Dave’s RV-7A Building Log

We got a few inches of snow to close out 2003, so we built a snow person.

Assembled the left elevator skeleton including control horn and final drilled all of the holes. Assembled the skin to the skeleton and final drilled. Disassembled and deburred all of the holes in the skeleton and 1/4 of the holes in the skin before the cordless screwdriver gave out (and I was getting cross-eyed). Smoothed the edges of the skeleton parts.

I didn’t feel like deburring the edges, so I started playing with the elevator trim. I final drilled the two trim tab horn parts to the trim tab skin.

I also studied the drawing for mounting the electrim trim servo. There are no step-by-step instructions (a preview of the wings and fuselage from what I’ve read), but it’s not hard to figure out. The drawing specifies where to put the left bracket for the servo. I drilled that and then mounted the servo and right bracket with clecos. Holding the right bracket in place with cleco clamps, I disassembled the servo and then drilled the right bracket. It looks great.

On a non-building note, I soloed for the first time today!! It seems like it took a long time to get to this point, but it was worth it.

Dimpled the remaining holes in the right elevator skin and skeleton. It’s ready for priming.

In order to prime the right and left elevator skeleton parts at the same time, now I’ll start working on the left elevator.

Worked on the right elevator some more. Countersunk the holes in the spar that are underneath the horn. The spar is .032, so technically it could be dimpled, but I decided to stick with the instructions.

Also smoothed and deburred the edges of the right elevator skeleton. Deburred the remaining holes in the right elevator.

Countersunk the holes in the right elevator counterbalance. Started deburring holes in the right elevator skeleton.

Clecoed the right elevator skeleton together and final drilled the elevator horn to it. Clecoed on the skin and final drilled that to the skeleton.

Did a bunch of work on the elevators today. Back-riveted the stiffeners and trim doubler to the skins.

Used 2×6’s connected with hinges to finish the bend of the elevator trailing edges. The pictures show before and after bending.

I worked with the elevator end and counterbalance ribs to make them fit together closer and final drilled the counterbalance skin to them. Drilled the counterbalance weight.

Tinkered around a bit with the elevator counterbalance rib and end rib. I smoothed the edges on the other pair and fluted them. I also made a lever with a slot in the end to complete the bend of the flanges to a 90 degree angle. That works better than just pushing on the flanges.

On the first pair, it looks like I bent the web of the rib a little bit when I was trying to straighten the flange to a 90 degree angle. That might be the source of my alignment problems. I’ll figure out a way to straighten the web and then I should be back on track.

Etched the elevator stiffeners and cleaned and etched the skins. Sprayed everything with primer. They came out looking really good this time. Getting better and better at shooting primer.