Dave’s RV-7A Building Log

Yesterday after work I finally got back up in the air again. I took a 172 up with an instructor to knock off the rust. It went surprisingly well. I’m cleared to rent the school’s planes, so I’ll be flying more often now.

Adele had a soccer game, so I didn’t have too much time for the project. The 48″ throttle quadrant cable I ordered from Vans arrived yesterday. I used some boards to hold the throttle quadrant in approximately the correct position (since I still don’t have the panel back from Ross yet). I test fitted the cable and the length is perfect for the prop. The throttle and mixture cables ideally need to be about 2″ longer. I could make the 48″ cable work by ordering the cable extensions from Spruce, but I’ll just order custom cables of the correct length.

The only problem is the diameter of the cable. It’s almost 1/10 inch thicker, so it won’t fit through the eyeball fittings I just drilled to the firewall. The instructions for the fittings say I can drill them out, but I’d have to drill them so large for this cable that there’d be nothing left of the sleeve that holds the cable. Argggg! It seems like every time I turn around there’s a new hassle. I’ll see if the custom quadrant cables from Spruce have a smaller diameter.

I worked on the covers for the F-704 sides for a while. I left these off to allow for wiring up some lights. I’ve had the lights for a while, but just haven’t gotten back to it. I deburred the covers and clecoed them in place. Well, the right one wouldn’t fit. I apparently installed the right canopy deck about 1/32″ too far forward and it prevented the cover from slipping into place. I spent quite a bit of time sanding and filing and finally got enough clearance.

The annual trip to the Boat Show was today, so I didn’t get much done on the project. I just tinkered with the seat pans a little bit, prepping them for installation.

I riveted in the baggage compartment side panels and riveted down the left side baggage floor. It’s not an easy task to lean in over the side and deal with nut plates, flush rivets, and pop rivets. The results look great, though. The compartment for the strobe power supply works exactly as planned. I re-installed the power supply and secured the compartment cover.

Warning! This pop riveter is a piece of dung. The top handle has been loose for a while, and I didn’t do anything about it. Well, the darn thing (trying not to swear to keep it family-friendly) slipped out of the handle and put a nice dent in the bottom skin behind the baggage bulkhead. I’m hoping that some tricky massaging with the rivet gun will mostly fix it. At least the dent is on the bottom of the plane.

I took Friday night off, but did some work today. I mainly just deburred and did the countersinking for the baggage floor compartments. The weather at high noon was just warm enough for painting, but I didn’t have the parts ready. I’m hoping I’ll have them ready for tomorrow, and the weather holds.

The family went out Christmas shopping, so I was able to spend some extra time in the shop hammering out the baggage floor compartments. I cut and drilled the hinges for the doors. I also cut and drilled the stiffeners for the floor. I test fit everything along the way. I think it’s going to work out pretty well. I now just need to do some dimpling, countersinking, and riveting.

I worked a little bit on the baggage floor compartments. Designed and building something like this from scratch really takes a long time. I try to think through everything to make sure nothing is going to interfere with each other. I cut one hinge to length and made the doors. I also thought about how to put a stiffener under the floor since the compartment adds too much flexibility to the floor.

I also placed an order with McMaster for some rubber edge grommet material. I have a few places where I need some, plus I want to install it on the glareshield edge. I also found some knurled knobs that might work out well for the ELT door.

I drilled and blind riveted the ends on the push tube, thus closing out my work on the fuselage for now. Yipee!!

It was a busy day, so I didn’t get too much done. I riveted the crotch strap attach brackets in place.

I also put the ends on the front elevator push tube. Talk about a tight fit. It took some hammering to get the things to seat in place. Hopefully that doesn’t cause problems down the road. I looked up the part number for the rod ends in the Spruce catalog and they’re supposed to be used for tubing that has a smaller wall thickness. No wonder they didn’t fit.

I had a very productive day. I deburred the remainder of the subpanel parts, except for the skin.

I next pulled out the crotch strap attach kit. Matthew was right. I’d eventually need to pull the control column stuff out again–like two days after I installed it. The attach kit has been sitting waiting for a long time, mainly because I knew it would be unpleasant. Leaning over the sides of the fuselage trying to drill with the angle drill lived up to my expectations. I basically clamped the aft half in place where the plans indicated and drilled the holes. After that I clamped the front half to the aft half with some 1/8″ spacers and drilled that. I drilled out the holes for the AN5 bolt next and then drilled the seat skin to the brackets. The passenger side turned out really good, but the pilot side has some marginal edge distances in the top of the bracket. I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I guess my measurement of 1/32″ back from the screw hole wasn’t precise enough. My suggestion would be to mark some center lines on the tops of the brackets and verify they line up (or are at least visible) through the seat skin holes before drilling the brackets to the seat ribs. And my biggest suggestion is to install these things much earlier, like when you’re assembling the center section. There’s no reason to wait.

The last thing I did for the day was to prime the last push tubes.

For something different, I pulled out the control columns and started figuring out the assembly. The first step appears to be putting the crossbar into the fuselage. I tried a couple different combinations of washers, but couldn’t get the thing to move freely. I’ll have to read up on other web sites.