Dave’s RV-7A Building Log

I riveted the two halves of the aft canopy frame together. Looks good.

I was still waiting on Julie’s help for the main canopy frame, so I did a few other odds and ends. I did the optional trimming on the canopy latch weldment and touched up the powder coating with some paint I bought from Van’s.

I also riveted in the parts for the canopy latch mechanism. Not sure why I waited so long to do this.

I also played around a little with some LEDs I bought from www.superbrightleds.com for $2 something each. I’m thinking that 2 or 3 of each color together will work great. White for the baggage compartment, and red for the main cabin.
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I did more riveting on the canopy skin and skirts. I squeezed all of the rivets that I could along the sides of the skin and the skirts. I also did a little filing on the aft tabs of the canopy skin so they would line up nicely with the skirts.

I bunged up the paint in a couple places with the bucking bar, so I’ll have to do a little touch up. Despite that, it’s looking great.

I started riveting the canopy skin to the frame, starting at the middle of the front row. The access wasn’t good for a squeezer, so I bucked everything along the front row and the diagonal side rows. There are a couple of really tricky rivets that will need some help from Julie. I can’t seem to get any of my bucking bars to fit well, making them difficult to do solo. I also pulled the CS4-4 pop rivets along the back row. I left the 3 holes on each side for later, because they need to be shimmed.

I did about 2/3 of the skin/frame rivets–mostly the ones that need bucking. I think the rest can be squeezed.

With the canopy skin clecoed to the frame, I installed the canopy back on to the fuselage. It’s difficult to determine whether there will be a skin interference problem when opening the canopy. Everything is just clecoed down at this point, but the canopy skin does look very low in the middle compared to the forward skin. It doesn’t hurt to put in shims now. I made a .032 shim for the middle 8 inches, tapering down to a .018 shim for 3″ outboard of that on each side.

This cool little gizmo showed up from EPM-AV. It’s a lot smaller than I thought it would be. It’s a stainless steel cabin heat selector box. Van’s sells one that’s aluminum, but this one stands up much better in case of a fire in the engine compartment. To me that’s worth the $40 in price differential.

I ordered the firewall forward kit from Vans. I deleted the cabin heat selector (bought a stainless steel one from EPM-AV) and the wiring harness (bought the wiring kit from SteinAir). I debated for a while about using a B&C alternator instead of the one Vans supplies, but I wasn’t convinced that it was worth the extra $$. I also thought about using a throttle quadrant instead of the push/pull knobs. However, it would have taken some extra time to mount it and I wasn’t sure how much space it would take up in the cabin. In the end, I decided to go for the stock set up, which is almost always less time and less money.

I dimpled the reinforcement braces and skirts, which I neglected to do before painting. I also riveted the clasps to the reinforcement braces.

Today was a major session of deburring, dimpling, countersinking, prepping, and painting the canopy frame. The only tricky part was countersinking the forward blocks for the struts. The best way to handle those is to drill them to your smallest countersinking cutter #21 or smaller. Then countersink the frame and block together. Then drill the blocks to #21 and tap them. The holes in the canopy frame will be much larger than #12 from the countersinking.

One other thing I did was to remove the ears from the canopy skin. It seems that everybody does this, and it makes sense.

I didn’t take many pictures, but there wasn’t much to see. Just lots of monotonous work.

I carefully painted all of the canopy frame parts and the inside of the canopy skin with the satin black Rustoleum that I’ve been using in the cabin. It looks quite good.

I’m definitely looking forward to getting the canopy done. From here it’s just riveting and assembly.

Most of the day was spent on house projects, but I managed to get a little bit done. I started disassembling the canopy frame, deburring parts as I went.

I didn’t get much done on the project tonight. I just drilled the little clasps to the canopy reinforcements and deburred them.

I made the 6 little tabs for the canopy reinforcement out of some scrap .032.

I also drilled the left and right reinforcements to the frame after some more bending and tweaking. With everything clecoed together, the frame definitely feels much more stout.