Apr 03, 2024     Rigged flaps - (8 hours)       Category: Wings

I rigged the flaps and configured the stops in the G3X. I don't know if it's because the motor tends to coast a bit after it stops, or if there's a little bit of slop in my POS-12 linkage. At any rate, The flaps tend to over run the target 40 degree setting when extending and the motor keeps running for a second or so after they're fully retracted. I tinkered with this for quite a while and realized that if I ran them down to about 2 degrees and told the G3X that was zero, then ran them down to about 38 degrees and told it that was 40, they would be just about perfect when they stopped. There's a bunch of different ways you can configure this, and I've got mine setup with preset stops at 10-20-30-40 degrees. When you bump the switch they will go to the next detent and stop. multiple bumps and they will go multiple stops-cool! I also set up the airspeed parameters; 20 degrees at 95kts, >20 at 86 kts.

I also ran into a potential rigging issue. The top heim joint on the flap pushrods has a bolt that is supposed to go through with the head outboard. With the flap weldment installed, there isn't room to insert the bolt from that direction because the skin is in the way.

I initially thought I could just stick them in the other way, and thats how I connected everything for rigging, but then I started thinking about it. About 30 years ago, I taxied out in a 182, that randomly started turning right and had a massively stiff ailerons. The root cause was that somebody had put one of the pedal bolts in backward and the aileron cable that was running down the aft face of the firewall was hung up on it.

That could have been a really bad day and in looking at this, I can see how sometime similar could happen. The RV rudder cables are not a tensioned closed loop, so when you're not actively pushing, there's slack in them, and if the nut and bolt threads are sticking out back there, then there's an extremely remote chance that a rudder cable could get hung up on them.

So, it seemed like I had to take half the airplane apart to get them in there, but by removing the flap motor, POS-12 and entire center brace structure, I was able to get the weldment cocked at enough of an angle that I could get the bolts in per print, with the heads out. Once that was done, I put everything back together, re torqued to spec, and ops checked. All good

  Mar 29, 2024     Permanently installed wingtips - (3 hours)       Category: Wings

I cleaned these up a bit more. Way back in the day, I acquired a set of RV9 FlyLED wingtip boards. They were reshaped to make them fit the RV7 wingtip coves, but the ribbon 4 conductor wire that comes with them was too short, so I made up connections with individual wires, secured against vibration with zip ties to a base glued down with E6000.

I also used a bit of E6000 on the VOR antenna to keep it from vibrating and cutting into the inside of the wingtip.

  Mar 24, 2024     wingtip prep - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Theres a lot of cross pollination with fiberglass work, or at least the way I do it. If I have a job that requires just a dab of epoxy, I'll set it aside until I've got a bigger project and then do it all at once. In this case, most of the detail of what I'm about to describe is contained in the empennage fairing log entry from 3-23-24.

Basically, the wingtip trailing edges stick out aft of the ailerons about 1/4". This seems to be a common issue with RV's because I've seen a bunch of them with exactly the same thing, including my hangar neighbor's RV6. I've also seen both the issue and the solution detailed in other build logs. If you don't want to live with it that way, the fix is just to trim that area back to match the ailerons after everything is on and rigged.

My concern with this is that there isn't much holding the trailing edge together back there, just about 3/8" of flox. I'm not comfortable shaving half of that contact area away just for aesthetic reasons.

My solution was to add more flox and a few plies of glass in that acute angle. I'm not doing any trimming just yet because Vans says that if a heavy wing shows up in flight test one reason may be the trailing edge of the aileron isn't quite right and may need to be adjusted to be flatter or thicker. Seems to me that if I have to do that it might slightly change where the aileron trailing edge resides relative to the wingtip trailing edge. After flight test, once I'm sure the ailerons are in their final configuration, If I choose to correct this I can easily do it or have the paint shop do it with just a long sanding block without having to remove anything from the airplane.

While I was doing that, I also used the dregs of my epoxy flox mix to repair the aft outboard corner of the r/h wingtip. These tips were part of the used wings that I bought when I originally started this project and at some point, somebody had smacked that corner into something and broken the gel coat off down into the fiberglass weave in an area about the size of a dime.

Today, I sanded that all back down flush starting with some 60 grit, finishing it off with 220, and hit it with a quick coat of rattle can primer. Most of this will get cut off if I go back and trim the trailing edges even with the aileron trailing edges, so I'm not going to worry about 100% getting all the sanding marks out to a "prepped for paint" finish sanding it until then.

  Feb 14, 2024     nav lights etc. - (30 hours)       Category: Wings

Lots of stuff in the airplane factory over the last few days, but most of it was just small stuff.

Installed the aileron pushrods in the wings, but I'm short one specialty washer that goes in the stackup connecting them to the stick quadrant, so I had to order more from vans and will come back to that.

Pinned and connected the roll servo

Wired the VOR antenna in the r/h wingtip

Finished wiring the landing strobe and nav lights in the wingtips.

Other minor things that I'm sure I'm forgetting.

  Feb 01, 2024     finished pulling wing wiring - (7 hours)       Category: Wings

Got sidetracked with a small problem this morning. I powered up the avionics to ops check something and was greeted with a sea of red X's. Audio panel, Comm 2, all engine monitoring, all off line. Took a while to think through, but finally I realized the only thing I had been monkeying with thaw as even remotely related was when I pulled the roll servo wire bindle into the wing. That component is also on the CAN bus.

I realized I still had the ends of the CAN Bus wires shorting against each other where I had pulled that bundle and it was grounding outer CAN buss and rocking it' world.

I spread all those pins apart and cycled the avionics and that problem magically went away. I find it interesting that a problem with the CAN buss can wipe out that much stuff and thought that it might be worth mentioning here for future troubleshooting for myself or others who might come across this entry.

I pulled the camera wire from the r/h wing into the cabin. This was a huge hassle because I went in the wrong order. The video cable is tiny, but it has a plug on the end thats a bit bigger. My bundle of pulled wires had gotten big enough taht I couldn't get that plug through the bends between the wing conduit and the fuselage sides.

I screwed around with this for over an hour before I bit the bullet and pulled the VOR coax out of conduit so I could get the video cable pulled, then reinstalled the VOR coax.

I installed the camera on the inboard underwing panel with the idea that if the location looked good I might move it to an adjacent area of the wing and if it didn't I could just replace the panel and not have an extra hole in the bottom of the wing. The location looks like it will work nicely, but the wire connector is in the cabin and any time I move it I'll have to pull wire from the wing which would be kind of a hassle, so at least for now I'mm going to leave it there.

Moved on to the left wing and installed the OAT probe under the wing in approximately teh same location, but with no plans to relocate it I went through the skin just near enough the inbd access as to be convenient for attachment and wiring. I was able to pull the wiring into the cabin without issue.

I didn't get a picture of it installed, because Kris Holt showed up at the hangar to see the project. Kris is an A&P/IA that I just taught to fly. He's currently a field service rep for Lycoming, so I was looking forward to any insight he might have as to my engine installation. He offered to come back and give me a thorough once over when I was done, and while neither of us are expecting him to find anything, I'm going to take him up on it. I'm certainly not perfect and really believe that the more sets of eyes you get on something like this the better.

  Jan 31, 2024     Pulled wing wiring - (4 hours)       Category: Wings

I pulled all the wiring from the fuselage today. I'm all the maneuvering over the last couple of years, the strings I had planned to leave in the wing conduits for today got removed for whatever reason. So the first order of business today was to run a stiff wire through from the wingtip, then use that to pull a string back through. I then used that string to pull wires.

The hardest part of this operation is getting wiring started in the conduit from the fuselage side, because while you can see down in the wing root joint, it isn't big enough to get your hand down in there. None of the pass through grommets in the fuselage align with the conduit, so everything has a kind of S curve as it goes through that area.

I found that once I got wiring in the wing root area, I could reach in through the inboard inspection panel and get my fingertips on the end of the wire to get it started in the conduit. Once it was started, it was cake.

I debated with myself for a while about whether to run the archer antenna coax separate from everything else, but ultimately decided that I could move it later if this simplest solution results in some sort of interference.

At this point, while some stuff branches off mid span (autopilot bundle and pitot heat) and some stuff runs all the way to the tip, it all runs together through the corrugated conduit that was installed during wing construction,

Tomorrow I need to start terminating stuff to where it connects, and I also still need to pull the wires that terminate basically at the inboard inspection panel. which is the OAT probe on the left and the taxi camera on the right

I'll include a couple of pix just because, but they aren't very exciting. just wires hanging out of the wingtips at this point

  Jan 29, 2024     Pitot tube installed - (8 hours)       Category: Wings

After a cold few days we've gotten another warm spell! The highs this week are in the high 50's mid 60's so I've been spending afternoons at the hangar.

I got back to the pitot installation yesterday, but with people dropping by the hangar and having to drive up to B&C specialty for some black # 12 wire so that I can have a properly color coded ground wire, it's taken a couple of days to knock this out.

Note- the chart in 43.13 indicated to me that based on my estimated wire length I was going to be okay using 14 gauge wire for the pitot heater. But that was just an estimate. I didn't know exactly where I was going to ground it, and the ground leg will adds to the overall length, so I went with the nuclear option and bumped up to a #12 wire. I'll be the first to admit that's probably overkill, but that heater pulls more amps than just about anything else on the whole plane, and it gives me flexibility on how I wire it.

Anyway, I pulled the pitot and aoa lines and the pitot heater power wire from the cabin to where they terminate in the wings, and did a mock up of the aluminum lines coming off the pitot tube to see if I might need to trim anything off. As shipped, the aluminum lines off the pitot tube are pretty long and you can cut several inches off of them before you get to the minimum length that Garmin recommends before transitioning to nylon. I don't remember the specific numbers off hand, but they're in the manual.

I ended up cutting 2" off the lines to make them terminate in the middle of the wing bay, flared them and added fittings on the bench. All of that stuff will fit up through the pitot mast so you don't have to try to work on that stuff up inside the wing.

I made the electrical connections via knife splices covered in heat shrink. The way Garmin does this, if you're using this pitot tube in a 24 volt system you wire the hearing elements in series, and for a 12v system you wire them in parallel. This means you have 2 wires that look to be approx 18 gauge coming into one connector from the heater, connecting to one wire on the ship side (times 2)

There are several ways to accomplish this, but you can see in one of the pictures below that I used blue knife splices. Blues are typically used for 14-16 gauge wire, but the two smaller wires coming off the pitot nicely and it also surprisingly fit the 12 gauge wire coming from the ship side.

I was planning to ground this locally, but it was getting pretty crowded in that bay, so I ended up running it out the wing tip where I'll ground it to a common ground with the landing lights.



The way Garmin does this, if you're using this pitot tube in a 24 volt system you wire the hearing elements in series, and for a 12v system you wire them in parallel

  Jan 03, 2024     Pitot mast - (4 hours)       Category: Wings

Christmas break/family vacay is over, So I headed down to the hangar this afternoon to spend some quality time with the project.

I had held off on installing the pitot mast and pitot tube because of the possibility of hitting it and bending something while the wings were off the airplane, but a loooong time ago I had match drilled the mast to the internal wing structure and skin. It was a simple matter to cleo it into place. Before I riveted it on, I did some simulations of the plumbing with scrap tubing to make sure I could fit everything in there with appropriate bends etc.

The mast is riveted to the adjacent rib with two LP-3 rivets, and up through the skin with MK-319-BS rivets. The 3 rivets that are common to the spar flange are solid driven rivets because I didn't want to unnecessarily upsize the holes in the spar flange to 7/64" to accommodate the MK rivets. It took a bit of maneuvering to get my tungsten bucking bar in there but overall wasn't too challenging.

I had previously pulled the nylon pitot and aoa lines from the wing root and was planning to get the plumbing done today as well, but that didn't happen. I prepped the fittings that will transition between the aluminum tubes from the pitot tube to the nylon lines, and also marked the minimum length for the aluminum lines coming off the heated pitot (8" per Garmin) in case I need to trim them down. The way it comes, the longer tube is pitot and the shorter one is AOA, but I also wrote on them with sharpie just in case I cut them off and so they don't get crossed up during installation. Before going any further, decided to take a break for a cup of coffee.

At the line shack, I bumped into another airport tenant named Wayne who has a C150, and we were looking at an RV8 at the gas pumps when the owner showed up. It turned out to be a guy I knew back in the day at Cessna (Fred Leeper) who had popped in from his backyard strip a few mile away to fuel up. While we were talking, another old Cessna acquaintance showed up (Brian Van Dyke). Brian jumped ship years ago and is now flying a Lear for Koch out of ICT. I hadn't seen either one of those guys for probably 10-15 years and it was nice to catch up.

Brian hangars his Bonanza across the runway in Gary Drummond's hangar. Gary is another old acquaintance from Cessna Flight Test who has an RV8 on the field. I'm not sure how many Rv's are actually based down at K50, but it has to be at least 1/2 dozen. Really cool.

I asked Fred who he used for the AW inspection for his RV8 and he told me that he didn't use a DAR, but instead just went with the Wichita FSDO. The inspector he got was Rick Stevens. Fred told me that it was a straightforward process so I'll likely just do the same thing.

While we were catching up, Greg Thomas, one of the owners of the airport, rolled up with a reporter from the Wichita Business Journal who was doing a story on airport revitalization and general aviation. She wanted a couple of pictures of Fred's RV8 and ended up taking a couple of pictures of my hangar/airplane factory as well.

By the time all that was said and done, I was out of time, so that's how a 30 minute project turned into 4 hours.

I hadn't considered it before the move, but when I was in the garage, I could work uninterrupted all day long. Now that I'm at the airport, it seems like pretty much every day I'm meeting somebody new or bumping into old friends. It's not the most efficient way to build an airplane, but I'm really enjoying it, especially when I bump into somebody I used to work with but haven't seen for years.

  Dec 22, 2023     continued working on wings - (6 hours)       Category: Wings

I made a drift pin out of a hardware store bolt for teh aft spar bolt. This holes were reamed out vert precisely and I don't want to botch them up by trying to align everything by just cranking a bolt in there.

Access to the fwd side of that point is extremely limited, so I stared the bolts by maneuvering them in place with a pair of needle nose pliers. Not much else to say about that. 3 washers, a castle nut and a cotter pin per print. done with that step.

After that, I put the nuts on the NAS close tolerance bolts and torqued everything to spec, including the two AN bolts per side that go into nutplates on the spar web that Vans has a service letter about people missing.

Kriya swung by the hangar after work to see what I've been doing since I've moved everything down there, which was fun :)

I also pulled pitot and AOA lines from the fuselage through the left wing to the general vicinity of where the pitot mast will live, which took a while. I'll get back to that at a later date.

  Dec 21, 2023     Installed wings - (3 hours)       Category: Wings

My brother-in-law Nate came over to the hangar this afternoon to help reinstall the wings. He had helped with the initial install way back in the garage when I set the angle of incidence and rigged the flight controls.

It went well with no surprises. I sprayed down the mating faces and bolt holes with LPS-2, slid the left wing home, aligned with a couple of drift pins and tapped in the -7 bolts with a rubber mallet far enough to make sure that everything was aligned, then drove them home with some light taps from a rivet gun with a nylon tipped set. once they were all seated with nuts just on finger tight, we moved to the other side and repeated the process.

fyi- I'd frozen the hardware ahead of time and had it on ice packs in the hangar until moments before installation. We used to do this with gear trunnion bearings on the jets, but in this case I don't really think that it made any difference. they were still pretty tight.

Anyway, I'm going back to the hangar tomorrow and plan to get nuts on and torqued for these, as well as get the bolts through the aft spar. My hopes to finish up the permanent wing attach tasks and maybe even get the empennage on, so we'll see how that goes...

  Oct 14, 2022     Moved wings to airport! - (8 hours) Category: Wings

BIG DAY TODAY! After 3 years or so, I moved the wings to the hangar (yay!)

Picked up a 12' u-haul trailer in north Wichita, then then drove to Valley Center and bought a cherry-picker engine hoist that I found on facebook marketplace. Dashed home and offloaded the hoist, then started prepping with furniture pads and straps.

Stacy Greene came over after work and helped with the grunt work. The trailer isn't wide enough to lay two wings side by side, but since it's only 11 miles from my house to the hangar I didn't feel the need to try to figure out how to stack them. I elected to just take one wing at a time and make multiple trips.

We loaded one wing wrapped burrito style in moving blankets into the center of the trailer with cinch straps positioned to keep it from sliding around. I took the wing on the u-haul trailer and Stacy took the wing stand in his 5'x8' utility trailer so we didn't have to lay it on the hangar floor. When we got there we just offloaded the cradle first, then sat the wing in it. ezee peeze.

Second lap was equally uneventful and then suddenly there was a lot more space in my garage.

It was around 6:00 at this point, and Stacy went home. I had really only planned to move the wings today, but I still had the trailer, so I elected to take advantage of it. A couple of weeks ago I built a simple stand to rest the wings on during installation and I threw that on the trailer and moved it to the hangar as well. Capped off the night by moving the horizontal stab, then took the trailer back and dropped it off at u-haul. I picked it up at 1:00 and dropped it off around 9:00 pm.

All in all, I think I got my money's worth out of a $29 trailer rental, but I've got to say I'm kind of tired after all of that. With the trip up to Valley Center followed up with all that back and forth, I pulled that trailer about 120 miles today, all without getting more than 20 miles from home.

Busy day, but I didn't think to get any pictures, not that they would show anything other than a bunch of moving blankets wrapped around airplane parts.

  Oct 14, 2022     Located hole for OAT probe and then moved wings to the hangar! - (1 hour) Category: Wings

I was wracking my brain for things that would be easier to do with the wings before I moved them and decided that I might as well firm up the location of the OAT probe.

Vans doesn't give any guidance whatsoever on this for the RV7, and actually Garmin doesn't say much either; basically that it needs to be in free air outside of the engine exhaust.

I had previously looked around to see what most people do here and the general consensus is under the wing in the general vicinity of the pitot tube location seems to work well.

Lots of people have put this through the inboard underwing inspection panel so they don't have to drill a hole in the wing. That way if they want to move it later they can just get a new cover to get rid of the hole. I don't like the idea of having to deal with this probe whenever I need to pull that panel off for something, so I elected to drill the hole aft of that panel. Nothing special about the location, It's just a couple of rib rivets aft of the aft edge of the panel and inboard of the adjacent rib rivet line 1.25"

This location keeps it close enough to the rib that the skin is pretty stiff, but exactly 1" away from the rib flange. so it's not too crowded to get a wrench on it. It also allows the wire to transition into the existing conduit without having to make any weird bends to avoid the aileron push tube.

Glad I happened to think of this today. It sure was nice to be able to drill this without having to lay on my back with shavings dripping into my face.

  Oct 13, 2022     finished wingtip nutplates and W-412 wingtip ribs - (5 hours)       Category: Wings

Installed all the nutplates on the right wingtip, including installing the archer antenna.

Regarding the antenna: I looked at this pretty closely with respect to fore/aft location. It's kind of counter-intuitive. You would think that it would make sense to move this as far aft as possible to get it away from the nav/strobe wiring, but the instructions that come with it are very clear that the wire run to the lights should run up the forward leg of the antenna and be attached to the already-installed plastic clips. It also shows the coax running up from the rear along the leg that picks up the nutplates then making a U-turn to attach to the terminal screws on the aft leg of the triangle shape at a 90 degree angle to the that leg.

Both of these requirements lend themselves to a forward location on the RV7 wingtip and a search of VAF shows that seems to be what everybody does, so I located it forward as seen below.

There is no provision included with the antenna to keep the long leg from flopping around and possibly cutting into the fiberglass due to vibration, so I just taped the long leg down with some industrial duct tape. I plan to fly it this way for a while and if I don't need to relocate it for some reason, I'll likely replace the duct tape with a few blobs of adhesive, but I'm holding off on that for now because it's super thin and if it's firmly glued down I'm afraid I might wreck it getting it unstuck if that becomes necessary.

The W-412 wingtip ribs go in the back end of the wingtips parallel to the outboard end of the ailerons to close it out and stiffen it up. However, the plans don't give an exact location dimension. Because it's wedge shaped, it's easy to make that part of the wingtip spread out or suck down depending on how far aft you shove it.

Obviously, you want the cross section of the wing tip to match the aileron, so way back when, I had fixed its location when I first pilot drilled the wingtips to the wing. The fiberglass has a step about 2.5" forward of the trailing edge where there are extra plies to re-inforce the trailing edge. The aft end of the wedge was riding up on that step, so I had previously trimmed about 1/2" off the aft end of the rib to get it far enough aft that the shape was right. Basically, I just trimmed off enough that it butted up against the step in the fiberglass.

The print calls out 10 rivets in each flange of the rib on 1.5" spacing, and the length of the rib after trimming worked out perfectly for this spacing.

To make sure that it didn't shift and screw up the shape of the wingtip while I was drilling it, I devised a process that made sure it stayed where I wanted it; I drilled the two forward holes in the upper and lower flanges but on the aft end I only marked the rivet location so that i could still see it with the rib installed. I then attached the tip to the wing and attached the rib to the tip with cleco clamps. Once I determined that the location was good, I drilled through the wingtip into the rib at the aft location and clecoed the aft two flange holes.

I then removed the tips and match drilled the forward two holes with a 90 degree air drill. Once the holes on both end were clecoed, it was simple to lay out the rest of the rivet pattern with a rivet fan. I drilled all the holes, countersunk an installer rivets.

There's only 1/4" clearance between the edge of this piece and the outboard edge of the ailerons, so I was super meticulous with the placement and layout of these. Took a while but they came out operationally and cosmetically perfectly on both wingtips.

This concludes everything I can think of that I want to do with these wings in the garage, so Stacy Green is coming over after work tomorrow to help me move them to the hangar. I finished up the day by running to harbor freight for some more moving blankets in preparation for that milestone.

  Oct 12, 2022     root fairings, wingtips, LOTS of nutplates - (16 hours)       Category: Wings

couple of sessions working on the wing root fairings. then started the wingtips today.

On the surface, the wing root fairings look dirt simple. They line up nicely with prepunched holes aft of the main spar, then you wrap them around the leading edge and pick up a couple of prepunched holes underneath near the main spar. You then match drill the holes in the fairing to the inboard flange of the tank.

While I had the wings on, I match drilled all the prepunched holes on the upper side aft of the spar, but due to the fuselage sitting on the fuse cart I wasn't able to get to the ones on the other end, i.e. bottom side by the spar. Based on that, I elected to not trim the gap to fit up to the fuselage side until later.

Now that the wings were off, I though that it would probably be a good time to match drill and dimple tank inner flange, but when I tried to wrap the fairing around the leading edge of the right wing it appeared to be too short by about 1/2 a hole by the time I got to the lower end.

Spoiler alert; I messed around with this stupid thing for several hours before I got it to fit right with all the holes lining up and dimpled. I also had to drive down to the yard store and get a #8 dimple die set because somehow I don't seem to have one.

The fairings ship flat and you are left to your own devices to bend them around the leading edge. I surmised that just forming it around the leading edge by hand was allowing it to spring back and preventing me from getting a super tight fit, so I spent some time experimenting and ended up rolling the leading edge bend around a 2" pvc pipe. Many cycles of mark/bend/on/re-mark/off/re-bend.

All of this finesse allowed me to pick up most of the extra length I needed for the lower holes to line up, but I did end up with a slightly oblong hole in the fairing oh the very aft lower end. This is a dimpled hole for a #8 screw, so there is a pretty big dimple there close to the edge, but the dimple doesn't run all the way to the edge of the piece, just not as perfect as I would like. I'll keep an eye on it when it comes off for the annual inspection and if it looks like it's working I can always make another fairing.

In retrospect, I think that there is enough variation when the tanks are built that this fairing could likely not fit well. It would be nice if Vans cut it a little long and left the section that fits up with the bottom of the wing un-piloted, not just the part that covers the tank inboard flange. That way you could match drill as needed and trim the end to fit.

Anyway, once I understood what I was dealing with, I was able to account for it when I upsized the pilot holes on the fairing for the other wing. Finish work on that fairing was knocked out in about an hour.

Part of this whole process was to match drill for nutplates in the inboard flange of the tanks, Then dimple and install nutplates. Lot's of attention to detail is needed in this whole process because where the wing walk is you countersink and install K1000-8 nutplates. On the tank flange, you dimple and use K1100-8 dimpled nutplates. It would be easy to get the two confused and end up with the wrong combo.

After the fuse fairings were put to bed, I turned my attention to the wingtips. vans says that you can either pop rivet these on or use nutplates. There is a 3rd option that appeared on VAF about 10 years ago and has been used successfully by a lot of people at this point, which is to attach them with piano hinges similar to the was vans recommends you attach the cowling.

While I like the idea of piano hinges for their simplicity and the ability to yank the wingtips off in a matter of minutes, I can see a couple of drawbacks. firstly, as piano hinges wear, I've seen them make gray dust similar to smoking rivets and from a pure vanity point, the piano hinges don't have any screws out there to attach a go-pro camera for really cool videos.

I'm installing an archer antenna in the right wingtip as well as LED lights in the tip and landing lights just inboard in the leading edge, So I'd like the ability to access that stuff without drilling out a bunch of pop rivets, so I ultimately decided to go old school here and just stick with nutplates.

I elected to go with #6 screws. Normally I despise #6 screws because they are easy to shear, but the way this stacks up is: dimpled wing skin, countersunk wingtip & then a nutplate. I don't think the flange in the fiberglass wingtip is thick enough to accommodate the bigger (deeper) countersink that would be required for a #8 screw.

I had upsized and dimpled the holes in the wing outboard flange some time ago so now I upsized the holes I had previously match drilled in the wingtips, and utilizing a nutplate jig, laced into the wingtips drilling and attaching nutplates, as well as countersinking for the skin dimples to nest into.

FYI- at the skin seam at the spar, there is one location top and bottom where the screw holes are too close together for two standard 2-leg nutplates to reside next to each other. One of the nutplates needs to be a 1-leg, otherwise the legs are right next to each other. I only mention it here because it would be easy to get drill happy with a nutplate jig if you didn't realize it.

On the right wingtip I'm installing an archer antenna so I took some time to review the installation instructions for it as well as VAF to determine the best location fore/aft. I clamped it in position when I was final sizing those nutplate holes because it gets sandwiched between the fiberglass tip and nutplates which electrically bond it back to the airframe.

I got the left wingtip nutplates all installed and all the holes drilled in the right wingtip before I ran out of time tonight. Turns out there are 38 nutplates per wingtip. If you consider that each nutplate requires 3 holes and in this case all three require countersinks in the fiberglass, thats 114 holes and 114 countersinks per wingtip. holy cow, no wonder this took forever.

  Oct 07, 2022     wing tips and wing root fairings - (10 hours)       Category: Wings

Final sized and dimpled tip skin for wingtips. I have decided to go with one of the standard vans solution for nutplates out on the tips rather than the hinge solution that has become pretty popular. The other possibility is to just pop rivet them on but since I'm going to have lights and VOR antenna out there, it seems like making them somewhat removable is the way to go.

Cleaned up a few other little tasks: Torqued down the heim joints in the flaps, including blue lock-tite. Took the flaps and ailerons to the hangar to join the rest of the flight control surfaces.

Worked on all the nut plate locations on the wing root. Dimpled or countersunk as required and added nut plates. Ran out of time and have just a couple left on one wing, plus the ones on the fwd tank attach brackets.

FYI- the upper wing root fairing is dimpled and nests in countersinks through a stackup of materials. Per print, they knife edges the upper skin and go about 1/2 way through the wing walk doubler. It's normally frowned upon to knife edge your countersinks, but in this case it's through a thick stackup and the structural elements are sound.

  Oct 05, 2022     trial delrin stops + removed wings - (4 hours)       Category: Wings

Played around with the idea of adding delrin aileron stops so they don't bang on the hard stops if caught in the wind. I checked lowes and my local Ace hardware and they didn't have the right sizes in stock. Went to home depot and found a combo that would allow me to try out a couple of different sizes.

5/8" diameter was too small and the ailerons still hit the hard stops before they bottomed out. 1" worked as envisioned, but limited travel to about 27* up and 16* down. This is pretty reasonable, but I think that 7/8" is probably the sweet spot and I'll circle back to this if I can source some.

Match drilled for wing root fairing nut plates top and bottom, to #19 for -8 machine screws.

Also started the process of tidying up the shop. It hasn't been done for a while and its getting pretty chaotic.

By the time all this was done, Nate was over to help me remove the wings.

I was a little worried that it might be hard to get the rig pins out because they were plenty tight to install, but I was able to tapped them out with a nylon hammer and a wooded dowel rod. The dowel wasn't even hard wood, just the handle out of a dollar store foam paint brush that I happened to have on hand.

We had both wings off in about an hour. I put one back in the vertical cradle and one across 2 work tables so I can have room to install nutplates and whatnot. Just a couple of days of detail work and these will be ready to go to the hangar and get out of the garage!

  Oct 04, 2022     Aileron rigging. - (5 hours)       Category: Wings

After finishing the big aileron pushrods (previous entry) I continued the day by checking aileron throws. It was at this point that I discovered that the brothers I bought these wings from had failed to install an aileron stop on the right wing.

I fabricated the stop for the right wing per print and determined an approximate location by drawing a sharpie line on the inner aileron bearing bracket with the aileron held to the appropriate deflection as measured with a digital inclinometer/level.

Removed the aileron and attached the new stop to the bracket via a #40 pilot hole and a cleco. installed the aileron again and checked travel, then determined that I had 32.4 degrees up travel. Per section 15 of the build manual, aileron travel is 25-32 degrees up 15-17 degrees down.

0.4 degrees as measured with harbor freight cube level isn't significant enough to worry about, but the boys had the other stop installed to allow about 29 degrees of up deflection. It would bug me to know that they weren't symmetrical, so I made a new stop with the pilot hole in the stop shifted slightly and checked again.

Took couple of iterations, but ended up with hard stops as follows;

Left: 29* up 16.8* down
Right 29.2* up 16.7 down

Sure happy with the result, but wait, there's more.

A lot of guys forego the metal stops completely in favor of a stop made from a round delrin spacer on the bolt that holds on the upper smaller aileron pushrod. This has the advantage of a softer stop without the metal on metal banging if caught out in the wind.

I would have gone that way 100% except my second hand wings already had a metal stop riveted on the left side, so I elected to match it on the right.

However, since my hard stops are on the high side of the operational range, I think I'm going to play around with the idea of installing delrin stops as well, limiting travel an extra 1/2 degree or so in order to have the ailerons hit the softer stop first. If the delrin fails I've got a real belt and suspenders installation with the hard stops or if the installation doesn't work out for some reason, no harm done. Thats a project for next time!

  Oct 04, 2022     Aileron pushrod tubes - (3 hours)       Category: Wings

A couple of years ago, I started fabricating the big aileron pushrods. The dimensions for the tube length on the preview print and the electronic version were blurry, so I started poking around on VAF. That lead me to a series of posts where people had reported making these to print length and they came up too short.

I called Vans and went down a rabbit hole of trying to guess what the tube length was supposed to be based on a blurry number and thinking maybe there was a drawing revision that changed it. Ultimately, I think that I was just seeing a blurry "5" and thinking it was a "6" of maybe it was the other way around.

At any rate, I only finished one end of these at that time, left the other end long, and put them up on the shelf. Now that I have the wings on, it was time to finish these up.

I installed one of these tubes, pinned it to the stick weldment, and set the sticks to neutral by measuring from each stick to the corresponding side of the fuselage. I then set the aileron bell crank to neutral with the aileron rigging tool.

I had put a sharpie mark on the tube at 65 25/32" which is the length Vans calls out for the tube. I measured from that mark to the appropriate bolt hole on the aileron bell crank and then measured the socket that gets riveted in the end of the tube including the heim joint that I screwed into it until just a couple of threads were showing.

All that fancy measuring revealed that I needed to add about 3/8" to the length of the tube or I was going to have to unscrew those heim joints quite a bit to get the appropriate length.

Standard practice with a heim bearing is to set it up so that more than 1/2 of the threads are engaged. That way if the jamb nuts come loose and the tube starts unscrewing itself it will bottom out on one end before it unscrews itself completely on the other end.

I measured the other side and got the same results, so I cut both tubes 3/8" longer than print and finished them by riveting in the sockets and screwing in the Heim bearings.

Installed and rigged everything and confirmed that I have 2 or 3 threads max showing above the jamb nuts on the heim joints on both ends of both tubes.

Nice!

  Oct 02, 2022     Flap pushrod holes - (5 hours)       Category: Wings

Every build log I've read calls cutting these holes an "iterative process" Vans instructions are equally vague, and just say something to the effect of "hole size as needed so that he pushrod doesn't rub throughout it's full range of travel."

So, armed with these less than precise instructions, I started by attaching the heim joints into the inboard flap rib. Then I rotated the flap up until I could see where the slot in the fuselage side needed to be to accommodate the shaft that screws into the rib, as well the approximate size of the hole that needed to be cut into the fuselage bottom to allow the body of the heim to tuck up inside the belly. The location includes the slot already existing in the side skin and the rivet hole you are instructed to leave open in the betty during fuselage assembly, so they are good starting points, but at least in my case the holes didn't end up centered on these pre-existing locations.

I marked my crude dimensions on the skin with a sharpie, then swung the flap back out off the way and with combination of drill bits, unibit, and a chainsaw file, crept up on the lines, pausing often to swing the flap up and check for clearance.

Once the flap would retract fully, I installed the pushrod and slowly extended the flaps a few degrees at a time. The hole in the belly needs to be sort of an odd oval shape because the pushrod moves laterally as well as forward as it extends. Every time I could see where rubbing was imminent, I would unhook the pushrod, swing the flap out of the way, and file a little bit away.

This went on for, no joke, probably 3 hour or so.

a few details to mention;

I started the process by installing the wingtips and ailerons so I could confirm that when the flaps were nested up against the belly they were approximately in line with the ailerons.

Van's standard part for the pushrod is a length of aluminum tube that the builder cuts to length and taps threads into for the heim joints. All well and good as long as they are made correctly. However, there have been a couple of instances of the tubes failing either because the relatively thin tube wall was rubbing on a too-small hole in the fuselage, or because they were drilled and tapped crooked leading to a thin wall and a failure at the threads. A failure of one of these rods can lead to flaps binding up or worse. According to folks on VAF, there has been at least one instance of an aircraft wrecking on the runway during landing because of a split flap condition caused by an improperly made/installed pushrod.

I believe I could make and install these rods properly and not have a problem, but a couple of years ago, I happened to be ordering something from I think Cleveland tools, and saw that they had the more robust hex shaped pushrods on clearance. They are beefier, and are pre-tapped on both ends. So for $16 bucks or so, I picked up a set and they had been in a drawer in my tool box ever since. It was really nice to be able to skip making this parts and not have to worry about it. However, they're also are a bigger diameter than the simpler fabricated pushrods and require a bigger hole.

Anyway, I finally got a hole that allowed about 1/8" of clearance with the pushrod thru it's full range of travel from the flaps zero position (where it's trailing edge is aligned with the aileron), to a full 45 degrees down without rubbing, as measured with a cheap digital level taped to the flap at mid span. This isn't as precise as I'll rig these before first flight, but good enough for this stage.

Vans says the max flap travel should be 40-45 degrees. Even though I have good travel all the way to 45 degrees I will likely limit these to 40 degrees to prevent the other problem I've seen personally on my buddy's rv6.

When the flaps are fully extended and somebody steps on the wing walk too far aft, it can pop the trailing edge of the wing skin down behind the forward edge of the flap. When this happened to my friend, he didn't notice it, retracted the flaps and bent both the leading edge of the flap and the trailing edge of the wing. Limiting full down flaps to 40 degrees allows more overlap of the trailing edge wing skin over the flap leading edge and should eliminate this possibility.

Like most things with this project, if you have to make two of something, the second one goes a lot faster than the first. Once I understood what the hole should look like and the approximate size, in addition to my arsenal of hand files, I broke out a 1/2" rotary file chucked into an electric drill and it only took about 1/2 hour to knock out.

  Sep 30, 2022     match drilled bottom skin overlap - (10 hours)       Category: Wings

I started the day by fabricating a new version of the fuselage side fuel tank bracket and match drilling it to the wing tank side. The ears and slot are located 1/4" further outboard to better align with the pilot hole that was previously drilled in the tank side tab. primed and set aside to dry.

Match drilled the lower center skin to lower inboard wing skin interface. This is the area where Van's instructions have you draw sharpie marks and extend them vi triangulation and measurement and then just poke a hole and hope for the best, because you're drilling up through the blank center fuselage skin hoping to hit the hole above it in the wing.

This has always seemed like a process of last resort. I was able to get all these with a strap duplicator except the furthest fwd one on both sides because the fuselage stand was in the way. For that one, I just drilled down from the top with a 12" long #40 bit while looking at the reflection in the fuselage side skin. ezee peezee.

NOTE- you also have to match drill a hole in top & bottom behind the aft spar. It would be easy to miss the one on the bottom, because there isn't a note or callout or anything, but it' depicted on drawing 38. On the lower side, you are left to your own devices to figure out best placement. I've shown in one of the pictures below where I ended up and I think it will work well in that location.

On the upper side, you just match drill to the inboard faring, but the aft hole takes a 1 leg nutplate due to interference with the aft end of the wing walk doubler. I measured this very carefully because if that wing walk doubler comes to far aft then even 1 leg nutplate could have some interference, but on both sides it looks like it will work out as intended.

I still need to match drill the upper side of that fairing for countersunk screws and to the tanks as well but at least on the tanks I'm going to have to wait until I get it off the fuselage stand because it conflicts with the lower end of the fairing where it fastened to a tank attach screw on the bottom at the main spar.

I finished the day by hanging the flaps and ailerons back on because I'm going to work on the flap pushrods before I take the wings off to send to the hangar.

  Sep 28, 2022     flap hinges, other minor tasks - (6 hours)       Category: Wings

final sized the flap hinge pins, built a retention clip for them. Did some other minor stuff. cleaned up the shop. Also went back to the email superstore and picked up the new steel blank for replacing the r/h fuselage side tank bracket

  Sep 27, 2022     fwdtank attach bracket problem - (4 hours)       Category: Wings

Planned to start the day with something simple and easy, i.e. match drilling the fwd tank attach brackets so that I could install the nutplate that holds them together after I take the wings back off.

Unfortunately, the starboard side had already been pilot drilled by the guys I bought hem from 2nd hand. The pilot hole is in the wrong spot. If it were a #40 hole it would, by dumb luck, be in the right spot to use for one leg of the nut plat, but alas, it's a #30 hole.

Several solutions came to mind, but when I called and discussed with Vans, Eric in builder support was of the opinion that the easiest way to correct this was to build a new fuselage side bracket and extend the ears slightly so that he bolt will nest properly.

That bracket is .063 4130 steel, which I don't have handy here at home. discovered that there is now a mets supermarket here in ICT, so I placed an order, for an oversized blank with the 90* flange bend already completed.

  Sep 24, 2022     set angle of incidence - (10 hours)       Category: Wings

I'm logging 10 hours for this due to how much time I spent measuring, researching, drinking coffee while staring at plumb bobs, etc. Honestly, drilling the holes only took about 10 minutes once I worked up the gumption to do it.

The general consensus seems to be that the two most high stakes operations in the whole project are cutting the canopy and setting the angle of incidence. There's lots of ways for this to go horribly, horribly wrong, so I was in no big hurry.

Leveled the fuselage in both directions via digital level. it showed zero deviation laterally when measured across the spars. For lateral measurement I checked 4 places; both longerons and both canopy tracks right above them. 3 of the 4 measurements showed 0.0 degrees and one was 0.1 degrees tail low. Good enough.

When we installed these wings, I hung plumb bobs and the looked really straight, but I realized that the inner ones were at probably about 30% span which probably wasn't good, so I elected them all to get a wider span.

Don't know if it was as a result of that or all the tweaking for the incidence adjustment, but they ended up swept forward about 1/4" from root to tip. The limiting factor is the forward finger of the aft fuselage attach hitting the inboard rib flange on the wing. I could get rid of it by pulling the wings and trimming probably 1/16" or so off both sides, which would let the spar stub that's coming out of the wings nest more fully against the fuselage and bring the tips aft.

I thought about that for probably a millisecond and decided that I wasn't going through that ordeal for 1/4" sweep. Vans says the tolerance is 1/2" +/- . I'm well within that, and symmetrical to within 1/32" or so when triangulating from multiple points both fore and aft.

An obvious goal in all of this is for the plane to fly hands off straight and level and to stall straight ahead without adding a bunch of aerodynamic band-aides. It's currently as symmetrical as I'm capable of making it in my garage and I'm not going to mess up a good thing by chasing a 1/4" sweep. Careful measuring at the aft attach points showed that I had good edge distance all the way around if I was precise about it, and I certainly intended to be.

Took a break, had another coffee, and then remeasured everything once again. Checked incidence in multiple places, then recalibrated the level, flipped it end for end and did it all again.

The trouble with a digital level is the same problem you get with any digital instrument; They are almost too precise.

I remember after glass cockpits and digital engine readouts became a thing we would get squawks on new airplane deliveries that tit or percent thrust or whatever was showing a 0.5% split at parallel throttle level position and could we fix that. When gauges were analog, nobody could measure to that level of accuracy and everything was fine, but now we drive ourselves crazy chasing 0.1 percent, or degree or whatever.

It's sort of the same thing here. I have a harbor freight digital level, and I just bought an expensive one specifically for this operation the other day. Both of them say there tolerance is +/- 0.1 degree, Both levels tend to agree, so my mistrust of harbor freight quality seems to have been misplaced in this instance. But, it's easy to get down in the weeds chasing that last 0.1*

Multiple measurements from multiple positions taken multiple times finally had me convinced that I was as perfect in incidence as I could get. Incidence delta with respect to fuselage level varied from 0.0* to 0.1* depending where on the span the measurement was recorded, with 2 digital levels. GOOD ENOUGH!

Measured and eyeballed the location for the uber critical aft spar hole. The most critical part of the whole operation isn't really leveling the wing, it's where you drill this hole after all the leveling is done. It's paramount that 5/8" edge distance is maintained from the center of this hole to all edges of all the material that it's going through. In my case, that left me a window of about 1/4" square to locate this. There are horror stories of guys missing this measurement and having to r&r aft spars or fuselage carry throughs due to the vans response "we have no engineering data to support any edge distance smaller than 5/8" If that happens, it's literally months of extra work just to get back to teh same place you were 30 seconds ago before you mis-drilled that hole.

It's also worth considering that this is a -5 bolt going through a thick stickup, so if you get the hole crooked, the bolt won't set flat i.e. you're also screwed.

With all that in mind, plus the fact that drilling these holes sets sweep and incidence forever, you can see how they sort of give one pause before picking up a weapon of mass construction (drill).

A while back I had obtained a set of drill blocks that somebody on VAF had machined specifically for this operation. Basically a chance of aluminum about the size and shape of a zippo lighter with a hole that will accept different size bushings.

So, once I was sure I was ready to drill the holes, I machine punched the location and started a hole just a few thousandths deep with a #40. Then I located the drill guide with a bit centered on this hole, clamped it down and drilled a #40 pilot hole.

inserted a cleco in the hole, confirmed via careful measuring, mirrors, etc. that I had good edge distance all the way around, rechecked that triangulation and incidence hadn't shifted. Re clamped drill bushing and upsized to a 9/32" drill bit. Finished off with a .3105 reamer.

Followed the same process on the other side.

Note- a AN5 bolt has a nominal diameter of 0.3125", but these both seemed kind of loose for a hole that was reamed underside, so I checked them and they both miked out at .310" i.e. they are on the low end of the tolerance for AN bolts. I know that they are acceptable per mil-spec, but given the critical nature of this attachment, I may try to find some bolts that will allow a tighter fit at final wing installation.

Anyway, I'm super glad that operation is over. Only a little faring work, plumbing, and rigging and then these wings can come off and go to the hangar!

  Sep 23, 2022     measuring for wing attach - (16 hours)       Category: Wings

Started rigging/adjusting the wings. Where the wings want to naturally fall when plugged in at the main spar is pretty close as far as sweep. Hung 4 plumb bobs per instructions and they were swept fwd maybe 3/8" at the tip before I did anything.

Spent probably an hour getting the fuselage as level as possible in both directions. Bought a really expensive digital level just for this job and got it measuring between 0 and 0.1 degree I had leveled it before we plugged the wings in, but with all the hopping in and out of the plane during that operation, it required a little fine tuning.

Vans tells you that you may have to have the wings on and off a couple of times. If you need to move the tips aft for sweep you can only go so far before something will bottom out at the aft spar attach and need to be trimmed.

In my case, life is good, because just as the fwd finger of the aft spar cary through hits the rib flange on the wing and prevents further travel of the wingtips aft, the sweep zeroed out and the triangulation became as perfect as I'm capable of making it.

So, the fwd fork on the fuselage side is exactly as long as it's possible to be. On the wing side, The spar stub could have been about 1/8" longer. I didn't build my wings, but there is a dimension for the aft spar stub on the wing side where you cut some off of it during wing assembly. This is because this part is common to the RV7 and RV8 and it's longer on the 8.

Long story short, the print shows you how much to cut off, but it doesn't have a reference point that gives you a way to measure how much should be left after. I've been looking at that stub for a couple of years now, hoping that the bros who built these wings were accurate when they trimmed the ends of that spar stub because it would really suck if it was too short.

life is good, like I said, the spar stubs could have been left about 1/8" longer before they would have bottomed out on the fuselage, but with everything adjusted where I want it, I have about 1/4"" laterally and about 5/16" vertically to locate the center of the bolt hole and maintain the ultra critical 5/8" edge distance.

Everything I've just written took about an hour, so what gives with the 16 hours logged over 2 days for this entry?

In addition to the normal instructions, Vans has a supplemental service letter type document in the tech support section of their web site that gives additional guidance on this. One of the things they mention is that you should mount the flaps to see if you can get them to nest under the fuse while you're messing with angle of incidence.

I spent the entire rest of thursday and all day friday trying to get those darn flaps to fit.

Vans tells you that you will likely have to trim the inbd upper flap skin to get them clearance to retract, but in my case, I was having to cut so much off that the rivet heads on the support structure that the flap pushrod attached to was going to be the limiting factor, not the skin. What the heck? I've got these trimmed back as much as physically possible and only have about 1/32" clearance with the fuselage side skin. clearly not enough to guarantee it won't be scrubbing paint off there during flap operation.

Thought about this overnight and when I came back to it on friday I had a plan of attack. You position the flaps laterally by first positioning the ailerons, then setting the gap between ailerons and flaps to 1/4". Way back a couple of years ago when I bought these wings, I measured this all out and had the prescribed 1/4" all the way around (or so my build log says) but there is some leeway for "adjust as necessary" in how you stack up washers on the aileron hinge pivot bolts to get them where you want them.

Re-adjusted the washer stackup and was able to move the ailerons outboard the thickness of one washer which is only about .060, but every little bit helps. measured the flap/aileron gap and discovered that it's actually more like 5/16", so I have room to move the flaps outboard. Kind of a hassle, but it's that or live with a tiny paint-destroying gap on the inboard side.

Fortunately, I've got plenty of extra piano hinge. I had ordered some from spruce with the intent attaching the wingtips with it and UPS damaged/bent the shipping tube in transit, so Spruce sent me more for free. Was able to use the unbent sections from the damaged tube for cowl stuff, and have several replacement 6' sections on the shelf

Drilled the hinge half off both flaps and relocated new hinge about 1/16" inbd on flap. This moved the flap laterally outbd 1/16" so now I have the prescribed 1/4" gap between flap and aileron, but I also have 3/32 to 1/8" gap at the fuselage. This isn't he first time I've noticed on this kit that if you give yourself more than the prescribed margins somewhere, it can cause a problem somewhere else later. But wow. who wold think that 1/16" on something a sloppy as a piano hinge could case so much trouble!

I feel like I went down a rabbit trail on this, because it started out as just seeing if the flaps would nest at the proscribed angle of incidence, but it's done and I've verified that hey flaps are indeed fitting nicely and I won't have to cut off the inboard lower skins or otherwise take heroic measures to make them fit.

I'm including beauty shots of the triangulation and sweep adjustments below, but I'm going to have to do it all over again before locking the wings down. Need to make sure I didn't jostle something while I was messing around with the flaps and ailerons.

  Sep 21, 2022     Installed wings for the first time - (10 hours)       Category: Wings

Yesterday I once again read through anything I could find on wing installation. I went to the hardware store with a flat granite countertop sample we had left over from a recent kitchen remodel and a micrometer.

Checked a bunch of grade 5 bolts for runout and most of them were a couple thousandths bent. picked the straightest ones then measured and picked the 6 smallest diameter ones. they were a couple thousandths below nominal.

Chucked them up is a drill press, burnished them to a high shine then cut the threads off and made rigging bullets out of them.

I also sprung for a fancy digital level from lowes. I'll skimp when appropriate, but I think wing rigging is one place where good tools will pay off.

Threw together a small cart/stand out of scrap lumber for resting a wing on during positioning pre-installation. nothing fancy, but it all takes time.those two operations took several hours.

Today I got home from a an early flight about 10:00 and spent the next several hours rearranging the garage, getting stuff laid out, measuring, leveling etc.

Brother in law Nate came over around 2:00 and we had a limited amount of time, so I didn't want to waste any time looking for tools or whatever.

Lubed everything with LP-2. Spars, webs, caps, holes, drift pins. everything

One person on each end, rest on cart just shy if fuselage, move to sides, lift and insert about 1/2". One guy to tip and one at root controlling insertion. get close then root guy climbs in and gives guidance via inspection mirror. Once they are aligned, tap in a drift pin with a delrin hammer.

Start to finish, not counting all the prep, both wings were installed in two hours.

Stacy Greene swung by after work and the 3 of us checked triangulation for symmetry and dropped plumb bobs for sweep. wings naturally fall symmetrical almost perfectly. Sweep fwd is approx 1/8 in. I will get down in the weeds on this tomorrow, but am counting tonight as a victory.

  May 01, 2020     trial fit flight controls - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Installed ailerons & flaps to see how everything fit with the wingtips on. Everything looks great with consistent 1/4" gaps between all flight controls.

I had previously adjusted the bend of the upper skin at the aft spar to correct the ski-jump problem that wings from this period were prone to. The right wing looks great in that regard, but the left wing needs a little more work. There is a gap at the flap recess that is bigger at the root than at the outbd end. I'm going to wait until the wings are installed on the fuselage to come back to this.

Removed flaps & ailerons, packed then up in shipping blankets and moved them to storage in the basement with the empennage and various other small parts.

  Apr 30, 2020     wing inspection panels - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

Didn't have a lot going on this afternoon, so I dimpled & installed nut plates on the insp. holes in the r/h wing. Installed tut plates with oops rivets after countersinking by hand with a debur tool.

  Apr 28, 2020     Pitot plumbing - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Kid #2 helped me put the r/h wing on the wing stand. Once that was done, I went back to the L/H wing and worked on plumbing for pitot and AOA.

I don't like the idea of that nylon tubing with its heavy press-on fittings just flopping around where in connects to the 3/16"alum. tube coming off the pitot tube. Seems like it might be hard on the pitot hard lines, plus its right under the aileron push tube so I definitely don't want stuff flopping around in there. Also people have told me that they've had a lot of trouble with those fittings leaking and it would sure be nice to have easy access during pitot/static checks.

To that end, I've broken my own rule about less fittings is better. I fabricated and installed a 24" length of 1/4" AN tube from the pitot bay to the inbd inspection bay for both the pitot and AOA. The plan is to connect the pitot lines via a union, then on the other end transitioning to the nylon where its easy to get to. Will see how this works during system wring out, but worst case scenario is that if it leaks I can go back to plan A and run nylon all the way to the pitot bay.

  Apr 27, 2020     fit r/h wingtip to wing. drilled to #40 & clecoed - (3 hours)       Category: Wings

Installed aileron, rigged to neutral, match drilled wingtip & clecoed to #40.

  Apr 26, 2020     finished wingtip nav light install on r/h wing - (3 hours)       Category: Wings

Did the trim & fit for the r/h FlyLED boards, the clear lens, & the nutplates that hold the boards on. Did the same nutplates on the other wingtip.

  Apr 23, 2020     Fit and drilled L/H wingtip - (4 hours)       Category: Wings

Fit the wing tip, matched to t.e. trimmed gaps etc. The aileron to tip gap is supposed to be 1/4" per print, so I cut it to 3/16" with my dremmel and then sanded up to the line to get the full 1/4". The tip fits pretty nicely at this point. Only off on the t.e. maybe 1/16" or so.

The T.E. of the tip has a little wave in it, so I'll likely try to manipulate that a little bit when I trim it to match the aileron, but I think I'll wait on that.

Once I got the aileron mounted, I was able to sight down it and the tip and discovered that not only does the tip have a little wave in the t.e., so does the l/h aileron. This is a bummer, but I don't thing it's bad enough to warrant rework. If it flies funny I'll manipulate it then.

Also drilled mounting holes to #40. Took it back off, then cut and final fit the nav light lens.

  Apr 21, 2020     Trimmed left wingtip - (4 hours)       Category: Wings

Pretty much the same thing as yesterday, but on the other wing. Still have a couple of low spots in both wingtips, so I cut some foam airfoil shapes and used them to push out the wingtips from the inside. both wingtips are pretty much in a shape that I can cut the aileron gap and finish them up, but I don't know if there's any real benefit to doing that yet, other than getting the wingtips out of the way and being able to store them on the wing rack.

  Apr 20, 2020     Continued to fit wingtips - (6 hours)       Category: Wings

The wingtips were both "unwarped" enough to fit them to the wing, so I trimmed the r/h one to fit. The lip where the skin sticks out past the last wing rib is about 9/16" which is quite a bit less than the moulded-in recess in the wingtip where it's supposed to nest, so I had to trim about 3/8" or so off the inner edge of the wingtip to keep it from bottoming out on the rib before seating properly.

I installed the aileron and pinned it in it's neutral position per Vans instructions so I could get the wingtip trailing edge aligned, then did a bunch of measuring and trial fits to try and keep the gaps around the aileron hinge as tight as possible.

I still wasn't happy with some of the waviness of the tip, so I cut some foam insulation to airfoil shape and inserted it into the tip to push it out from the inside temporarily.

Everything looks pretty good, but it's only held on with tape at this point. Will likely not drill for nut plates until later. Still need to enlarge tip to aileron gap to 1/4" and have some fiberglass work ahead because the wingtip trailing edge needs to be cut down to match the aileron.

  Apr 16, 2020     re-shape wingtips - (6 hours)       Category: Wings

Started out last night by just forcing this into the correct shape with some heavy weight (back rivet plate & some dumbbells) and hitting it with my torpedo shop heater to see if I could get them to take a set in the new shape. This was a complete failure, although I did manage to melt the end of a plastic spring clamp.

Went to harbor freight and got a cheap heat gun, then experimented until I found out how to make this process work. Basically, localized heat will cause the edges of these wing tips to move AWAY from the side where heat is being applied. So if the edges are flared out, then applying heat to the outside of the wing tip just behind the unwanted curve will cause them to curl in. Unfortunately, as it cools off, it wants to pop back into the same shape it was before the heat was applied.

What worked best was to heat and preload the shape in the direction you want, then try to hold it there with clamps and whatnot while it cools. No matter how I had it clamped, there was always some spring back, so there was a bunch of repetition with small gains each time.

This is definitely a case of slow and steady wins the race. It took most of the day to figure out a combination of braces, clamps, strings and heavy weights that would do what I needed. Then I would heat up an area, encourage it into the correct shape, then wait for it to cool and see what result was achieved. Took forever, but I think I eventually got there.

During the cool down cycles, I was looking for something else to do, so I took apart and cleaned the gas caps because the fuel lube that the boys had put on them years ago had turned to the consistency of maple syrup. I also noticed that one wasn't adjusted right at all and the fiber lock nut wasn't even screwed down. After I cleaned them up I lubed them with a drop of oil and they work a lot easier.

  Apr 14, 2020     Wing Insp. panels & wingtips - (3 hours)       Category: Wings

Ordered the Fuselage kit today. I've been delaying for a while; both to wait and see if we were going to owe anything to the tax man, and because this is the point of no return where you really have to lock down landing gear configuration and canopy style. After finally getting my taildragger signoff in a C170 last year, I was pretty sure I wanted a taildragger, but I've been really waffling about whether to go tip-up or slider on the canopy.

I like the visibility of the tip up, plus it's 20 lbs lighter and I'm pretty sure it would be easier to build. But, even with all that, I ultimately decided to go with the slider. When I really thought it through, I could envision how much of a hassle a tip-up could be here in windy Kansas, trying to get the plane preflighted and loaded while making sure the canopy didn't end up in Nebraska. It will also be nice to taxi around with the top open in the summer, both here and at our place out west. In the Cessnas, I'm an arm out the window guy and it will be nice to do the same on this plane.

Once that decision was put to bed, I finished up the wing inspection holes on the left wing. The boys had put all the #6 nutplates in the spar flanges, but not the #8's in the skins, so I finished that up, as well as finishing all 6 panel covers (3 for each wing). Tomorrow, I'll likely do the other wing.

Also started thinking about how to deal with the wingtips. These have been stored for years, probably sitting on the edges, and they have warped pretty drastically. New tips are $250 a pop plus shipping, so I'm going to try to fix these.

I think the best way to coax them back into the correct shape will be with some strategically placed weight wile applying heat, so I'm going to tinker a while to see what that might look like. I'm really not impressed with how floppy these things evidently are, so if I can get them back into the correct profile, I'll likely glass in some stiffeners to make sure they stay that way. This may be a spectacular failure, but I'm going to try before I shell out the $ for new wingtips.

I'm on the fence about whether I need a Nav radio in this plane, but was thinking that if so, I'd likely go with an archer antenna in one of the wingtips so that will play into whatever design I come up with for stiffeners and such.

  Apr 07, 2020     finished installing lower outbid skin - (3 hours)       Category: Wings

Had Holly help me put this wing back in the vertical stand and finished the last 2-3 bays that way. Started with it peeled back toward the wing root and held with a couple of strings, but once I got within 2 bays from the end was able to just cleco everything and work through the lightening holes.

  Apr 05, 2020     started riveting lower outbd l/h wing skin - (4 hours)       Category: Wings

First thing, mapped the rivet callouts for this skin and marked the runs in sharpie. The rivets vary in length from -3.5 all the way to -5, depending on where it is and how many layers it goes through.

Didn't want to teach any of the fam to rivet/buck on a wing skin, so I debated on whether to try it by myself or wait until I could get a partner over here. Ultimately decided that I could handle it myself if I could get the angle right. Started vertically in the cradle and got the most inbd aft rivets through an inspection hole.

Then had Holly help me lay in flat on the table and peeled the skins back with a couple of strings running up to a convenient hoist I had in the ceiling for removing the hard tp from my jeep. If Wile E Coyote was doing this, it's the sort of contraption he would likely use. Did about 2 more bays this way and really beat up both forearms through the lightening holes, even though I was wearing long sleeves.

Was concerned that maybe the skin was starting to creep downhill toward the trailing edge, so Holly helped me sit it back up in the cradle and everything lined up perfectly again. Did another bay before calling it quits for the evening.

  Mar 23, 2020     Prep wing skin. Prep pitot. - (4 hours)       Category: Wings

Helped my In-laws move last week. Between that and the Covid-19 train wreck, I haven't been working on the plane much in the last week or so. Thanks to the pandemic, pretty much everybody in ICT is looking at furloughs and massive economic impacts, not to mention that we're now looking at home lockdowns etc. Given the magnitude of this disaster, I don't know when I'll be able to order the fuse, but I'm going to push fwd with what I can do with the stuff I've already got.

UofA cancelled face to face classes and went 100% online while Holly was home on spring break, so she's not going back to AZ any time soon. We're going to have to make a trip to AZ probably in April to get her car and move her out of her apartment, but she's moved back into her old room permanently for now.

RJ is working extra hours at Dillons as everybody is panic buying random stuff. You walk in there and it looks freaking apocalyptic. Kriya has also had the flu (the puking kind, not the Covid-19 kind).

Anyway, I finally got back to this and edge finished the lower outbd left wing skin, trial fit, on and off a bunch while designing the pitot mast mount. Decided to incorporate an angle that ties into the rib as well as the spar flange so hopefully the mount will be a little more robust. Also cut down the mast so that the Garmin tube will set about 5.5 inches below the wing. Garmin range is 4-10" below the wing, and I was shooting for about 6 inches, but I got one of the holes off center and ended up cutting off another .5 inches to get new holes. Will work well and doesn't look as goofy as a super long mast dangling down there.

  Mar 10, 2020     SB16-03-28 on left wing - (3 hours)       Category: Wings

The SB warns to only do it on completed wings if you discover cracks during annual inspection. Looking at how you would have to accomplish this on a completed wing, I think that it's safe to say the logic is that there's a pretty good chance of botching something if you do it wrong, and it's not worth taking the risk for just a preventative measure for something that may never happen.

However, my left wing still has the lower outbd skin off, so I decided that it was worth knocking it out on this wing now. In the future, I'll just have to monitor the right wing during the condition insp. and deal with it if I ever find cracks.

Step one was to drill the rivet heads off the inbd aileron hinge bracket. Slow and steady is the way to go when you're working on spars & whatnot, so I started by center drilling the rivets with a #50, then a #40, then finally a #30 just deep enough that I could snap the heads off. Once I was sure where the now exposed rivet shank was in relation to the spar etc, I drilled most of the way through the rivet with a #50, then in just a little way with a #40 in order to give my punch a shoulder to ride on without swelling up the shaft.

My daughter is home for spring break, so I conscripted her to back up the shop heads with a wood block while I smacked the other side with a pin punch and hammer and they all popped right out no problem. An autograph on the inside of the wing concluded her participation in this particular project.

After I got the hinge bracket off, I went ahead and tweaked the upper spar flange in that area to get rid of the ski jump. I'll do the rest of it when the wing is flipped over and easier to access.

Clecoed the doublers in and trial fit everything. I also confirmed that once these doublers are installed it's going to be problematic to buck a couple of those rivets. In fact, it may even be a problem to pull cherries, because the edge of the doubler angles are right under a couple of dimples and I don't know if I could get them in far enough to pull.

Vans has approved relieving the doublers so you can get a bucking bar in there or use pull rivets, so I cut an appropriate angle on the legs of the doublers. Given what's going on in there, I'm pretty sure I'm going to use MK-319BS pull rivets in those 2 holes and just be done with it (approved by vans & std industry practice).

De-burred, dressed the edges & primed the doublers, then shot them on with a 4x rivet gun, 6" long #4 universal set, and a tungsten bucking bar. These are -8 & -9 rivets and between that and the long set, I really had to crank the pressure up. I went with a "that's about right" setting and t ended up being about 80 psi at the compressor. One of the rivets is a flush head and I used a bent/ modified flush set for that one. One of teh tails is wiped over a little, but not bad enough to drill it out and risk oversizing a hole by trying to set a 3rd rivet in it. They are all within spec and I'm calling it good.

  Mar 08, 2020     Adjusted aft spar flange r/h wing.       Category: Wings

The left wing isn't closed up yet, so I'll probably drill off the inbd aileron hinge and complete SB16-03-28 on that side. I'm not excited about drilling off that hinge, especially when I can see that the angled doublers installed in this SB are going to cause a real problem bucking the skin rivet in the lower skin right behind it. But, it's a situation where I can do it now, so I probably will.

When I got these wings, I discovered that they were the vintage that had underbent rear spar upper flanges. What this means is that at the flap wells, the upper skin "ski-jumps" instead of flowing in a straight line to the t.e.

Vans is aware of this and has a loaner tool which will latch onto the flange and bend it into the right shape and eliminate or at least minimize this and so that the flaps will tuck up under the skin like they are supposed to. I contacted Vans a while back about getting this thing and was told that another builder had it and I was on on the list to get it when available.

Since I'm planning to have the aileron hinge off to do the SB, it seemed like that would give extra access to manipulate the spar flange in that area with it out of the way, so I decided rather that waiting for the vans tool too be available I could probably build my own tool.

I had a couple of pieces of heavy aluminum bar stock about 3.5" wide and spend about an hour or so crafting them into a giant clothes pin with nicely radiuses ends and reliefs for the rivet tails and dimples.

There's no way I'm doing SB16-03-28 on a closed up wing until/unless I have to, but the fully skinned right wing had the worst t.e. issue, so I decided to see if I could fix it before I dug into the SB on the left wing.

Just by sighting down the t.e. you can see how the aileron closeout has pulled the upper skin down into the correct position outbd and how the inner section ski-jumps up where there's no substructure to pull it down You can also get an idea of where it should be by laying a straight edge chord wise along the upper skin at the trailing edge. It shouldn't have any curvature back there at all.

Basically, I started at the inner aileron hinge and worked toward the root, flexing the flange until everything was heading in the right direction. I went a little bit at a time so as to not stretch or deform the skin, laying a straight edge chord wise on the upper skin t.e. as I went to check the results. I went over it 5-6 times, bending it a tiny amount with each bite until I got a satisfactory result.

There's still a deviation of maybe .10" in a few places, but the trailing edge skin now flows straight off the wing and the flaps should nest nicely so I'm going to leave well enough alone.

Next session, I'm planning to do the same on the left wing, as well as SB16-03-28.

  Mar 08, 2020     Landing light brainstorming - (3 hours)       Category: Wings

So the guys who I bought these wings from had planned way back in 2007 to do roll your own landing lights. They had cut elliptical holes in the leading edges for a couple of small halogen lights that I'm not going to use. I'd like to utilize those holes for LEDs if I can find a reasonable solution that will fit, but I'm not sure the hole extends far enough under the bottom trailing edge to throw light where it needs to be on approach. I'm planning to build this at a tail dragger and the challenge gets even bigger when you start thinking about aiming taxi lights in that configuration.

Somebody from VAF previously sent me a PFD of the template to cut the Duckworks hole in the wing. Unfortunately, the holes that are already cut are wider than the template. I contacted Duckworks a while back & got the dimensions of their lens blanks and when I explained what I had they told me that the standard blanks only needed about 3/8" min overlap on each side and that they were oversized enough before trimming that I would probably be okay with the standard ones but that they could cut oversized ones for me on request.

I think that the only way to be sure what I need to do with this hole is to settle on a LED set, install them, and then see what I need to do with the hole, so I'm going to order lights from Flyled tomorrow.

  Mar 08, 2020     Re-arranged shop & set up to finish wings - (4 hours)       Category: Wings

With Roberts help, I moved the wings off the two-piece wing stand, then remodeled it to be a one piece stand with rollers on it. Also, put the left wing on the tables and removed the clecoed on bottom outer skin, and started thinking about what I need to do before permanently installing it.

So far the list is:
Pitot mast, plumbing & wiring
Landing lights
Adjusting the under-bent aft spar flange
Doing the aileron hinge SB (maybe).

  Mar 07, 2020     Re-arranged shop & set up to finish wings - (4 hours) Category: Wings

With Roberts help, I moved the wings off the two-piece wing stand, then remodeled it to be a one piece stand with rollers on it. Also, put the left wing on the tables and removed the clecoed on bottom outer skin, and started thinking about what I need to do before permanently installing it.

So far the list is:
Pitot mast, plumbing & wiring
Landing lights
Adjusting the under-bent aft spar flange
Doing the aileron hinge SB (maybe).

  Dec 23, 2019     Aileron pushrods - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Cut the tubes about an inch longer than the dimensional callout. Primed the inside with zinc phosphate, the outside with sherwin williams, and installed one end, so that I can trial fit to check for interference with pitot plumbing etc. Will trim to final dimension and install the cockpit end after wing mate.

  Dec 12, 2019     set mark on r/h wing lower trailing edge- disposition - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

Note- when I first bought these wings, I noted the a mushroom setmark on the lower inbd skin at the aft spar flange, approx centered between the two inbd inspection panels. There is a corresponding ripple in the spar flange that I was able to see with a borescope.

I didn't really see how it would cause any problems, but since this is my first RV and I'm unsure how robust some of the structure might be, I thought I'd check. Vans tech support looked at the pictures and said don't worry about it, so now I've got written guidance from Vans saying it's structurally ok.

Given the location and difficulty in reworking this, I'm going with Van's advice. I hate the idea of sand and fill to cover up mistakes, but I've seen it on plenty of jets, so I'm letting the paint shop fill this with a few grams of filler when that time comes and nobody will ever know except you and me :)

  Dec 12, 2019     Wing Spar root nut plate rework - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

There are a couple of nutplates on each spar web at the root that are pretty much the first thing installed when you start working on the spars. On one wing all 4 of the countersinks were shallow by probably 4-5 thousandths. This is an area where the spar has to slide into and mate with the center section after you build the fuselage and the tolerance here is really tight. I was concerned about the proud rivet heads getting hung up when I eventually try to slide the wings home, or maybe fretting against the center section afterward and either causing corrosion to start there or maybe wearing a divot in the center section that would make it hard to get that wing out if anybody ever has to remove them in the future.

I asked Vans builder support about this and Sterling said it would be fine, but it was really bothering me that I might struggle to slide these wings home and was also going to have this point load in an area thats held together with about a dozen close tolerant bolts, so I drilled them out.

Reworked the countersinks to the proper depth with a microstop, swirled the hole with primer on a q-tip, and reinstalled the nutplates. The bolts that go into those nutplates are close tolerance and go through several layers. It seems like it's to my benefit to make sure that nut plate is dead in the center, because theres no wiggle room in the hole at all. To do that, I stacked enough washers on a bolt that I could snug it up on the nutplate without going deep enough to engage the locking portion. This made sure the nutplate was 100% centered. Was able to squeeze the rivets with a longeron yoke.

  Dec 12, 2019     Aileron pushtubes plus rework on spar nutplates - (3 hours)       Category: Wings

Talked to Vans Builder Support yesterday re; the dimension for the long aileron pushtubes. They pulled up the same drawing I was looking at and said the dimension was fuzzy on their copy as well and agreed that it looked like 66 & 6/32, but had no explanation as to why it would have changed from my 2006 vintage print, which is the same drawing revision ( rev 4). I had also put a picture of the print on VAF and somebody said that they thought it was just blurry and really was still 65 & 5/32. They pointed out that while some people had found the smaller dimension to be slightly short, adding more than an inch to it would likely make it too long to fit.

Builder support had suggested that I measure the rod ends and do the arithmetic to determine how long to make the tube to achieve the overall dimension of 69 & 9/32, since it was a constant and the same no matter what source you looked at. I did that and discovered that if I made the tube to the longer dimension, the ends would be bottomed out on the jamb nuts to get the correct overall length, with no room whatsoever to adjust shorter for any potential tolerance buildup or airframe variation. This is obviously not right, so I'm inclined to think that the input from VAF is correct and that The dimension is actually 65 & 25/32 on both prints, but is sure doesn't look like it!

I need one of these tubes in place so I can make sure I have clearance for the hardlines coming off the heated pitot tube, but they don't have to be cut to final length until much later in the process, so I decided to finish the tubes but leave them long, and only install the heim joint on the bell crank end, so I can get that trial fit for now. I'll get a good measurement and finish the other end during final assembly to a fuselage that doesn't exist yet.

To that end, I cut the tubes to about 66.75 inches. I then cleaned the oxidation layer off of the inside with a piece of red scotchbrite on the end of a coat hangar spinning slowly in an electric drill, and plunged them with paper towels wetted in acetone shoved through with a smaller aluminum tube I had laying around. I primed the inside by taking a rubber glove over one end and spraying tempo zinc phosphate self etching primer into the other end and then sloshing it around to cover the inside.

Once the outside was cleaned up similarly, I sprayed them with some new primer I picked up at Sherwin Williams this morning. According to Sherwin Williams, FA3XEP is the same thing they used to call 988GBP. When I dissected the old r/h elevator, that's the primer that was on it and it was obviously a lot tougher that the zinc phosphate so I'm giving it a try. I'm pretty sure it's also going to be quite a bit heavier and it costs $16 per can, so my plan is to use it where stuff might get beat up, but stick with the zinc for ribs and stuff like that. I'll give this a couple of days to get 100% hard and then install one of the rod ends for the trial fit I need.

  Dec 10, 2019     aileron pushrods - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

I've read tons of posts on Vans Airforce about how often the big pushrods end up too short if you cut them to the length on the print, so I looked at this pretty closely. The wings I have are from 2006, and the 15A print has a dimension of 65 25/32" I've got new preview plans in both paper and Electronic versions, so I looked at them just to confirm. The callout is fuzzy on both the paper copy and the electronic version, but it looks like 66 26/32.

I get why they would bump this up if people were getting them too short, but an increase of exactly 1 1/32" seems like a strange number, so I asked on VAF and got a reply from someone who said their print had the old number, but they increased it by 3/8".

This is a little strange. The title block shows 4 revisions to this print, the last one in 2003. None of the revision notes mention anything about changing this particular dimension.

I'd like to get these made so that I can do a temporary install on the left wing and make sure I'm going to have clearance for my pitot tube install, but I'm going to investigate this a little further.

  Dec 10, 2019     autopilot mount - (1 hour)       Category: Wings

While I'm waiting for new empennage parts to come in, I thought I might as well keep moving forward on something else. Ordered a roll servo mount a while back so I went ahead and installed it in the right wing. Removed the bellcrank, drilled the required new hole on my drill press, hit the edge with some primer on a q-tip and then re-installed with the servo mounting brackets.

Torqued down all the fasteners except the one that has the upper servo mount strap coming off of it. The hole for that is slotted, so I'm assuming it needs some finesse during servo install. I'll torque it down after I get the servo in, later on down the road. NOTE: The instructions don't make it clear, but there is a definite right and wrong way to install that strap. The ears are a different length and it needs to go in with the slotted hole at the bell crank mount on teh spar otherwise it will hit the bell crank mount.

  Oct 04, 2019     flap issue - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

inspected the flaps- several areas where the rivet tails aren't pretty, but none of them are clenched, so okay. I did discover an issue though. Drawing 14 has you install the aft rivet for the nutplate the CM-4 rod end bearing screws into prior to installing the FL706B plate. Then on the fwd one, you countersink & install a longer rivet through both the FL706B & the FL704 rib. It's obvious that you cant get a rivet set on the aft one if you install FL706B first.

The original guys evidently missed this step, and their solution was to shoot the aft rivet in with the shop head on the outside of the rib. That worked out okay on the left flap, but on the right flap, they actually countersunk the inside of the nutplate ear and put a flush rivet in (???) then creased the shop head on the outside with the bucking bar.

These rivets don't do anything but keep the nutplate from turning so there's nothing structural about them. I shot an email with pictures to Van's, mostly just to reassure myself that there weren't going to be any clearance issues or whatnot on down the road and the word from tech support is that it won't cause any problems and to leave well enough alone.

Here's the response I I got from Sterling Langrell at Vans:

"This one rivet being reversed should not cause any problems as it is not on the doubler where it could interfere with the push rod. Leave it alone."

  Oct 03, 2019     Aileron wrap-up - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

I got some torque putty yesterday so I re-installed the aileron hinge brackets from when I had to remove them for access to missing pop rivets. They go on with AN3 bolts so the torque is only 20-25 inch-lbs plus whatever prevailing torque is in the lock nuts, which is so small that I can't measure it with my torque wrench. I know it can't be much, so I torqued them to 26 in-lbs and called it good.

Since I had the torque wrench out, I checked the other aileron and it was about the same.

I've decided to use orange torque putty on everything during the build & a different color during subsequent annuals, so I can tell at a glance if I've had something apart since construction. Used new hardware because I won't re-use fiber lock nuts on anything as significant as a flight control.

This pretty much finished up the ailerons, so I wrapped them in a moving blanket and set them aside for now.

  Sep 28, 2019     installed missing rivets in aileron - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Install the missing LP rivets common to the nose rib/aileron counterbalance on the r/h aileron. These are pretty much the first rivets you're supposed to install when you build the ailerons. They are a pain to get to on a completed unit due to no clearance to get a pop rivet tool in there. Was able to pull the rivets at an angle by bending the mandrel and then sliding it through a couple of small pieces of rudder trailing edge wedge stacked up. This allowed me to pull with the gun at about a 40 degree angle while still having the rivet set properly. Had to remove the hinge brackets to give myself any chance of success at this, and I don't have any torque putty, so I haven't put them back together yet. I'll do that in a day or two.

  Sep 26, 2019     aileron & flap conformity/quality check - (2 hours)       Category: Wings

Ailerons & flaps had been stacked with shop rags between them then taped together with duct tape, presumably in 2008. Took a long time to get them apart and all the 11 year old tape residue off of them. Both had -3 rivet holes that hadn't been set at the rib T.E. due to tight space for a squeezer. I was able to get them with a ground down no-hole yoke. In one case, there was already a pull rivet in one flap, so even though I could have set a rivet, I put a matching pull rivet in the other one so they would be the same side to side.

Also did a quality and conformity check against the print. The only significant thing I found so far is that on one aileron, there are pop rivets missing from the aft side of the counterbalance pipe common to the nose ribs. They drilled the holes, and then evidently just forgot to put rivets in the holes. Space is too tight to get a pop rivet gun in there now that it's all together and I don't have any confidence that the angled technique with the mandrel going through a wedge will work. I think that the angle required is too great.

I will have to ponder this a while. I've also asked for input from Vans Airforce forum and will see if anyone has suggestions. If I can't come up with a better idea, I could always put a machine screw and lock nut in there, but that seems like a clunky solution.

  Sep 17, 2019     Pitot mast corrosion control - (.2 hour)       Category: Wings

There was a nice pitot mast in the tubs of random parts I got with the kit. They had primed it everywhere except the back side of the mounting flange and it had a few specks of rust. I cleaned it up with a red scotchbrite pad and hit it with some rattle can zinc chromate that they gave me as well. Can you even buy zinc chromate anymore?