Mar 12, 2024     Baggage Area (in progress)       Category: Fuselage

One of the biggest challenges with the baggage area is determining where and how to route cables to the tailcone. Van's has the battery placed in the tailcone, which is important for maintaining proper center of gravity, but necessitates at least one if not two large power cables from the firewall to the tail. Adding in autopilot servos, ELT, antennas, the magnetometer, static lines, and elevator trim servos makes the cabling situation quite complex. I have not finalized my plans, but am leaning towards running four 5/8" conduits from the sidewalls through the baggage floor and out into the tailcone. I am also planning on running two #2 battery cables, one on each side of the aircraft, to have a separate ground path for the battery.

  Jan 12, 2024     Tailcone Attachment - (12 hours)       Category: Fuselage

After Section 29, tailcone attachment was straightforward. The most difficult part was making sure the longerons from the fuselage and the tailcone were aligned, and that the drill for the attach bolts was straight. Other than that, it just takes time. I was very happy with how everything came out.

Riveting required a helper, but again was pretty straightforward. There are quite a few overlapping skins on the bottom of the fuselage at the tailcone joint, so we took care to make sure everything was well aligned before driving rivets. I can see how it would be easy to have a gap between skins worsened by an expanding rivet.

My garage felt quite small during the attachment, but now that the tailcone is attached I have been able to push the fuse assembly back and angle it a bit more to give some more working space on either side of the fuse.

  Jul 11, 2023     Upper Forward Fuselage Assembly       Category: Fuselage

The upper forward fuselage reminds me most of the control surface sections in the empennage kits - it is overall pretty straight forward and lots of basic aluminum work; drill, deburr, dimple, prime, rivet. I was a bit concerned when my firewall appeared to bend forward at the top, but after consulting with other RV-10 builders that is exactly how the firewall is designed. If I have one complaint with the Van's plans, it is that they don't call out these expected details after assembly relying on you to interpret the plan drawings or use your builders network.

I opted to build the "Quadrant" version of the assembly, but am planning on an aerosport products quadrant and center console which requires different routing of the throttle, prop, and mixture control cables. So, I ended up not installing the quadrant bracket in the assembly. It would be very easy to access the mount location for the bracket to install it later if desired.

  Jun 15, 2023     Step Installation       Category: Fuselage

After Section 29, the steps were a nice break. I bought a laser level from Amazon to help with the alignment of the steps per the plans, but otherwise did not need any new or special tooling. I primed the exterior and interior of the steps with Stewart Systems Ekoprime. I was considering adding aluminum supports to the interior of the steps where the bolt attaches, but after doing some test fits I was worried about the primer scraping away and subjecting the steps and support to dissimilar metal corrosion. So, I opted to leave the steps per the plans and purchased some access panels from Airward to install in the baggage floors, should the step hardware ever need to be adjusted.

  May 07, 2023     Fuselage Side Skins       Category: Fuselage

During Section 29 I had to move my project (along with my family) from El Paso, Texas to San Antonio. This, plus the huge amount of work in Section 29, caused the section to stretch out for almost a year.

There are three main difficult parts in Section 29: Bending the fuselage longerons, bending the side skins where they curl down to overlap the bottom skin, and then drilling the firewall attach brackets once all the previous parts have been bent and clecoed together.

The fuselage longeron bends went fine. Very similar to bending the tailcone longerons, and not too difficult. However, the side skin bends were very difficult. In hindsight I would have spent more time on the bends as that would have made riveting easier, but we were able to get a good fit. I also would recommend longer vice grips to give more mechanical leverage while bending. For each skin, I would typically work the bend several times (5-10) and then do a test fit. I did at least 4 or 5 test fits per skin, with even more fitting on the aft side skins which are much larger. Do be careful of the aft wing attach points when putting the skins on and taking them off the airplane.

After everything is bent and clecoed the plans call for match drilling the longerons (which are drilled using a template) through to the firewall attach brackets. I was quite nervous about this as I have heard from other builders that edge distances can be a challenge, but I was very happy with how my match drilled brackets turned out. Van's says the traditional 1.5 rivet diameter edge distance is not required here, and I am a bit shorter than that in some areas, but there is plenty of room for the shop head of the rivet and no steel brackets were improperly drilled. I used plenty of boelube and went slowly. Also have plenty of squeeze clamps on hand to keep everything secure while you're drilling.

After all the initial assembly, debar, and dimpling I primed everything with Stewart Systems Ekoprime. The longerons and associated cross members were not bad, but the skins are large and took a long time to prep and paint.

Riveting is definitely a two person job. The understructure is not difficult to rivet, but many of the skin rivets (particularly where the side skins overlap the bottom skin) require two people. In total the riveting took several days working 4-5 hours each day. Once it was done, the increase in rigidity of the airplane structure was quite noticeable.

After finishing riveting, the weary builder is confronted with bolting the landing gear into place and adding an exterior support (the landing gear has been redesigned from earlier RV-10s due to cracks occurring at the landing gear attach points). This was not too bad, though I did have to spend some more time with the die grinder on the bottom skins to make sure there was no interference with the landing gear mount, letting the landing gear sit flush. The bolts for the landing gear can be quite difficult to get to, and I ended up investing in some extensions for my 1/4" ratchet and a crows foot.

  Jun 30, 2022     Forward Fuselage Ribs, Bulkheads, and Skins       Category: Fuselage

This section marries the firewall work with the aft fuselage assembly completed in Section 26. You start by building out the bottom skin for the firewall to spar section, then bolt and rivet the two halves together. I used saw horses and the EAA work tables to hold the assembly up while I was doing the attachment, then transferred to the fuselage stand (which I built using a combination of plans from Van's Air Force). The assembly is not too heavy and was pretty easy to move with two people.

I again primed the spar-to-firewall tunnel section with EkoPoxy (including both bays going to the wings where fuel lines will run).

  May 10, 2022     Firewall       Category: Fuselage

The firewall section involves riveting the stainless steel firewall to the powder coated steel and aluminum aft structure which will marry the firewall to the fuselage. I used lots of Boelube and went slow while match drilling through the firewall and did not have any major issues. The riveting is pretty straight forward, but some of the powder coated brackets can be tricky to do by yourself.

I primed all the aluminum parts contacting the firewall with Ekopoxy, which is a solvent resistant two-part epoxy primer from Stewart Systems. Because the fuel lines will run through the central tunnel I wanted to use a primer that would survive contact with any fuel leaks.

  Apr 30, 2022     Mid Fuse Ribs and Bottom Skins       Category: Fuselage

Section 26 is the first of the big fuselage sections. Working from the center spar aft, the fuselage mid sections are attached to the ribs, then the bottom skin is riveted on to hold everything together. Riveting the bottom skin was the most difficult part. Because the skin moves past the spar, I used 2x4 cribbing to hold the entire assembly on end off the ground, and then riveted with one person on each side.

One other tip - my plans are relatively recent and don't have the rivet skipping or overlapping issues that earlier versions do. But, the outer fuselage ribs (F-1015, etc) have very specific overlap instructions that you want to double check before you start riveting.

  Mar 31, 2022     Mid Fuselage Bulkheads       Category: Fuselage

After getting through the Service Bulletin the rest of Section 25 was pretty straight forward. There are lots of 1/8" rivets in this section. I found that stabilizing the parts being riveted by clamping them to my benches was key in getting good quality rivets.

  Mar 13, 2022     Tailcone       Category: Empennage

It took a few weeks for the fuel tank sealant to ship and arrive, so I started on the tailcone midway through the elevators. I also wanted to clear off some shelf space for the Fuselage kit, which shipped slightly ahead of schedule!

Most of the tailcone assembly consists of skills that have already been developed – deburr, drill, dimple, prime, rivet. But there are a few new bits; namely, bending the longerons. The longerons must be bent at the start of the aft deck. The plans say clamp the aluminum angle in a vice, preload, and whack at the bend site with a hammer. Check against the skins and repeat. Initially, this was intimidating – but it works! (I later learned you do a lot more longeron bending during the Fuselage construction). Once the longerons are bent, the aft deck has to be clamped square while the longerons and J-channels are drilled. This was one of the more rewarding sections of the build, as you are essentially forming the longerons out of “raw” aluminum angle.

I was able to rivet most of the skin rivets myself. I tried to backrivet some of them, which was helpful for doing the rivets solo, but frustrating when a rivet would need to be drilled out due to not sitting flush (not enough contact with the backplate). I eventually got some help - with two people, the rivets are all fairly easy with the except of the rivets under the J-channel stiffeners. Van's must have a special bucking bar, because I had a lot of trouble getting mine in the gap. The rear top skin can be riveted with just one person, if your arms are long enough.

Finally the last rivets were set. I went ahead and installed the avionics tray (in white, right) and a Garmin autopilot servo mount for the rudder (rear) which will allow me to have a yaw damper. I'm planning on a yaw damper servo and possibly Aerosport Products Rudder Trim instead of installing a rudder trim tab. The trim tab would be an off-plans modification, and I have a similar rudder trim setup in my Arrow which works pretty well.

One thing I did during the tailcone which delayed completion was to build two more EAA work benches. Once the tailcone is assembled it was helpful to have the extra (rolling) workspace to put it on, instead of trying to keep it on the saw horses.