Dave’s RV-7A Building Log

Drilled one longeron to the right side skin up to the F-704.

I attached the corner rib to F-705 strip that I previously fabricated and drilled the arm rests to the side skins.

Removed the side skins. Attached the other half of the F-704 and secured it with the wood spacers and bolts. I had trouble getting one of the bolts in all of the way. It’s the same area where I had trouble removing the bolts when I was riveting the F-704 together. I’ll have to look at it later when I have the parts disassembled. I might have tweaked one of the side supports.

Next I bent the corners of the side skins. They turned out pretty good, but I’ll do some more tweaking on them when I disassemble the beast. I didn’t get a tight enough angle at the forward corner.

I had a heck of a time getting the side skins to line up right around the F-706 and corner ribs. Adele and Julie were both helping me. I finally tried temporarily moving the sawhorse from under the F-704 to under the F-705 and bingo. Everything lined up. I clecoed the side skin to the F-706, then F-705, and then the F-704.

Before I had the side skins completely clecoed on, I was wondering if the longerons and skins were actually going to line up. It seemed that everything was slightly off. But after the skins went on, it looks great. The mark I made for the downward bend in the longeron aligns with the downward angle in the side skin, and the longeron follows the skin forward from there. I know everybody says this, but the longerons really lined up perfectly.

I only did a few time-consuming steps today. It’s better to take some extra time with things like bending the longerons and side skins. Those are not parts you want to re-order.

The fuselage is really solid and looks huge in my ever diminishing garage.

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.

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.

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.

Flipped the center fuselage over and fitted the outside seat ribs. I had already drilled the bottom skin to the outside ribs, so that part was done. I did need to trim the forward ends of the ribs about 1/4″ to get them to fit inside the flanges of the F-704 better.

I then confirmed the torque on the seat rib to F-704 bolts and dabbed them with torque seal. Next was attaching the seat belt anchors to the F-705. The only reason I did this so late was because I wanted to put a little bit of primer on them where I had to grind them down. It’s not too bad fitting them in after the ribs are in place. I got part way through attaching them.

Not only did we get the aft fuselage almost done, we also completed the center fuselage bottom skin. What can I say? Julie is a goddess.

You really have to pay attention to what doesn’t get riveted. Don’t rivet the two forward or aft rows at this point. The corner baggage ribs and outside seat ribs are also done later.