Dave’s RV-7A Building Log

I spent most of the day trying to get the labels to stick to the panel. Out of the first batch of 5 labels, 2 actually turned out good. When they work, they really look great. There’s a small halo of glue around the labels, which I easily removed with rubbing alcohol.

The next two batches were not so successful. It’s really frustrating to put an hour in on a batch of labels and have them all look great until the last step. They just don’t want to stick to the rough texture of the powder coating. In retrospect, I started spraying less glue on the panel for the later batches. Maybe that was part of the problem.

Out of 20 some labels so far, only 2 have worked. That’s not a good percentage. And I’ve burned maybe 6-7 hours on it. I wish there was another way to make great looking white labels, but I haven’t found it. I’ll talk to Frank at Pulsar again and give this method one more try. After that, I’ll use masking tape if I have to. I’ve burned way too much time on this.

In order to feel like I got something meaningful accomplished today, I asked Julie to help me drill the wing tips. They turned out quite good. There’s a 1/32″ gap in the middle of the top of one of the tips that I’ll try to reduce when I drill out to #30. Otherwise they turned out great and really nicely aligned with the ailerons.

Another round of label making. I contacted Frank at Pulsar for some advice on getting the white overlay to stick only to the toner. He said I still had moisture in the blue paper. I tried heating up the paper more with the heat gun before applying the overlay, and sure enough. Problem solved. Now I’m just having a problem getting the labels to stick completely to the panel. I tried cleaning the panel with rubbing alcohol and then lacquer thinner. No luck. I’ll call up Frank for some further advice after I review the instructions again.

Making the labels certainly has a lot of steps. I think I messed up a label at every step of the way, probably not helped by being tired and having a brew with dinner. I did get one word of one label to stick perfectly and it looks absolutely terrific. I just need to solve the problems with the last step and I’ll be on my way to label nirvana.

Here’s a JPEG of my labels so far. If you want the original Visio file, shoot me an email.

The panel is back from the powder coater. Looks great. It’s matte black with a slight rough texture. I tried making some labels for it using the Pulsar system. It’s a complicated process, but I think I have the steps down. If I were making black labels, it would be relatively easy. Adding the white foil is the main stumbling block at this point. I’m getting fuzziness around the letters and little white specks throughout the background. I’ll call Pulsar and see if they have some advice. I tried putting the label on a floppy disk as a test. The texture of the panel is very similar to this plastic. The missing parts of letters was just due to not using enough of the spray glue. That should be easy to fix.

After messing around with labels for an hour or so, I was ready for something else. I bought a mini-switch from Digikey a while back to replace the one I bought from Radio Shack for the baggage compartment light. The RS switch just didn’t look very solid. I installed the new switch and put the cabin frame support cover into place.

I had just a little time for the plane while Adele was playing with her B-day presents. I verified the layout of the panel labels, and tweaked things a bit more. I also gave the panel one more overall sanding in preparation for taking it to the powder coater tomorrow.

I didn’t do much on the plane. With Halloween and Adele’s birthday this week, it’s going to be low on the productivity. I sanded down the filler on the panel, but it still needs one more good sanding overall. I also messed around with laying out some panel labels. For some reason Visio seems to think 1″ = 7/8″. Handy (not).

Since I had to remove the throttle cable to swap it with the longer mixture cable, I decided I might as well make my own mount. The one from Van’s FWF kit causes the cable to be too close to the exhaust. I used some 0.125″ angle and .063″ sheet to make something that will work much better. It took quite a while, but I enjoy fabricating parts like this. And here are the two parts primed.

I also test fit the quadrant and cables with the mount I made a few days ago. Seems like it’s all going to work together. I tweaked the angle of the mount a bit. I also measured the throw of each quadrant lever versus the throw needed at the engine. Seems like I’ll need to drill some new holes to increase the throw. Both the throttle and mixture seem a bit short. Here’s the mount painted.

The primary task for the night was to make a mount for the throttle quadrant cables. The cable housing needs to be secured so I made a bracket out of some spare angle I had. 0.125″ probably would have been good enough, but all I could find of the right length was some 0.189″ thick angle. The nuts on the cable are too large to line them all up, so I staggered them. Lots of cutting on the band saw, belt sanding, Scotch-briting, and drilling. It looks pretty good.

I mounted the quadrant to the panel and subpanel to figure out where to attach the mount. I discovered that the throttle cable is a wee bit short of perfect. Since the 51″ mixture cable is plenty long, I started swapping it with the 50″ throttle cable. Hopefully that will be enough extra. I knew I’d be messing with those cables again. While they’re off, I’m going to make a better positioned mount for the other end of the throttle cable.

I drilled another set of holes to secure the SL-40 tray to the subpanel. There wasn’t a hole in the right place on the tray, so I just made one. That’ll make everything more secure.

I also did some work on the shopping list for wiring. I need some 6 AWG cable for the alternator and fuse blocks, and the associated lugs, and some switches, etc. Placed orders with B&C and SteinAir. I would have just ordered everything from B&C, but Stein has much better prices on some items. Unfortunately, Stein didn’t carry everything I needed.

Feels like I’m in the middle of 30 different things, but I’m definitely making forward progress.

I started prepping for installing the panel by mounting the avionics trays to the panel and then mounting the connectors and wires onto the trays. The big pile of spaghetti wire looks a lot better when it’s installed. Mounting the connectors was very easy on some trays–well, actually all the trays except for the SL-40. That thing is a PITA. The holes in the tray didn’t line up with the connector housing and you’re trying to install tiny screws at the back of a very narrow and long tray. I ended up drilling out the outer holes to #30 and still had to do some filing. I probably spent half an hour on that one tray and 10 minutes on the others combined.

With Julie’s help guiding the wiring through the subpanel, I mounted the panel into place on the fuselage. We ran into one minor snag. I didn’t make the cutout for the audio panel wiring quite big enough. I’ll have to remove the panel again and go at the subpanel with the Dremel. Before doing that, I trial fitted the quadrant mount. I still have a few holes to drill there and installing a chunk of angle for holding the control cables will be easier without the trays in the way.

Overall it’s looking great. This is the really fun part–putting the panel together after months and month of planning.

After discussing with Jim, I decided I didn’t need to prime the reinforcement angles on the panel. The powdercoating should seal things up just fine. I countersunk all of the rivet holes in the panel for AN426 rivets, and then cleaned and scuffed both sides of the panel. It seemed a shame to scuff up the nice shiny panel, but it’s better for getting the powder coating to stick. I used a squeezer to set all of the rivets for the reinforcement angles and avionics stack angles.

I also primed/painted a few miscellaneous parts like the throttle quadrant mount.

I finally gave up on using steel firewall eyeballs. I contacted the distributor for the eyeballs I have, and they don’t make the steel eyeballs in the size I need. I also asked Vans if the cables can be made with a smaller diameter. No go. If the manufacturer decides to make .35″ eyeballs some day, I can always swap them out. I went ahead and ordered the custom quadrant cables from Vans in 50″ and 51″. I already have the 48″ one I need. I’ll order the aluminum version of the eyeballs from Spruce.

All I did was disassemble the panel and prep the extruded (i.e. non-alclad) parts for painting. I’m planning on getting the panel itself powder coated once I have everything fitted.

As a background task, I’ve been doing a bunch of planning for wiring. The snap bushings in the F-704 center section are notorious for filling up. I made a list of every wire that needs to go through the various snap bushings in the fuselage. I also started a list of the electrical equipment with recommended fuse ratings and wire sizes. With those two lists I can determine which snap bushings are too full, and re-route some wires if needed.