Dave’s RV-7A Building Log

I ended up watching the debate more than building. I just drilled the seat belt anchors to the bottom of the bulkhead and deburred a few parts.

Finished up riveting the sides on the center section bulkhead and riveted on the spacers. The next step is to rivet on a few brackets, but they need to be primed first. I’m going to wait until I have a larger batch before I prime.

I moved on to the next bulkhead, F-705. I hunted down the numerous parts for that, and started fabricating the various pieces. I decided to do all of the fabrication for this bulkhead up front. Some parts are as easy as cutting a piece of angle, or as difficult as cutting a taper on some bar stock. It took about 4 hours to measure out all of the cuts, cut them on the band saw, and then clean them up with the sander and Scotchbrite wheel. Here’s a picture of the F-705 parts ready for drilling.

Adele helped me get all of the gooey, sticky labels off of the parts. I don’t know why Van’s uses such nasty labels.

After that I started back-drilling the lower assembly. The instructions say to just drill everything out, but it’s obviously easier to clamp on one pieces at a time, drill it, cleco it, and then do the next part. [Note: Look ahead to Oct 7th to see a mistake I made here. Be careful when cutting and positioning the doubler bars that you have enough edge distance on the hole at the inboard (pointy) end.]

The next step is to drill the seat belt attach brackets. I drilled a hole in all of the right brackets using the dimensions on the plans. I then clecoed it to the bulkhead. I used a piece of scrap as a 3/16″ spacer and clamped on the other bracket. After carefully lining it up, I clamped the undrilled bracket to the bulkhead and then back drilled. I stopped for the night in the middle of that process.

Celebrated one year on the project by taking the night off and having some fellow builders over. It was fun having folks come by to check out the shop and my progress. Thanks Bob, Todd, and Will.

Mostly spent time cleaning up the shop in preparation for some other builders stopping by tomorrow night.

Squeezed more of the rivets on the center section with the no-hole 4″ yoke. Normally, I line up the plunger with the rivet. But with them on opposite side of a large piece, it’s hard to do. I figured out that if I line up the squeezer plunger with it’s reflection (second picture below), the shop heads turn out perfect.

One year ago today I received the second empennage box and inventoried it. That was the first official hours I logged on the project. In the meantime, I’ve built the empennage, wings, and started on the fuselage. Not bad. I’ve learned a lot along the way.

I still occasionally wonder if I’ve gone crazy. Building an airplane?!? It definitely sounds crazy. It has been a fun project so far. Among the projects I’ve done in my life, mostly house stuff like re-wiring or re-plumbing an old house, I’d have to say that this has been the most fun and rewarding. And I’m not even flying it yet! I’m looking forward to having it done some day, and having a great plane that I can fly and know inside and out.

One year down, and I hope only two more to go. I’m about 600 hours into the project. I’m guessing the total hours will be around 1800. Hopefully that means I’m about 1/3 of the way there.

In between waiting for Julie’s help on finishing the wings, I played with the center section bulkhead. I tried to figure out how to best set the rivets holding on the side supports. I tried the squeezer first with the no-hole yoke. That didn’t work too well. It’s hard to line up the squeezer with the plunger on the manufactured head.

After that, I tried using the C-frame. With the Cleaveland tools, I can’t figure out any way to connect the rivet gun to the C-frame plunger. I ended up just hitting it with the dead blow hammer. I had the center section propped up with some wood so that it was perfectly level, but the rivets still bent over horribly.

I went back to the squeezer with the longeron yoke on it. That worked great for the first few rows of rivets. After that, it wouldn’t reach. I’ll have to figure out something else.

I also messed with the snap bushings to get them to fit. The side supports cut into the snap bushing hole. Seems like bad planning. I sanded off part of the front of the bushing. It fits great now, and wiring that runs through the bushing won’t be exposed to metal anywhere.

Did a bunch of miscellaneous finishing work on the wings. Took the tank off the right wing and torqued the tie down bolts and dabbed them with inspection laquer. Tapped on a few skin rivets that weren’t set enough. Drilled out a couple of bad rivets and re-set them. Put both tanks back on. The left tank fits after sanding down the ProSeal. Yeah! The wings are back in the cradle and going to stay there for a while. I’ll do the bottom skins at some future date. For now, I’m done messing with the wings.

Reamed out and shortened the bushings for the control columns. I test fit everything, but I didn’t spend too much time on it. The instructions say you can remove the control column assembly in one piece, but it really can’t be done. The passenger side column was a little stiff on the bushing, so I reamed it out a bit with a large drill bit.

After that I worked on countersinking all of the nut plate attach rivets on the top flange of the center section spars. I riveted on the nut plates. (10/10/2005 Edit: If you’re building a 7A, leave off the outside two nut plates on each side on the front flange. It will make fitting of the gear mounts easier.)

I prepared the cover support ribs, drilling them to the spar. Fabricated the web stiffeners and drilled them to the spar. Fabricated the spacers and drilled out the holes in the spar to 1/4″ in 1/64″ increments.

I finally got to use my new nut plate jig on the web stiffeners. It works fantastic. I gave Adele the camera, and she went crazy with it while I was working on the stiffeners.

Lots and lots of drilling today. I’m glad I have a light air drill.

Countersunk the center section spacers. Drilled and trimed the control mounts. They’re now ready for priming. Pulled out the control columns are started figuring out how they go together.

Finished riveting the firewall together (except for the recess). I back-riveted the rest of it, which ended up being pretty easy. I boofed a few rivets when I didn’t have the assembly firmly pushed down onto the back-riveting plate. No big deal–drill out the rivet. I’d have to say that back-riveting is easier than squeezing. I spent a lot of time maneuvering the squeezer for one or two rivets, when I can hammer 5 rivets in a row with the back-rivet set.

The toughest rivets were the inside ones on the floor support angles. The rivets are right up in the crevice of the angle. I had to drill out a couple of those and redo them. With the angle sloping there, I really thought they were going to tilt over. But they ended up setting nicely. I made a few small dents in the angle with the rivet gun. I’ll sand out the dents and re-prime.

[edit 1/13/2005: Do yourself a favor and mark out the holes on the outer side of the angle for attaching the floor stiffeners. It’s much easier to do it at this point than when the firewall is upside down and attached to the fuselage.]

The firewall looks awesome and feels solid.