacation in Colorado, then a second week at Table Rock shopping for a vacation house. We sold our house in Scottsdale and this one will do double duty as a vacation house for the family and a crash pad for me to stay at when I go down there to visit my folks. My mom has broken her second hip 10 months after the first and has transitioned from rehab to long term care. I'll be going down there frequently to visit with her and support my dad however I can.

Back to the plane;
I elected to go with the EFII fuel pump based on recommendations from VAF. The plumbing is a lot simpler than the van's supplied unit, with only a few simple plumbing lines and a minimal amount of fittings. Less of that stuff is better, and to quote a friend of mine "the Vans fuel pump plumbing looks like a french horn"

Unfortunately, simpler in design doesn't always mean simpler to implement. I've got an idea of how I want to mount this and route lines, but the tube bender I've had in my handyman plumbing box for 30 years is incapable of making a tight enough 180* bend, plus it tends to mar the soft 3003 tubing. I've ordered a fancy tube bender from Spruce, so will circle back to this in a few days.

Once I failed at bending fuel lines, I went back to the ELT installation. I have elected to go with the shorter ELT antenna under the aft intersection fairing between the horizontal & vertical. People report good results with this location, but it's not without controversy.

The ELT manual says the antenna should be oriented vertically. but it also has minimum separation requirements from other antennas. The Garmin manual has even greater separation requirements. The RV7 can't practically accomplish both of these, and I'd rather have good antenna separation because I need those comms to work on every flight. Besides, it seems like in most off field landings, the RV7 stands a pretty good chance of ending up on it's back, so it seems like an ELT antenna on the top of the tailcone is a real crap shoot in an actual crash, compared to a C172 or something where it stands a pretty good chance of staying upright.

By putting the antenna all the way back there, the coax that came with it is about a foot too short, so I made up a new one the correct length. Was going to route it down the sidewall above the middle J channels with tie wraps, but I wasn't happy with the transitions around the bulkheads not potentially chaffing, so I elected to run them through the bulkhead pass throughs previously drilled in the floor.

People are quick to point out that you shouldn't run this cable through frames because of the potential for it to get severed in a crash. While I understand the concept, I think having it protected from chaffing on a daily basis is more important. Plus, the advisory circular that deals with ELT installations (AC91-44A) doesn't actually say anything about routing through bulkheads, but it does say tons of other stuff that people violate on a regular basis. It's all a tradeoff and this is the tradeoff I've elected to make. If it doesn't ops check okay then I'll do something else, but at this point, I'm pretty happy.

  Jun 24, 2021     skins, elt mount etc. - (2 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Clecoed the aft upper tailcone skin back on, but haven't started riveting it yet. I'm putting it off because I really don't want to put a doubler in it and a big ugly ELT antenna sticking up back there.

I made a mistake when I ordered this ELT. Spruce had 2 different versions and I ordered the one that was about $100 cheaper. Turns out the difference between the two is a honking 24" antenna vs. the 15" one that comes with the more expensive Compact ELT kit.

I called Dodson Salvage up the road and they had the shorter 110-773 antenna on a wreck, so they are sending it to me and I'll mock it up to see how obnoxious it looks sticking up on the tailcone.

Even if it looks okay, an RV with a slider canopy isn't physically big enough to meet the antenna separation requirements for 2 garmin comms and an elt. Lots of guys have put the elt antenna laterally in the empennage intersection fairing, which doesn't meed the criteria in the installation instructions for being vertical, but does meet the 32" min separation from a top mounted comm antenna that's called out in the artex manual.

Seems like at this point in the project I'm agonizing for hours or days over decisions that only take a few minutes to implement. I've got to get over that tendency if I want to continue to move forward.

Also, big news yesterday; Vans started crating my finish kit!

The hole pattern in the vans ELT mount doesn't match the hole pattern in the Artex mount. I was only able to pick up one nut plate that I had installed prior to riveting that mount into the tailcone. So the only actual manufacturing work that went on today was to match drill the Vans mount to the holes already existing in the Artex plate. Tomorrow I'm going to have to either try to fish nuts back behind there or figure some way to get nut plates attached behind the holes taht are circled in sharpie in the attached picture.. That will be a head scratcher which may require drilling out some rivets.

If you're using this setup, do yourself a favor and match drill all that before you install the vans kit in the tailcone. They say their nut plate pattern matches common ELT brackets, but the Artex 345 evidently isn't one of them.

EDIT: This is me from the future. Look at the entries for June 16th and June 29th 2022 for a couple of gotchas I didn't know about.

  Jun 22, 2021     tailcone wire runs & static lines - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Last night I glued in some wire tie bases for tailcone wiring. I don't trust the double side tape they come with, so I used E6000 glue as well. Today I routed and secured wiring for the elevator trim and tail nav. I also installed some conduit and a pull string for subsequent magnetometer of whatever. This way I can keep the power wires for the trim and lights away from the signal wires for the magnetometer. My other goal is to never have to crawl back in that tailcone once the upper skins are done.

Also installed the static ports and plumbing up to the baggage bulkhead. No surprises, although I'm not really crazy about the push on connectors that come in the stein aire kit. I may just go to the hardware store and get some brass barbs to use instead. Will sleep on it before I make a final decision.

  Jun 17, 2021     Fuse skins & random stuff continued - (10 hours)       Category: Fuselage

This week I've been busy and only working in short spurts over several days.

Finished the flap actuator installation, prepped primed and dimpled the upper tailcone skins, pulled the rudder cables, and probably a couple of other things I can't remember right now.

Leaving this afternoon to Branson Mo for some family business. I grew up down there and I think I've already mentioned that my folks still live on the farm. Unfortunately, my mom is in the hospital with her second broken hip in 11 months, and is transitioning to a nursing home, at least for a while, so I'm going down to help with that process and to lend some emotional support to my 90 year old dad.

Flying down in a brand new C-172, and by brand new I mean it had 6 hours on the Tach when I got it. Nice to fly new stuff, but a sad trip nonetheless.

Once I prepped the tailcone skins I peeled the blue vinyl off of them and discovered a ripple in the F-2117 fwd skin. It's not really a dent, so I didn't notice it until I got the blue stuff off, but the distortion is very noticeable if the light is right. This is a huge bummer, and I've though for several days about just using it as is and counting on paint to hide it.

Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that since it's not riveted on yet, it's only the cost of a new skin and a few hours of prep work to make it right, so I'll order a new one from Vans on Monday. The bummer is that I think it was likely this way due to shipping damage out of the box, and I just didn't see it when I unpacked.

The other news is that we've just contracted to buy a different house. The market is crazy right now, so we're hoping to get top dollar where we live now, and are moving into a "better deal" that is on a golf course with a pool, two things that teh fam wants.

What this means for teh RV is that I have to get it in a shape to transport about a mile and move the airplane factory as well. I've rented part of a shared hangar about 10 miles away that we'll move the wings to, but I'd like to take the fuse to the new house, where it will still be convenient to work on. The engine and finish kit should be showing up within the next month or two as well.

Lots of stuff happening in the next few weeks!

  Jun 07, 2021     Flap actuator assy - (5 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Continued working on this assembly. Got all the sheet metal finished, painted and nutplates installed. It really doesn't look like much, considering how long it took, but there is a lot of on & off and some head scratching to get it all to fit right.

Case in point, The thru bolt that comes in the hardware in the electric flap kit is way too long. This seems to be a common theme with this sub-kit, because there are a couple of other parts in there that they specifically tell you to not use because they have been superseded. The callout on the print is for a AN4-16 bolt, so I rummaged around for a while and found one, but when I did a trial fit of the actuator in the channel I discovered the threads on the AN bolt were riding inside the F-766B angle, like the bolt wasn't long enough.

Went back to the print and finally discovered that the hole in the F-766A channel gets drilled out to 5/8" so the bolt head sits down in it and rides just on the F-766C plate. Drilled out the 4 rivets that hold that plate in, upsized that hole and sure enough, that made the difference. the threads on the bolt are now appropriately out of the angle.

Installed all the nutplates for this assembly. Soee of the structure here is pretty thin stuff, so instead of countersinking for oops rivets to hold the nutplates on, I went ahead and took the time to dimple everything, including nutplates.

It's all pretty much ready to go together except for 3 rivets that attach the F-767 Plate to the F-766A actuator channel. I can't find a rivet callout to tell me whether these should be flush or pan head rivets. Seems like they should be pan head, because thats the callout for the rivets that hold on the F-766B angle in the same general vicinity, but I put a call out on VAF to see what most people are doing here.

  Jun 04, 2021     Flap system - (2 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Still didn't feel great today, but got in a couple of hours of simple stuff. Located the flap center block and notched out the tunnel cover as required, but I haven't drilled it to the floor yet. Also fabricated angles, braces & other tidbits for the flap actuator system.

  Jun 03, 2021     Started working on flap system - (2 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Really don't feel very good today. The kids both have colds, and today I started getting the same crud. Because of that, I only spent a couple of hours in the shop.

Reamed the clevis holes for the flap actuator tube. The plans say to drill these to 1/4" but Thats usually kind of sloppy for a -4 bolt, so I reamed them to .2495 and that's plenty big.

Cut the center bearing block to size and drilled the mounting holes per plan. Note, this delrin block was about 3/8" too long as shipped and the bolt holes are laid out referencing a dimension from each end. If you layout the bolt holes before you trim this to the right size, one of them will be in the wrong place. You can see in the picture below how much I had to trim off of the long end.

Drilled the safety wire hole in the end of the actuator. Somebody discovered that if the jamb nut comes loose on the helm joint, there is the potential for it to unscrew itself and come apart completely. The service letter fix is to drill a hole at an angle through the end of the actuator rod end cap and safety wire it as a sort of belt and suspenders approach. The smallest drill bit I has on hand was a #50, which is pretty big for safety wire, so I ran down to the yard store and picked up a couple of #60, which will handle .032 safety wire easily.

  Jun 02, 2021     cabin tunnel cover, fuel valve cover - (7 hours)       Category: Fuselage

started fitting the fwd tunnel cover. Instructions suggest cutting wooden spacers 15/16" to make sure you don't push it down to far between the floor stringers. After scrounging around the shop for a few minutes I discovered that a 1" wide roll of 3M blue tape is exactly 15/16" wide. Busted open a pack and used several rolls as spacers. At this point, everything is just clecoed together, because I've ordered a EFII boost pump and will have to play around with this cover to figure out the best way to mount it and may need to adjust where the hole & nut plate callouts are.

Really cool to see the cockpit coming together, even if I know that a lot of it will have to come apart again.

I also riveted the sides of the firewall recess closeout. I never could find on the print where is says which side the flush head goes on. I looked online and couldn't find enough detail in anyone else's build log to determine what they had done, but it seems like it would have to go on the cabin side to prevent potential clearance problems with firewall angles and the side flanges of the heater diffuser, so that's the way I oriented them.

  Jun 01, 2021     Installed stick linkage, gussets, fwd floors - (6 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Had to tape a couple of wrenches together to get the nuts started on the lower bolts, but decided that at this point there was no reason not to install the control stick assy.

Also installed the gussets just fwd of the spar in preparation for the fwd covers. Installed some nut plates etc. and temporarily installed the fwd floor. & prepped the center tunnel cover & heat diffuser.

  May 26, 2021     Primed fwd floors, boot rings, & tunnel cover. - (3 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Like the title says- deburred, prepped, & primed.

  May 25, 2021     Tunnel cover, Center cabin cover, & stick boot rings - (7 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Fabricated the F-741 Tunnel Cover, then match drilled and bent the louvers on the F-782C center cabin cover assy. That thing has a ton of nooks and crannies, so it took a long time to smooth the edges. Only primed the part that will show after carpet is down.

I also fabricated the stick rings from .032 stock per print. Didn't get quite done before I ran out of time today.

  May 23, 2021     Nutplates, etc. - (3 hours)       Category: Fuselage

I had jury duty last week and it ended being a pretty serious case. Didn't have a lot of extra time to work on the plane, and honestly, my head wasn't in it. I worked 10 minutes here and 15 minutes there and finished installing the nut plates common to teh cockpit floors and the tunnel covers.

On Saturday, my flying club had an event at the "Doc" hangar at ICT, so Kriya and I spent a couple of hours over there. If you ever have a reason to swing by Wichita, I highly recommend it. Connected with a guy thats building an RV out at Lake Waltana as well, and I'm hoping to lend a hand when he mates the wing, since he'll be there before me.

  May 14, 2021     Antenna Doubler - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Finally bit the bullet and decided that I'm going to install the com antennas in tandem with the fwd 1 just right of the tunnel, 6" aft of the spar carry through.

Once the decision was made, I bent up a .032" doubler out of some scrap I had, and made a template for the hole spacing of the delta pop antennas. Tied the doubler into a floor rib with some LP4 rivets, and attached it to the belly skin with 4 MK-319-BS blind rivets. I could have gone crazy with a bunch of driven rivets, but since I was by myself and wanted to get this done before I left town again for a few days, I elected to just go with 4 holes that I dimpled with my pop rivet dies and pulled the blind rivets just to tie everything together. The antenna mounts via a couple of studs and nuts, so that will give significant clamping force right at the antenna base and I don't think it really needs any more rivets than this.

This all took a lot longer than it really should have, but in the end, it turned out nice.

  May 13, 2021     Aft Seat pans - (5 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Fabricated and installed piano hinge on seat pans per plan. The details for this are on print 29 and there are about a hundred different dimensions called out for everything from where to trim eyelets, to the hole pattern. Lateral position of these isn't super critical, but fore & aft placement needs to be pretty precise. The furthest aft one picks up a couple of holes that are common to the floor ribs. Just a little too far forward or back and you would run into edge distance problems on the hinge at those holes.

Also match drilled for nut plates common to the center tunnel ribs. Previously I've used oops rivets for nut plates, but this center tunnel seems like it's kind of a big deal structurally, so I like the idea of that being as strong a joint as possible, so just like in the baggage area, I dimpled everything and will dimple the ears of the nut plates that go on the back side of the stackup.

  May 12, 2021     Baggage bulkhead, tunnel cover, & fwd side panels - (8 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Installed all the nut plates for the aft baggage bulkheads. I've been using oops rivets to install nut plates, but the F-706 frame is only .025" so I ended up dimpling them, as well as the 18 or so nut plates around the perimeter. I did go ahead and use countersunk oops rivets for the 3 nut plates through the F728A bellcrank channel. Dimpling all that stuff took forever, but it turned out nice.

The tunnel cover holes common to the baggage floor/ribs seem to be slightly mislocated fwd by about 1/16". I thought that this might be an issue after a trial fit last night. I had looked around on VAF and several other people had the same issue. The suggestion on that front was to re-bend the aft flange, and then slot the 2 holes in the vertical flange common to the baggage bulkhead since that would cause them to be off. I don't have a decent break here at home, so I'm not confident I could flatten this thing out and rebend it with decent results.

I tried slipping the vertical flange behind the bulkhead, instead of in front of it, and that gained enough to make it fit, but it still wasn't quite right, and if I put it together that way, it means that I can't get the tunnel cover off without first removing the lower aft baggage bulkhead, which seems like a hassle.

I called Vans to see what they suggested and Sterling said it's not structural so just go ahead and oblong the holes to make it fit. I'm not thrilled with how this turned out, so I may just remake this from scratch at some point.

Fit the fwd baggage side panels, including trimming the top, priming, installing all nut plates, and fabricating the optional tie down ring storage on the pilot side. I accomplished this by drilling and tapping a piece of 1/4" bar I had laying around, then match drilling and riveting it inside the upper surface of the L/H fwd baggage side cover per the suggestion on print 29.

  May 11, 2021     Aft bulkhead work - (5 hours) Category: Fuselage

Finished both upper and lower baggage bulkhead pieces, Including fabricating and match drilling the plastic blocks that the shoulder belt cables feed through. Drilled for all nut plates on the panels and the fuselage frame. Then prepped and primed the closeout panels.

Didn't get any pix today, but nothing special to photograph anyway. Will install nut plates next time and move onto the next thing.

  May 10, 2021     rudder cable fairings - (18 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Well, the house in SDL sold in less than 24 hours. That meant that I was here for less than a week before I U-turned back out there and cleared all the furniture out, prepped the car, took stuff To Holly in Tucson, and cleared out. I was there for 8 days doing all that, Then when I got back I had stuff here that I had to catch up on, so it seems like I haven't worked on the RV in forever.

While I was there, I was able to visit Darwin Berrie and see his RV7. Absolutely beautiful airplane, and it confirmed the decision to not put steps on my 7. It's a big step, up onto the wing, but not unreasonable.

Darwin also installed an IO390, so I was able to look it over closely and take some pictures and get some tips from him which hopefully will come in handy when I get to the FWF stuff.

Anyway, back at it!

This entry represents a bunch of short sessions and one long one today. Last week after I returned to Kansas, I primed the floor pans, baggage side panels, trimmed and match drilled the rudder cable fairings (but won't rivet them until later) and took care of a few other small jobs, Just trying to get back into the saddle. I painted the seat backs with rustoleum hammered pewter textured paint and got some splotches on one so I ended up stripping it off and repainting it. They turned out ok, but I don't think I'm going to use that stuff on anything else. I'm just going to stick with gray primer inside for now.

Today I installed the aft baggage side walls, baggage floor, and trimmed to fit then match drilled the aft baggage lower and upper corrugated panels. The lower was easy because It was already drilled so all I had to do was cleco along the bottom edge and then match drill up the sides.

The upper requires trimming to match the upper curvature of the bulkhead, and the print calls for an 8.5" radius. I don't have a set of calipers or compass that big, so I made one out of a ruler with a sharpie and a toothpick taped an appropriate distance apart.

Trimmed to fit, then laid out the hole pattern per print 29, and pilot drilled to #40. Match drilled the baggage bulkhead and clecoed everything together. Will need to upsize for the #8 nut plates and cutout for the seatbelt cables next.

Side note- Sorry for the cruddy picture quality. I got a new phone a while back and my old life proof case doesn't fit. I got a new case from amazon and it's pretty much bullet proof, but it causes the pictures to be fuzzy. I'm evidently going to have to spend the bucks for a new life proof case if I want good quality pix again.

  Apr 23, 2021     baggage floor conduit - (3 hours)       Category: Fuselage

I had a trip to Missouri to see my folks recently and then a trip to Scottsdale. The housing market is so hot out there right now that we made the decision to sell out home there and I spend about a week getting it ready for showings then putting it on the market. It went on the market about 4 pm last Tuesday and on Wednesday we had 6 showings and two offers. Crazy! Now that it's selling, I'm headed back out there tonight to spend about 10 days or so getting rid of the furniture etc.

While I was there last week, I connected with another RV builder, Alex Hardt. He and his wife are also building an RV7 and are a little further along than I am. It was really cool to spend the evening talking airplanes and I look forward to running into him again in the future.

With all that going on, I haven't been working on the plane much, but in addition to that stuff, I've honestly just had some analysis paralysis. The next step is to close out the baggage side walls and floors, and before doing that, I needed to lock down antenna placement, and conflicting wire runs, and if I'm going to install steps.

Opinions are divided on steps. There are those who say it's stupid to put them on a taildragger, and those who say it's a big step up onto the wing without them, especially as you get older. Those who have installed them have typically shortened them by about 4". Knowing this, I ordered a set of steps with the fuse kit with the intent of having a welder shorten them, but after talking to a couple of weld shops, including the one who Cessna sub contracted with to build the steps for the TTX, tI have a concern about them either cracking over time or being beefed up enough to not crack, but having an unsightly bead at the splice.

I've prepped the baggage ribs for steps by trimming appropriately during that phase, but think at this point I'm going to just put a soft rivet in the index hole in the skin and move on. If I decide in the future that it's a hassle to not have them, I can always drill off the baggage floors and install them later.

On the subject of antenna; Tons of RV's out there have both com antenna on the bottom, side by side basically at the main wing spar. Guys will tell you they have good luck with this location, but I have some concerns about the signal being blocked while on ground or clearance or whatever, and I've had a couple of avionics guys, including one who is a former Garmin systems engineer who now runs teh avionics shop at Lees Summit, tell me that with the 10w transmitters that I'm buying, I'll almost certainly have xmit bleedover if the com antennas are less than about 4' apart. Garmin says the min line of sight distance should be more like 8' which is clearly impossible on something as small as an RV7, but that it can be less if they aren't line of site i.e. one on top and one on bottom.

I hate the idea of a com antenna on top, because they're ugly, but I don't want to create operational problems either just because I'm trying to make it pretty. Right now Plan A is to put them in tandem on the bottom per the installation drawing on the SteinAir website, with one on the centerline just aft of the main spar and one on the centerline in the tailbone about 4' aft. Plan B is to stick with the fwd bottom location, but move the second one to the upper tailcone aft of the slider rail.

Both of those options require a similar cable run, so I think I've got a plan for now. There are provisions per Vans to drill a couple more access holes for wiring in the F-705 bulkhead, and I see that lots of people have run conduit under the baggage floor so I decided to do the same.

The conduit that I have on hand from Vans is sized fro a 3/4' hole, which seem like overkill for what I want, so I went with 5/8' holes and some 1/2' conduit that I sourced locally. I also added a couple of .032' doubled at the penetrations through the F-706 because it's only .025" and I'm more comfortable if it's beefed back up there a little bit. Even though Vans has previously told people that extra holes there are fine, I'll sleep better knowing that I stuck some beefy doublers in there.

I stuck some wire tie mounts down and ensured that they were going to stay stuck by supplementing the 3m tape already on them with a dollop of pro seal at each, then wire tied the conduit so it's not just a free space run between bulkheads.

Now, I'm comfortable buttoning the baggage floor up and in the future when I run wiring and other systems, I have the option of both sides of the tunnel as well as these two conduit runs. I can't imagine that won't be enough places to stick wires through.

  Apr 07, 2021     F-787 Stiffener & F-6111 skin reinforcing ribs - (6 hours)       Category: Fuselage

The F-787 Stiffener web is pretty straightforward, but the clip that ties it into the F-707 bulkhead is supposed to have a hole predrilled the you fabricate it, and it seems like if you dislocate it even slightly it would throw off the pre-drilled holes that match up with the skin. I clecoed it to the F-706 bulkhead and without the skin in place, it was pretty wobbly. Installed the fwd skin with enough of the left side unchecked that I could reach under and match drill the clip in place.

Match drilled all holes in skin.

The next section of the plans deals with the F-6111 skin reinforcements, and are extremely vague. something like" trim to fit, you will have to twist to match contour and maybe flute."

At first these look like they are way too long, but it turns out that they don't need to be trimmed for length at all. Just have the outboard flange trimmed to match the angle of the longeron on the bottom and the F-706 on the top end. My process was to mark a centerline on the outer flange, trim the bottom flange to the correct angle, then drill and cleco the lowest hole. I then started trimming the top end of the outer flange a little bit at a time. Once I saw teh centerline through rivet holes I knew I was done. Match drilled and clecoed.

Took me probably a couple of hours to figure out how to do this and to creep up on the trimming, but if I had it to do over, I could knock these out in about 20 minutes. It's that easy, once you understand where to trim.

  Apr 06, 2021     F-786A Fuselage Stiffeners - (3 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Fabricated these stiffeners and match drilled upper skins. I kind of went out of order here and match drilled these all the way to the front to make sure everything fit together correctly. I'll go back next time and work on the F-787 & F-788

  Apr 05, 2021     Aileron bellcrank & bulkhead gussets - (5 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Assembled the aileron bell crank. The dimension for the spacers on each side of this were more of a starting point than a finished size. Did a lot of trial fitting and taking off a few thousandths at a time by chucking the spacers up in a drill press and sanding the end on some 100 grit sandpaper. very time consuming, but in the end they came out perfectly.

The gussets you can see in the pix below seem simple enough, but the challenge is that there's enough flex in the bulkhead tabs that it would be easy to adjust them far enough fore/aft that the holes in the bulkheads wouldn't line up with the upper skins. My fix for this was to cleco the upper skins in place and then clamp these with some vice grip clamps, then uncleco the skins enough to get in there with a 90* drill motor and match drill.

  Mar 30, 2021     Fuselage decks, elevator bell crank support, baggage bulkhead, seat belt anchors - (6 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Lots of stuff today- My AN426AD3-5 rivets came in today so I was able to finish the deck rivets, including the really hard to buck ones. I'm including a picture below of the 3 bucking bars that I had to use. It can be done!

Riveted the elevator bell crank support. The number escapes me right now Was it F-708? something like that. Anyway, one potential problem to look out for. The upper 4 rivets that are common to the cargo bulkhead need to be dimpled. I hadn't accomplished this yet. OOPs! fortunately, the two layers were both thin enough that I was able to dimple them as a stack with a hand squeezer. Came out okay.

Also laid out, the seat belt anchors. seems like it is a strange order but it was in teh plans to do it now so I just knocked them out.

  Mar 29, 2021     F-695 Gussets - (3 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Match drilled the F-695 Gussets. I also had to trim the fwd edge a little bit to get it to match the angle of the firewall better and increase teh angle of the bend to get it to lay flat.

I was super careful to lay these out because of edge distance concerns on multiple layers. The 10 fwd holes along the long edge pick up the steel engine mount bracket as well, and on the right side I actually was almost too conservative with this. The 11th rivet back was so close to the aft end of the steel bracket that it was going to be difficult to get a good shop head.

Since I had edge distance to spare in that direction, I slipped a steel putty knife behind the bracket to protect the longeron and carved out a relief for the rivet tail with a rotary file on a dotco. went slow and checked several times to make sure it was going according to plan. Turned out fine. I adjusted teh layout on teh other side so that this wasn't an issue.

Match drilled and riveted. Most could be squeezed, but the fwd couple on the long leg needed to be shot. These are AN470AD4-7 rivets, so they take more grunt to set than my favorite tungsten bucking bar could handle, so I went into the drawer 'o bars and came up with a honking big steel bar that weighs a couple of pounds and set them nicely.

  Mar 26, 2021     Work on the cockpit decks - (5 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Match drilled the F-721A left and right canopy deck. Then countersunk the F-718 Longerons, dimpled the canopy decks, etc. It's obvious that once these are installed it gets real tight for a bucking bar where the two join together so it made sense to install the 2 rivets that join these pieces together on the bench. Then I clecoed them to the longerons as a unit without problem. I then started shooting rivets and was able to get to most areas with a small tungsten bucking bar, but I ran out of AN426AD3-5 rivets.

I can't imagine why I don't have more of these. Vans gives you tons of rivets, and this is the first time I've ever ran out of a specific size. I spent about an hour tossing the shop, thinking that there must be another bag that I had overlooked, but no joy. I called Airparts thinking I would just run across town for more, but they don't have them in stock in ICT and are getting them from the Florida store, allegedly to be here on Monday.

At some point, I realized I had misread the slider canopy detail on drawing 25. Turns out there are 3 AN426AD4 rivets aft of the seatback crossbar common to the F-718 longeron and the F-757 plate. I drilled these holes and used a chip chaser to clean out burrs between the layers, and was able to reach them all with a squeezer.

  Mar 25, 2021     seatback crossbar, gussets, cockpit decks - (8 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Lots of work accomplished today! I had planned to install the "Almost a 14" mod during assembly, but the challenge I have is that on a slider it attaches through bolt holes that hold the canopy blocks. Since those don't get located until much later, There isn't any way to attach the Anti-splat crossbar at this time.

My options were to leave the factory crossbar clecoed in and work around it, or fall back to plan B. When I look at how this all fits together, it's evident that the big F-757-S gussets that cap each end of the crossbar and tie it into the longerons create a ton of torsional stiffness. Looking at the Antisplat installation, it moved the crossbar aft about 3 inches and all those stresses are cantilevered on one end of the bar, instead of being spread out. I'm not sure how I feel about this...

Long story short, I ended up just riveting in the factory crossbar and associated other stuff per print. I'm going to fly it this way for a while and if I decide that I absolutely must have the mod, the hardware is on the shelf.

Regarding the F-757-S plate, I'm building a slider, so the front end gets a big 2" radius carved out of it. I thought about trying to lay this out with a compass or something, but after looking around the shop for a few minutes, I found a roll of tape that was the correct radius and just traced it out. Rough cut on my band saw and then finished them off with a 1/2 round vixen file.

Also did a lot of riveting today. The plans get pretty spotty here about what order makes sense, but thinking through it, I ended up counting rivet holes on the upper skins to see where they stop overlapping the F-770 skins front and back. Once I had that clear, I riveted the F-770 to the longeron in the cockpit area. There are going to be a couple of rivets just fwd of the F-704 bulkhead that are going to be a bear to buck once the canopy decks are permanently installed, but I don't see any other way to maki it happen. They pretty much have to be done in that order.

I also match drilled The F-721A to the longerons, deburred and primed.

  Mar 24, 2021     riveted aft deck - (7 hours)       Category: Fuselage

fabricated a new F-7-14d elevator stop. I started with some oversized stock, and basically just made it to a width that would allow me to have good edge distance everywhere and then cut it down to size after that. It ended up being about 1/4" wiser than other one. I suppose I could have gotten away with only about 1/8" wider, but this one makes me a little more comfortable.

I simulated the aft V/S/ spar by clamping a piece of big angle to the F-712 bulkhead and used that to position the rudder stop before match drilling through aft deck and longerons, all good.

While I was in fabrication mode, I went ahead and made the rudder stops called out on drawing 27A. I didn't rivet them to the tailcone, because I don't have a lot of confidence they are correctly sized.

I also dimpled and installed nut plates on the elevator horn closeouts on both sides of the tailcone

Riveted the aft deck to the tailcone.

After riveting was complete, I checked again for twist. Don't know what I would have done if I had found any, but thankfully, it's exactly where it was pre-riveting i.e. between 0 & 0.2* deviation when compared to a straight edge across the fuse at F-704.

  Mar 23, 2021     Aft Deck, SL000-14 Tailcone Stiffener, prep work - (7 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Lots of details over the last couple of days. Rain was in the forecast for the first part of this week, And as I've mentioned, I take my bench grinder with 3m wheels outside for big jobs to try and keep aluminum dust out often shop. So, on Sunday (2 days ago) I finished the edged on a bunch of gussets, seat belt anchors, etc. I also fabricated the spacers and elevator stops required for the aft deck.

Yesterday, I finished riveting some misc. stuff on the aft tailcone, so now it's done up to the longerons, except for the rudder stops.

Today, I finished match drilling the aft deck to the F-710 & F-711 bulkheads and associated spacers. The main longerons were sticking out about 1/16" aft of the F-712 bulkhead, so I filed them down by hand to prevent any potential interference with the aft V/S spar on down the road.

I was going to rivet this all together today, but I'm not real happy with the edge distance on the F-712D elevator stop to longeron interface. I made the stop to print, and the bolt holes common to to longerons are a little too far inbd for my liking. I'm going to remake this part a little wider so that I can get the bolt holes in the center of the longeron horizontal leg. 1/4" should do it. Thats a job for tomorrow.

"birddog486" reached out to me on VAF and reminded me that if I was going to do SL-00014 Tailcone Stiffiner, it was a lot easier to accomplish this prior to riveting on the aft deck. I had this kit on the shelf, so I went ahead and completed it.

The only hassle was having to dimple new rivet holes where a squeezer wouldn't reach. I've never been able to get a good result with the Cleveland pop rivet dimple set, so I took some time and fabricated a setup so that I can dimple with a rivet gun on low pressure. Nothing complicated about it, just a piece of brass round stock with a hole drilled in the end to accept a dimple die, and a matching setup in the end of a beat up brass tip set that I've had in my tool box for a while.

  Mar 20, 2021     Edge distance on Longerons at F-711 bulkhead. - (2 hours)       Category: Fuselage

This has a happy ending, but I'm including it here, and probably on VAF as well, so that I can have written documentation saved as a reminder to myself of where the engineering coverage for this came from. Also, when I noticed it, I did a ton of searching on line for info, and while I found lots of pictures in build logs where others have has seemingly the same issue, I really couldn't find any other info. So hopefully, posting it in my build log will help somebody in the future if they run into the same issue.

Basically, the pilot holes in the aft deck that are just forward of the notches for the vertical bars are more inboard that all the rest of that row. There are some clearance issues and the need to mate up with underlying angle that cause them to need to be that way, but it causes a potential problem with edge distance on the main longeron.

A couple of posts ago I drilled the back deck and it came out great as far as twist etc. But I could see that I had shy e.d. on this hole on one side, or maybe both. Everybody uses 2d as a rule of thumb for edge distance, but if you look at the mil spec, it's quite a bit less than that. For an AN470AD4 rivet, the minimum from the center of the hole is actually .219. Subtract 1/2d from that and you get .1565" from the edge of the hole as a minimum.

I measure this with a mic. and discovered that on the port side I was .176" which falls within the mil-spec, but on the starboard side, I was at an unsettling .1485" This is a ridiculously small deviation of .008" below Mil-Spec.

According to my arithmetic, even if you split the difference precisely, you would have both sides falling within the mil spec by a microscopic .006" For me it would be pretty much impossible to hold that kind of tolerance outside of a machine shop.

People treat that mil-spec like it came down from the mountain on stone tablets, but much like 43.13, it's always just been generic guidance for when the manufacturer doesn't give specific guidance. There are quite a few places on this project where it's impossible to meet mil spec numbers if built per print and thats fine. That happens on certified airplanes as well. The print is approved engineering data that overrules the generic industry standards, but the key is, there has to be approved data to make that work, otherwise you fall back on 43.13 or a mil-spec for guidance.

However, in this case, the print doesn't give actual dimensional callouts of this area, so I reached out to Vans to get written engineering coverage for this. The correspondence with Vans is below.

"Hi Terry

At this point on the longeron short edge distance is not a problem as just aft of this rivet hole you have a large notch for the vertical bars. What you have is acceptable for this location.

Sterling

From: Terry Shortt
Sent: Friday, March 19, 2021 6:38 AM
To: Support
Subject: Longeron edge distance question @ F-714 aft deck- looking for a sanity check

Good morning Guys,

Drilled the aft deck yesterday and while I have good e.d. on the F-711D Angle, the #30 hole just fwd of the starboard F-711 vertical bar is a little shy on the longeron. The pre-punched holes in the F-714 aft deck are a little more inbd there than the rest of the row, and I didn't really think about it at the time. After match drilling, the e.d. came up to be .148”. If my arithmetic is correct, this is about .009 below min ED per Mil-Spec. call it .010 for good measure.

The one on the port side came out at about .165” so I really don't know what I could have done differently other than pull the pilot holes outbd a little bit. Even if I had readjusted the F-714 to split the difference and had machine shop precision, there is only a few thousandths to play with there. My longerons are just that distance apart.

Please let me know your thoughts.

Terry"

  Mar 19, 2021     Shims & elevator stops. - (3 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Stuff like this seems to take me a crazy long time, but I've found that the best way for me to fabricate a really precise part is to start with a rough dimension based on the print and then final size by matching to to assembly. This means lots and lots of walking back and forth between the fuselage and the bad saw or 3 wheel I have on a grinder on the back landing, to keep some at least some of the aluminum dust out of the garage.

At any rate, I made the F-710C Spacer, F-711E Stop/Spacer and F-712D Elevator Stop. The plans don't say anything at all about these at this stage, They just say rivet the back deck. But if you look at drawing 27A the fwd two spacers go under the aft deck and take up the 1/8" gap between the bulkheads and the deck, so they pretty much have to be fabricated and installed as part of that process. I'm going to hold off on installing the F-712D elevator stop until later, because the aft rudder spar gets attached to it as well and I'd like to trial fit all that together to make sure I get it positioned properly.

FYI- for F-712D An old revision of the print shows one of the legs being 1 1/4" wide, but the current rev has both legs being less than an inch. However, they still give you a 1X1 1/2" chunk of angle to make this out of, so you have to rip both sides to a smaller dimension. The print calls for a weird joggle on the face of the horizontal angle, and I debated just making it straight across and skipping that part, like I've seen on other build logs, but then realized that when it's time to rig the elevators, if you need more up travel you can file off that area with a lot less hassle if it's made this way.

  Mar 18, 2021     Aft Deck - (6 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Spent some tim this morning peeling all the blue vinyl off the inside of the tailcone and vacuuming all the shavings etc out of the whole thing. That stuff gets everywhere and rolling it upright caused a bunch more to appear from wherever it had been hiding.

Cleaned up the shop, including breaking down the extensions on my saw horses. I included a picture below in case anybody reads this and is wondering what to use. These are just simple plastic horses from Lowes. I drilled a couple of 2x4 extensions to the top with sheet rock screws, which ensured that the boards wouldn't fall off, but it's not like they were cinched down tight through the plastic, so I wrapped a healthy amount of duct tape around them as well. The front horse had a 1x6 attached flat on top of the 2x4 which allowed some wiggle room when it came time to maneuver the center section onto it. Worked great!

I spent a lot of time leveling this. I had built a fuselage cart from plans and dimensions I found on VAF. I'm only 5'10", so I shortened everything by 2" from the plans and the longerons hit me mid-chest. When I leveled it laterally, I had to raise the tail about 3" so if I were doing this again, I would take that into account when I built the stand.

When all the leveling was done, I drilled the aft deck to the longerons. The plans have a warning about making sure that there's no twist in the fuselage before you drill this, because, in Vans words, "drilling the aft deck to the longerons makes the fuselage torsionally rigid, any twist built in will be there forever."

The process I used was to use a 4' spirit level across the fwd fuselage. I checked it in a couple of different locations, and when I was happy with it, I put a digital protractor on the level and zeroed it out, then moved it to the aft deck and checked it there.

It took very little wiggling to get this right. Basically just aligning the edges of the deck parallel with the longerons and centered between them did it. Once I was happy, I clamped the aft deck to the longerons with a ton of clamps, checked it again and then drilled to the longerons with a new #30 bit. After everything was done, the difference between the front and back varied between 0.00* and 0.20*, depending on what station I measured it from. I believe that's as close as I am capable of making it without heavy factory fixtures, so I'm pretty happy.

  Mar 17, 2021     Flip that canoe Baby!!! - (0.3 hour)       Category: Fuselage

Robert August and Rob Ramey came over after work today and helped me flip the canoe off of the saw horses and onto the new stand I built yesterday. I went to college/A&P school with both these guys, and Rob was my roommate for a year or so. We all moved to ICT and went to work at either Cessna or Beech about 25 years ago. Cant believe its been that long! I've known these guys and their wives since forever.

Robert sent a picture to one of our old A&P instructors who is in his 80's and still very into all things aviation. HIs caution from the last time I talked to him was that everybody he knows who's built an airplane has sold it and immediately started building another.

I have to admit that after it was upright, I had to just stare at it for a minute. It's really starting to look like an airplane!

  Mar 17, 2021     Recycled Fuse crate into work cart - (6 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Seems like a shame to just scrap the fuse crate, so I made yet another trip to Lowes for more lumber and turned it into a rolling work cart with a couple of shelves.

I have to say, it was liberating to not have to measure stuff down to 1/32" and to just be able to stick a screw or nail in wherever without a lot of extremely tight tolerances.

  Mar 16, 2021     Fuselage cart - (8 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Built a fuselage cart from plans I found on VAF. I had quite a few 2x4's left over from other projects and thought I could knock this out with what I had on hand. Of course that never works out, and I ended up going to Lowes for a couple more boards. Later on I ran out of wood screws and made a trip to Ace. Then I needed wheels...you get the idea. Anyway, what with all that, this pretty much took all day.

In the first picture, you can see that I also started cutting up the fuselage crate.

  Mar 08, 2021     more riveting - (2 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Nate (brother in law) came over today to help wrap this up. Nat is an A&P/IA who currently teaches Caravan initial at flight safety and had the afternoon off today. He came over around noon, and we finished up pretty much all the fuselage riveting, then he drove me to the airport to catch a commercial flight- Thanks Nate!

  Mar 07, 2021     More rivets - (2 hours) Category: Fuselage

Kriya helped with the floor stiffener rivets. Pretty much all the -3 rivets are done. She may not be strong enough to easily drive the long AN426AD4-? rivets in the fwd fuselage, so she's more comfortable if I get somebody else to help with that stuff.

  Mar 06, 2021     Pound them rivets, pt. 2 - (2 hours)       Category: Fuselage

This morning I went up to EWK and helped Robert change out he fuel pump on his glass star. really annoying process. We had changed it out about a month ago, but had not safetied it or re-installed the left mag until today.

During opps check, I noticed that at idle everything was fine, but when he ran it up to a mid range rpm, it started to drip fuel out of the weep hole in the bottom of the airbox, so I don't know what that's about.

After that, he came over to my house and we riveted on my fuselage for probably another couple of hours. got pretty much everything done except the floor stiffeners between the F-704 & the firewall, and a few rivets around the aft spar fork where it's questionable if I can get on the heads with teh set that I have currently.

  Mar 03, 2021     Pound them rivets! - (5 hours)       Category: Fuselage

I set the F-772 floor skin in place, then pried the F-770 side skins out with popsicle stick and applied 3M Fire Barrier 2000 to the firewall flanges. A little judicious bumping with the heel of my hand got the F-772 into it's final position, then I squeezed the rivets along the lower flange. The sides are clecoed together with a cleco in every hole and will likely stay that way until the finish kit shows up and I can see what I want to do about cowl attachments. I would have liked to go ahead and squeeze those rivets too, but others on VAF have assured me that as long as I have a cleco in every hole, there is enough squeeze out of the 3M product that I won't have a problem just leaving them clecoed for now. I'm leaning toward using piano hinge up the sides of the lower cowl per print and then going with cam locks for the cowl seam and where the upper attaches to the firewall, but that' s a future decision.

Robert came over after work today and we shot/bucked rivets for about 4 hours. Got the sides done pretty much all the way back to the F-705, not including the floor stiffeners up front. One or two more sessions and this thing will hopefully be ready to flip!

  Feb 27, 2021     fuselage riveting - (3 hours)       Category: Fuselage

After rummaging through my tool box, I determined that I don't have a bucking bar that would fit behind the nutplates in the F-715 ribs, so I drilled those 6 nutplates off and shot the associated rivets solo by holding the bucking bar through the aileron pushrod hole. I'll need some help to reach the rest of those.

Speaking of, Kriya spend a couple of hours shooting rivets this afternoon while I bucked. and we knocked out about 70% or so of the #3 rivets on both sides.

I also managed to smack my head pretty good and cut my scalp bad enough that I needed a band-aid. Drat!

  Feb 26, 2021     riveting continued - (7 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Finished riveting the baggage floor ribs to F-706 bulkhead. The angle that gets riveted on the aft side of the F-728 A Bellcrank Channel was still just clecoed on, and by removing it, I was able to get a straight rivet set on the the aft side of all those ribs except the two center ones, which I had to shoot with the gun on the front. Any time I'm able to avoid using a double offset or other weirdly shaped set, I'm all for it, so I was glad that I hadn't set those rivets yet.

Per the suggestion in the instructions, I started riveting around the F-704 bulkheads and worked forward & aft on both sides. I was able to reach about 1/2 way back on the F-715 ribs trough the aileron pushrod hole, and likewise got almost all the rivets in the vertical rows through the F-704, with the exception of 1 rivet where the flange of the armrest is in the way of getting my tungsten bucking bar on it. When I get some help, I'll get on the inside where I can see what I'm doing and buck that one with a steel bar I have that will fit in there.

Also finished all the #4 rivets common to the upper edge of the gear web. they were -7s (I think?) and took quite a bit of grunt to set but came out okay.

If you look close at the pix below, you might notice that there are 3 rivets not set in the F-715 rib that I would have been able to reach. Thats because I already installed nut plates on those ribs, which are in the way of my solo blind bucking endeavors, so the next time I have some help in the shop I'll get those as well

Will continue with the ones that I can reach solo next time, or branch out to some harder to reach ones if Kriya has some free time to shoot while I buck this weekend.

  Feb 25, 2021     Random fuselage assy - (8 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Kriya helped me lift the fuselage center section back in place so yesterday I reinstalling/clecoed everything back together. Today I started riveting some of the substructure together, including the gear webs, floor stiffeners & got about 1/2 way done with the aft baggage floor ribs to the aft baggage bulkhead.

Something cool that I noticed this afternoon was that with everything clecoed together, the tailcone is actually hovering about 3/8" above the saw horse I had back there. It's totally cantilevered from the fwd and center sawhorses. Really cool.

  Feb 23, 2021     Started reassembly - (1 hour)       Category: Fuselage

Reinstalled longerons to tailcone and shimmed level. I'm going to need to conscript some help to get the center section set back in place.

  Feb 23, 2021     static line clips - (1 hour)       Category: Fuselage

Drawing 25 has a detail view of some simple clips that are to be made out of .025 strap bent into a sort of Adel clamp shape and riveted on the back side of the longerons in the tailcone "as needed" between bulkheads to support the static line run fwd.

I had to think about it a while to figure out the simplest way to make these, but basically I started with a piece of .025" shim stock cut into 2" chunks and then just wrapped them around a piece of 1/4 bar stock & a 1/4" drill bit held in a bench vise.

Still not sure if I'll use these or not, but it was a simple project that was kind of fun to think through.

  Feb 22, 2021     primed longerons - (3 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Kansas finally recovered from Snowmaggedon 2021. Crazy, a week ago it was sub-zero, today it was 59* Took advantage of the temp and primed the main longerons, as well as the armrests and some other odds & ends. A short section of the longerons will be visible after final assy in the baggage compartment area. I debated on whether to try to prime that section gray so that if I scratch the top coat the neon yellow zinc phosphate primer wouldn't show through, but ultimately decided that I was probably overthinking it. That area is pretty protected, so its pretty unlikely to get much wear and tear, so I'll likely just top coat later and call it good.

At this point, everything is dimpled, deburred, countersunk, & primed as appropriate. I'm so ready to start putting this back together!

  Feb 11, 2021     Dimpled, countersunk, etc. - (6 hours)       Category: Fuselage

It's been really cold here since last weekend, with the high today about 10* I heated the garage up to a point that I couldn't see my breath anymore, but it wasn't warm by any means. Riveted the F-772 skin to the F-715 ribs, which allowed me to get all the clecoes out of the bottom of the center section.

Finished countersinking and deburring the main longerons. Also dimpled all of the stringers, bulkheads, tailcone skins, etc. and installed some nutplates as appropriate. At this point, I'm just looking for stuff to do until it warms up enough that I can prime the longerons outside. According to the long range forecast, looks like that's about a week away. Still haven't decided whether I want to paint the baggage area or carpet it which will maybe have me painting those panels at the same time.

I believe that once the longerons are primed, this thing will be ready to go back together for riveting!

  Feb 07, 2021     disassembly continued - (7 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Yesterday I spent about 5 hours in the shop. Dimpled the l/h F-770 skin, countersunk the F-704H side plates, and cleaned up a few other small tasks. Today, I spent about 2 hours cleaning up everything I could think of that made sense to do before pulling the center section off to prep the upper longerons and the center section-tailcone interface.

It occurred to me that the upper longerons are pretty floppy and just generally hard to maneuver when they're on the bench due to them being bent and curved in 2-3 different directions, so I went ahead and countersunk them all the way back to the baggage bulkhead frame. I also dimpled the vertical flanges of the F-705D side channels, although I couldn't get a squeezer on the lowest hole (highest in the picture below) due to a bolt being in the way on the back side. when I get this apart, I'll take that bolt back out to dimple. Seems like theres a ton of stuff like that, where you want it locked down tight for match drilling, but then you end up taking it back out for access for something else.

You may notice in the picture that the F-705 is still just clecoed together at the top This is because I'm installing the "Almost a 14" kit during construction. The kit instructions assume you're installing in an already completed airplane and they have you drill out all those rivets to get the factory cross bar out, so I went ahead and drilled them out and put clecoes back in a while back.

At this point, I'm ready to get the center section apart and the upper longerons out of teh tail cone for countersinking, dimpling, etc. We're having some family over for the Superbowl in a couple of hours (go Chiefs!). I'm going to grab my brother in law to help me take this apart before kickoff.

  Feb 05, 2021     prep work and disaster recovery (new F-770 skin) - (16 hours)       Category: Fuselage

This entry covers several days, mostly just deburring and whatnot. But, when I was working on the left F-770 skin, I discovered 3 blown out holes. 2 of them were actually figure 8s and one was oblong. Whats worse, they are the 3 aft holes common to the F-770, F-7101 Gear Attach Web, & the F-713 Aux Longeron. Simply put, there's a lot going on in that location. Since this area is hidden by the wing root fairing, I toyed with the idea of a -5 rivet, or external doubler or whatever, and even dimpled them to see how bad they were. Ultimately, I decided to just bite the bullet and order a replacement skin. Especially since this is the one that had a crack in the aft conical bend.

None of the sub structure was damaged, so I think what happened was that I match drilled this with the plastic on and the plastic had stretched so that the holes in the plastic weren't aligned with the pilot holes in the F-770. I really cant explain it, but you can clearly see in the picture below that the lower longeron right behind it doesn't have a mark on it. It's on the side of the airplane furthest away from the overhead lights, so maybe I was drilling with some weird shadows or something, but I really have no excuse.

The replacement came today, and I'm once again amazed with the precision of Vans match drilling. It clecoed right up with absolutely no drama, so I elected to remove it and just final size the holes on the bench, so as to not potentially oversize anything underneath.

Funny how you get faster the more times you do something. The Fedex Truck dropped it off at about 1030, and I had it deburred, edges smoothed, and the conical bend done in time to get some primer on it before dark, which is good because its too big to prime in my little temporary paint booth and today is supposed to be the last warm day for quite a while. I'll let the primer dry for a day or two then dimple and this should be done!

Before fedex showed up, I was killing some time in the garage and decided to do something I've seen other builders do, which is to beef up the armrests. As designed, they are pretty flimsy and can be easily bent by people shoving off of them to get out of the airplane. I pondered this for a while thinking about the best way to attack it, and ultimately came up with a neat solution.

Cut the J off of some left over J channel scraps so that it ended up as a simple piece of angle. Then match drilled as seen in they pictures below. This stiffens up the whole thing, as well as eliminates the sharp edge on the lower cabin side. I'm not going to rivet this until it's clecoed in the fuselage, since it's still pretty twisty just clecoed together and I don't want to unintentionally lock in a twist that will cause it to not fit right by riveting the stiffener on before it's clecoed to the skin and bulkheads.

Overall, a good few days and a ton of progress today. Even the conical bend came out really pretty.

  Jan 29, 2021     prep on F-770R - (2 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Started deburring the F-770 side skins. I also match drilled the hole in the skin that matches the hole in the F-715 end seat rib. You may recall that the pilot hole for this is mis-located in the skin vs. the rib, i.e. the pilot holes in the two pieces are off by about 1.5". I had talked to Vans about this and was told that either location was acceptable.

Since I had already opened up the hole in the rib, I had previously reached in through the lightening hole and marked the location in sharpie on the inside of the skin. When I pulled the skin off, I used that as a reference for the hole in the skin, but made it undersized, then re-installed the skin and final sided it with a round file to make sure they lines up exactly. I will follow the same process on the other side when I'm deburring it.

I created some extra work for myself here and should have just held off on drilling the original hole in the rib, then it would have been much easier to just match drill both pieces from the outside when they were all clecoed together originally.

  Jan 28, 2021     F-782 prep plus a lot of deburring - (7 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Went to Sherwin Williams yesterday and picked up a new can of gray self etching primer. $16 for a can of spray paint, holy cow!

Continued taking apart and deburring the fwd fuselage today. decided it would be a good time to crank out the F-782D angles and match drill the F-782 cover plates while I had easy access.

laid out location with straight edge across the F-782 & F783 support ribs, then removed the F-7101 gear web to match drill. WARNING! If you try to drill this all in place, it would be ridiculously easy to drill through the side skin. Theres not even enough room behind that gear web to get a standard cleco in there before you hit the inside of the side skin.

Speaking of, I wanted to cleco this all back together to mark where to notch the F-782D angle, but as I said, it was to tight to get a cleco in there. I scrounged a couple of clecoes out of the trash bucket that had bent nibs and ground them down so that the nib was exactly the same length as the barbs. That gave me just enough clearance to get them to engage before the hit the skin behind the gear web.

Created notch with a rotary file, then match drilled everything, including the fwd lip of the F-740 seat floors, which need a hole match drilled for a nut plate hole thats already located in the F-782 cover plates. Used a #20 strap duplicator for that hole.

Spend the rest of my shop time today deburring, countersinking, etc. on all the supporting structure thats coming out of the fwd fuselage. Will have more of that next time.

  Jan 26, 2021     Started fwd fuselage disassembly - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

It never got above freezing today, so priming outside was out. Threw together a temporary paint booth out of cardboard thats good enough for sub structure and rattle can primer.

Deburred and primed baggage compartment bulkheads and stringers, Then countersunk and primed the fwd floor stiffeners.

I'm basically taking the fwd fuselage apart in reverse order of how it went together. My garage isn't heated, so it's a huge hassle to get it heated up with a shop heater, then wear a respirator while priming. But looking at the weather forecast for this week, I think I'll likely continue like this for the next day or two.

It's supposed to be up in the 50s here on Friday, so I'll hopefully be in a position to prime the rivet lines on the skins outside, since they obviously won't fit in my awesome paint booth and I don't really want to build anything better just for that.

  Jan 25, 2021     fwd fuselage floor stiffeners & finished match drilling - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Match drilled the floor stringer field rivets I didn't get to yesterday. Also took an awesome selfie with them in the background (below).

Called Vans and verified that the #10 holes common to the skins & lower longerons get countersunk, even though it knife edges the skins. Kevin at Vans verified the skins being knife edged is more desirable than dimpling them and having a countersink deep enough to receive a #10 skin dimple in the lower longeron.

Didn't have a #10 or 3/16" piloted countersink, so I ran down to the Yard Store, fully prepared to pay $26 for one, but found one in their used bin for $1.50 Sweet! Countersunk per print.

Started at the tip of the tail and spent about 1/2 hour verifying that everything was match drilled all the way to the firewall.

At this point, all the match drilling and support structure fabrication is done. I can hardly believe it, but it's time to take this all apart again for deburring, edge finishing, dimpling, etc.

  Jan 24, 2021     fwd fuselage floor stiffeners - (1.5 hours)       Category: Fuselage

The replacement floor stiffener came yesterday, and I've been thinking quite a bit about a way to match drill this by myself. After a while, it dawned on me that I didn't really need the skin in place to match drill to the firewall and the center section flange. That stuff isn't going anywhere, because it's clecoed every which way.

Removed the floor skin, marked centerlines and min end distance lines on these stiffeners, clamped them in place with cleo clamps, and match drilled each end. I've seen build logs where people make reference to holding these with duct tape or wood blocks or what ever, but in my opinion, this is the simplest way to get these dialed in.

While I was at it, I match drilled two more -4 rivet holes just aft of the fuel tank attach ears. On the 7A, this location gets two bolts match drilled thru into the fwd brace for the MLG weldment. That part doesn't exist on a -7, and the prints just show you ignoring this area. Seemed like a pretty big span to not have any fasteners in it (about 3"), so I had contacted Vans. Kevin Miller in tech support said it was good either way, but that he had continued that rivet run by installing extra fasteners on his own airplane. Based on that, I laid out and drilled for two more rivets on the same 1" spacing in the location depicted in the attached picture by the red oval.

Clecoed the F-772 skin back on, but ran out of time to do anything else. Tomorrow I'll drill the field rivet holes in these two angles, and then unless I discover something I've forgotten, seems like this whole thing is ready to start coming apart for deburring and prep work.

  Jan 22, 2021     fwd fuselage match drilling continued - (1 hour)       Category: Fuselage

drilled the big holes in the 770 skins except for the one that I need to match drill to the f-715 seat ribs. you may recall that I foolishly already drilled those holes in the ribs, and then discovered that the pilot hole in the skins were off by almost 2" I called Vans and they said eaten location was okay, and I've seen quite a few people who've just drilled both. I marked inside of the skin through the hole in the and will match drill undersized when I have the skin off and then file final size to match when it's clecoed back together.

I tried to go on the cheap with a harbor freight unibit for the 1" holes, but they were just to big and through too much metal for that cheap bit to work well, so I bit the bullet and bought a $45 one from Ace that cut like butter.

  Jan 21, 2021     brake & rudder - (3 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Knocking out a few small jobs while I'm waiting for a replacement floor stiffener to show up.

Today I installed the brake pedals & master cylinders on teh rudder weldments. Not much to say about this that hasn't already been said by others. lots of clamping and marking to make sure everything is lined up.

I will say, I've seen a lot of people advocate waiting until this unit is installed in the airplane to see where you want the angle of the pedals, but that's pretty much dictated by edge distance for the bolt hole you have to drill in the ear that comes fwd off the brake pedals. I clamped the pedals in place so they were all symmetrical with each other in a position that gave me 2 ED on that hole, then started the hole by back drilling through the master cylinder mounting hole with a 90* drill. Once I had the hole located, I pulled the pedals off the assy and finished the hole on my drill press, then reamed it to final size.

I spent literally about an hour tossing the whole shop looking for the correct AN3 bolts that attach the master cylinders to the rudder pedals. I was about ready to give up and just drive across town to airparts to buy more when I discovered them in a baggie from vans that contains all pipe fittings etc for plumbing the brakes.

  Jan 06, 2021     Baggage compartment sidewalls - (4 hours)       Category: Fuselage

Installed and match drilled sidewall stiffeners, bulkheads & closeout panels. Also watched CNN quite a bit, as today was the election certification and the riot that ended up with people storming the capitol building.

Trimmed about 1/16" off the aft end of both F-722 stringers due to interference with the flange of the F-706 bulkhead. In retrospect, I don't know if I really needed to do this. Later when I clecoed the F-750 side panels on, it was a pretty tight fit so they may have they forced the flange of the F-706 aft a little bit anyway. Didn't hurt anything though, and made it easier to get them lined up with the holes in the skin.

If you look at the second picture, this little ear on the end that has about 1 ED, is on the fwd end of the F-722. It's prepunched that way from Vans. This seems to be a theme with them. There are lots of pieces that the stackup of mating causes one end or the other of a stringer or rib to have that little ear, and it almost always has edge distance issues. That's before match drilling, so you can see that after you open this up to #40, its got probably less than 1 ed. Not worried about it, because they are evidently supposed to be that way, but if you try to match drill it, there is enough wiggle in the tab that it's easy to blow out the hole.

My process for making sure that doesn't happen is to not match drill those tabs. Instead, I drill the mating structure final size then open this hole up separately. This prevents blowing out the hole, and the matched holes from vans are close enough its no problem to get it to match up afterward.

After a lot of trial fitting and sharpie marking to make sure I wasn't going to blow out anything, I went ahead and match drilled. No challenges, except where the upper bent flange on the F-724 gets attached to the main longeron with a -4 rivet. The print calls out a bare minimum 1/4" edge distance on the longeron, which doesn't leave much room for error. It also doesn't do a great job of leaving good edge distance on the underlying flange either.

On the left side, 1/4" left me with basically 1.5d ED on the underlying flange, so I measured the same on the other side to see where it fell on the longeron. Due to the way the flange was laying, I was able to fudge the hole outboard an extra 1/16" or so and maintain the same ED on the tab but pick up a little more breathing room on the longeron. I know that 1/4" is exactly 2d for a -4 rivet, but it still makes me a little queasy to drill a hole that close to the edge of something as important as a primary structural member. If anything at all goes wrong, you're screwed.

This job obviously didn't take 5 hours of hands on work. But I'm logging that due to pondering time, shop cleaning time, sitting and watching the TV in disbelief, etc.

Other that waiting for the replacement forward floor stiffener to show up, I'm pretty much done with all the assy and fab work for this stage. Will spend tomorrow reviewing and taking care of a few small tasks, then the day after, I'm road tripping Holly back to college at University of Arizona. 15 hours or so our house in Scottsdale where we'll meet Kriya and spend a few days before Holly heads down to Tucson.