Dave’s RV-7A Building Log

Finished deburring the center bottom skin and dimpled around the edges with the squeezer. I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out whether the forward two rows should be dimpled or not. The instructions mention not to dimple the aft rows, but don’t say anything about the front rows. After staring at the plans, it looks like the F-704 bulkhead gets attached to the ribs in such a way that it will be difficult to dimple the skin later. I went ahead and dimpled the holes.

I also trimmed four of the seat belt anchors a little more to clear the seat rib flanges.

Deburred one side of the center bottom skin.

Deburred the edges of the center bottom skin, and dimpled the holes in the F-704 bulkheads. I also measured how much more needs to be trimmed off of the seat belt anchors that butt up against the seat ribs.

Julie was in the mood for riveting, so we pounded out some rivets. We got the front half of the aft fuselage done, which looks to be about 2/3 of the riveting on this section. It turned out quite nicely. Julie is the awesome riveter. She ran the rivet gun from the outside, while I bucked from the inside. I had to drill out and re-do a couple of rivets, mainly because I was having trouble getting the bucking bar on the rivets in the bend between the bottom and sides.

Primed the rivet lines on the bottom center fuselage skin. Deburred the center section doublers.

Clecoed together the aft fuselage. Julie helped me flip the assembly over, and I put rivets in the holes and taped them in. It’s ready for riveting.

Made the cut outs in the seat and baggage ribs for the wiring holes through the F-705 bulkhead.

After spending an extended Thanksgiving out of town, I was eager to do a little something on the project. I touched up the primer on a few spots on the aft bottom skin.

While I was down visiting my parents for Thanksgiving, I took a tour of Van’s factory. Ken showed us around, claiming that there really wasn’t much to see. In actuality, there was lots of cool stuff to see. I’d say the highlight was the automated punch machine, but seeing the factory planes all lined up in the company hangar was also very cool. It was worth the half hour drive down from Portland to see where these cool kits are made.

I forgot the digital camera, so we had to buy a disposable camera. The picture quality is not so great, especially in the darker shots.

Here’s the factory demo RV-7A.

This is their super fast punch press that does the cutting and hole punching on the parts. They have 2 other smaller punch presses as well.

And here is the packing area followed by one of the many rows upon rows of shelves filled with parts.

Dimpled all of the seat and baggage ribs and then deburred the F-704 and F-705 bulkheads.