Dave’s RV-7A Building Log

I’m changing the order from the instructions slightly. Now seems like a good time to notch the corner ribs for the steps. I took off the baggage skins (again), and estimated with a straight edge where the step tube would fall on the corner ribs. For some reason, I thought the step tube would lay flat against the web of the corner ribs, so I ended up taking off a little more than I needed to. I used the nibbler I bought recently, which did a really nice job. It’s such a simple tool, but very handy.

The next step was to start bending the aft bottom corner of the side skins. I tried to match the set up shown in the pictures at the end of the instructions. I always forget those pictures are there, but noticed them a few weeks ago. I had it all set up and started to do the bend, but then realized the angle was digging into the skin. Not good. Then I realized I had the angle on 180 degrees backward from the picture. I drilled another piece of angle, a smaller one this time, and set it up again. By this time I was ready to call it quits for the day. My back has been bothering me. It was time to give it a rest.

I drilled the holes in the side skins to 1-1/2″ for the step tubes. I saw a suggestion to drill this larger to 1-3/4″ so that the weld around the step tube would fit better. But then you end up with a gap under the step tube. I drilled to 1-1/2″ and then drew a line 1/8″ outside the hole and trimmed to that all the way around except at the bottom. It turned out great, but I’m not sure it was really worth all of the trouble. The gap would have been small and inconspicuous if I had just made the hole 1-3/4″ to start with.

I then fitted the side skins to the fuselage. I clecoed them onto the F-705 and then the F-704. I’m having the same alignment issues as Dan C., so I think I should start clecoing at the F-706. For now I’m just going to remove the skins and do the conical bend at the aft bottom corner.

I also realized that I forgot to put the F-704 bulkhead halves back together. I need to take care of that as well.

I spent quite a bit of time today just looking at the plans, looking at the structure, looking at the parts, and just figuring out how things all go together. I also cleaned up the aft and center skins a bit. Since I took all of the plastic off, they look awesome but had some oil splattered on them from the rivet gun. A little bit of citrus degreaser and they look really nice. Need to get it all looking good when guests take a look over the holidays. Or maybe I just wanted to admire the great progress so far.

The big news of the day is that Julie helped me join the center and aft fuselage sections. It was a little tricky balancing things until the center fuselage was secured, but overall not difficult.

I left the baggage skins off as suggested by Dan and others. That did make it much easier to get the 4 layers of skins and flanges all lined up properly. After some coaxing, the holes lined up well and I put in clecos. I put on a few clamps to make sure nothing would fall over in the night and did some clean up. By the way, the saw horses with the extending sides worked out great for this job. (edit: Later I noticed the extended sides were starting to bow downward precariously. I ended up putting a 2×4 on top of the saw horse for added support.)

The fuselage is starting to look big and very cool. And thus I went picture crazy.

Julie helped me rivet the last few rivets in the very aft fuselage. These were some tricky rivets to get, but they turned out great. I must say our riveting skills have really improved over this project. We flipped the aft fuselage back upside down in preparation for joining with the center fuselage.

Next item was to fit the longerons into the aft fuselage. I enlarged the slot in most of the bulkheads (thanks to the advice of Dan and others), but somehow missed the F-706 bulkhead. No big deal. I took out the file and widened the slot. Also, the slot in left longeron wasn’t quite wide enough, so I took care of that as well.

While waiting for some help with the riveting on the aft fuselage and the joining of the aft and center parts, I started looking at the forward fuselage drawing. I decided to fabricate a couple of the angles, but only managed to cut the two parts 1″ short. I’ll have to order some more angle. Luckily it only costs $7.

I figured out I could squeeze some of the rivets on the F-711 and F-712 bulkhead, so I did that. There’s still a few left to do that are going to require some help.

I’m not happy with the way the skins look around the F-712. The bulkhead is making the skin pull in right in front of the bulkhead. The flanges were at the right angle. I’m now starting to wonder if there’s something wrong with my F-712 bulkhead. I remember thinking that the two halves of the bulkhead seemed to be the exact same size, when one should have been slightly larger than the other. I’m thinking that maybe I received an incorrect part. I took some pictures to try to show the issue, but they really don’t show it very well.

[ed. After looking at this area again in the morning, I don’t think there’s a problem. The side skins are pulled in slightly in front of the F-712 bulkhead, but it’s nothing major.]

Cut the slots in the longerons. I used the aft deck as a template, marked the slots, drilled a hole at the end of the slot, and then cut the slot slightly undersized with a die grinder and cut-off wheel. This is the first time I’ve actually used the cut off wheel, and it worked pretty well. From there I filed the slot until it was the correct width and location.

Finished up drilling the outer seat ribs to the seat pans. They look very good. I think the center fuselage is now ready for joining with the aft fuselage.

Since I figured out that the inside of the seat skins do need to be drilled out, I took care of that.

I figured out that I hadn’t fluted the top of the outside seat ribs yet. I had to remove all of the seat skins and then flute the ribs. I also deburred the outside edges of the seat skins, since they will be used to line up the outer seat rib. After doing all of that and re-attaching the seat skins, I finally started to drill the outside ribs. I got one of them completed.

Finished bolting on the seat belt brackets, torqued them, and applied torque seal.

I next started fitting the baggage and seat skins. I had to enlarge the holes slightly in the aft seat skins for the seat belt brackets. I also had to trim a tiny bit from the front outside corners of the front seat skin in order to fit nicely inside the F-704 flange. Once that was done the skins fit pretty well.

I drilled the holes in the skins to size. Well, mostly. This step is a little trickier than it sounds. The forward seat skin is already punched to size. And then the baggage and aft seat skins have a mix of #30 holes and nut plate holes. And I couldn’t figure out whether to drill and what size to use for the nut plate holes on the inside edge of the aft seat skins. After looking at other web sites now, it looks like I just drill those for #8 nut plates through the skin and rib.

I also drilled the outside seat ribs to the F-704 bulkhead.

This is definitely fun stuff seeing parts go together, but it takes more time to read and understand the instructions and plans as you go along.