Stjohn's RV-7

6 hours.
The goal here is to have more parts on the airplane than on the shelf, so I decided to tackle the master and starter relays, to install them so they don’t grow legs and wander off. It’s also healthy session of plane-kata: measure, figure out assembly sequence, measure again, drill, deburr, rivet. This kind of activity centers, focuses, and calms.

The little dangly thing is an aluminum mockup of the copper bar that will go between the terminals. The battery box isn’t on there permanently; I have to take it off to rivet and seal the firewall recess in, but that comes later.
Another thing I did was oval out the holes in the canopy latches so the fingers can engage properly. Like I said, bits and pieces. What I’m trying to get to is a natural break point where I can commit to fiberglassing the canopy fairing. This will involve shoving the fuselage aside to make room for the inevitable mess the fiberglassng process is going to take. But this time, i’m prepared. I’ve got gloves, mixing sticks, mixing cups, a pump system, the whole shebang. The mess should be minimal. But part of getting to that point is finishing the aft canopy, and therein lies a Matroshka doll of things to do. For instance, to install the aft canopy section, the aft top skin needs to be on, but before the aft top skin goes on, I should probabably install the static ports. Actually, bollocks to the static ports, I have to crawl back there anyway to run the lines, might as well do it afterwards. I did finish cutting the aft canopy section, and it sure is cool to see it in place:

So now, the top skin needs to be riveted on, then I can drill the canopy to it and the roll bar.
A good amount of time today was spent cleaning. Cutting plexiglass makes a huge mess, and the shop wasn’t pristine when I started.

4 hours
There are always loose ends, mostly consisting of fiddly bits that didn’t get finished during major ops. These are things started while waiting for parts or when there isn’t enough time for a big job, like fiberglassing the canopy. On the canopy, I ran out of SS screws a while back, leaving 3 holes unfilled in the plexi-to-metal connection of the frame. Whilst waiting for the Spruce order to show up, I started on the battery box. The batt box was a good way to ease into FWF tasks, and I’ve now got it done, except for the painting the retaining bar and standoffs. I made the master and starter relay doubler and that’s waiting to go in as well. I painted the canopy latches and put them on, and my screws came in from Spruce so the tipup’s all done too, except for the latch fingers not being able to close the canopy all the way because the latches are maybe 1 or 2 mm too high (yes I said millimeters instead of 1/16ths) and even though the latch handle closes, the fingers aren’t all the way engaged with the latches in the detents. So do I file the fingers and detents to the point where the mechanism works or do I elongate the latch holes in the canopy frame to drop the latches by the required distance?
I hate the canopy. It’s running neck-and-neck with paint as far as hated tasks, but I have to tell you, paint has gotten a lot easier since I stopped worrying and learned to love the rattle can. I might do the whole ship in rattle-can matte black. Just because.

3 hours.
I got the canopy bubble on the tipup frame, riveted/screwed the side skirts on. Also painted the latch hardware and the tank supports. Why do they not powder coat the tank supports? Blargh. I also redid the masking tape around the edge of the canopy’s protective plastic. One thing that messes with me a bit: I have no idea how this is all going to work when the forward skin goes on. I guess I’ll find that out soon enough.
Next is glassing the canopy. Common sense would dictate that I start with a part not so critical, so maybe I’ll do the glass for the V-stab and rudder. I’m not too worried about glassing/filling/shaping the canopy’s interface to the deck skin; it’s essentially fiberglass and bondo. Hell, I’m from Michigan. Fiberglass and bondo is a way of life.

1 hours.
Yes, i know it’s only 1 hour, but “1 hours” will be easier to search later when I need to total up the time I’ve spent on this adventure.
I made the backing strips for the aft canopy section. To complete the aft canopy, I have to rivet the top skin on, which means I should probably install the static ports and tubing first, and maybe the conduit that goes from the tail all the way up to the cabin. I need to revisit my wiring run scheme at some point.

6 hours.
Yesterday revealed to me exactly why I’ve been able to get absolutely FA done lately. My shop is an ergonomically retarded, awkward hodgepodge of spaces where various things that have zero relevance to aircraft construction are leaned, stacked, and wedged. At first I thought just a cleaning was in order, but it went beyond that. When getting from once side of the shop to the other starts feeling like crossing a crowded bar with a drink in your hand, it’s time to take steps. To start with, I’m at an architectural disadvantage. The space itself isn’t conducive to maneuvering around a large central object while storing other large to medium size objects (tool chest, engine, compressor). Something is always in the way. So start from the top down: maximize the amount of continuous square footage, and minimize the travel distance for general operations. But something had to go. The kitchen range was removed and put in the little garage, next to the washer and dryer, leaving a hole perfectly sized for a Lycoming O-360 on an automotive stand. The bandsaw/grinder/vise bench went back to its location in the back where the sink used to be, and the rolling tool chest was put along the wall adjacent to the workbench. The giant stereo speakers (early 90’s vintage) went up in the overhead area where I used to store hinge stock and other long, thin parts, which moved to a longer, thinner part of the overhead area. The compressor went against the east wall, tucked in under the hardware drawer cases mounted on the wall. Everything was vacuumed and dusted, things were organized and put away. Just moving the tool chest near the workbench reduced the clutter, because things like changing drill bits meant that I could put things away as I was finished using them without walking around the airplane to the opposite side of the room. This process started yesterday and finished up this morning, which gave me enough time to finish the canopy frame. I painted the glare shield flat black (RustOleum barbecue paint) and the inner frame smoke gray. Not the same shade as the Stewart Battleship Gray on the interior, but the upholstery will cover most of that anyway. And to make matters more interesting, the Stewart paint on the longerons came off in vast swaths when I pulled the tape off today. Grr. So I’ll be repainting that. Fun. After painting the frame, I riveted on the stiffeners. Now I have to install the plexi to the frame and prep for fiberglass work. The end is in sight on the canopy. If I can keep from cracking the bastard, I’ll be a happy guy.

4 hours.
I suppose the price, a little blood and a bit of pain, isn’t too high for the completion of a couple of items which have been hanging over my head for a while. On Friday, my replacement canopy side skirts arrived, but I didn’t get going on them until Sunday, because I found myself in an intense and protracted battle with Windows 7 and my employer’s VPN server. I don’t understand why anything with the word “Windows” in it stretches time out like taffy and a simple task manages to eat up a day. The aircraft was a different matter, squatting out there on its sawhorses like a chrome toad, malice seething from every rivet. My primary concern was that my skills had degraded enough to the point where I would Go To The Bad Place, that is, crack the canopy through some kind of ineptitude, and I think the plane was just as apprehensive as I was. While I was waiting for my side skirts to come in, I had set to work on the canopy stiffeners. This task wasn’t exactly difficult, but it was no picnic either. Bending those things into the right shape and especially bending the edges of the lightening holes was not that much fun, and I’m really surprised I didn’t mangle them a lot more than I did. Right now, I’m going to take comfort in the fact that paint hides a lot.
But the skirts did come in, as well as my new, larger Weldon bits (which are the shizz for countersinking plexiglass), along with my screw dimple die set. Figuring out how to make the new skirts fit with the old holes worked my puzzler out a bit. On one side, I tried clamping the new skirt to the side rail and match drilling through the previously drilled holes. That worked, but what a pain in the arse. That was where I did my best to put a #40 drill through the first knuckle of my middle finger on my left hand. While the drill was spinning in the meat there, I felt an odd tingling, most likely from the drill vibrating the nerve. To call the sensation odd would be understating the facts. There was a bit of blood, but not enough to turn my little ship into a demonically sentient killing machine like in the Stephen King short story. The starboard side, I just used the old skirt as a drill guide on the new one. Much easier and worked perfectly, and with zero loss of bodily substance. I got the canopy screw holes done, screwed the whole skirt/canopy/rail sandwich together and it seems to work wonderfully. All that remains on the skirts is to drill, deburr, and dimple the holes where the temp screws were.
The other thing to consider is the splice plate between the canopy ribs at the aft end of the plexi. I’ll have to countersink and rivet as many of those holes as I can before I take the canopy off. I’ve got this thing fitting as well as it can, and there’s no way I’m going to take a chance on messing up the alignment of the holes in the canopy. But once that’s done, the plexi can come off and I can drill the stiffeners to the canopy skin, then I can mark the skirts using the side rails as a reference to mark the area that should be trimmed off the skirts. Or maybe I’ll just leave it. The stamping press at Van’s makes a much cleaner line than I could ever cut on my craptastic bandsaw. Once that happens, everything gets painted gray, and the stiffeners get riveted to the canopy skin. Then the canopy skin inside the plexi gets painted flat black. After all that paint, the canopy goes back on and the microballoons and resin get deployed on the front edge of the canopy.
See how much fun this is?

1 hours.
Got the side skirts drilled to the canopy frame. It’s nice to have a pure-metal session, no plexi, no fiberglass, no paint. Next step is backdrilling the holes through frame, plexi, and skirt so that the screws make a nice plexi sandwich. The only non-fun part is that one of my holes goes through a weld on the side rail, which will make it impossible to put a rivet there. So I have to burr away that weld enough to make the shop head sit flat. No big deal, but fiddly.
Once all this stuff is drilled, it’s deburr, dimple/countersink, then paint. In case you didn’t get it before, I hate paint.

4 hours.
We’ve not visited for a couple of months. This is what happens when you pack a lot of work, home improvement, and travel into what could be decent build time. Home improvement has this weird time dilation. Like near-C spaceflight, I suppose. A week-long project takes way longer when you can only work on weekends. but it remains in process for the entire time, so it’s like working on it for a month when it should take a few days. It’s still not done. I still have baseboards to put up in the bedroom. And another garden bed to build. But this weekend was pretty huge, because the tip-up portion of the canopy is drilled to the frame. Yes. Finally did it. I mustered up the courage to put drill to plexiglass. David came over and we drilled the canopy to the side rails and the F-631 ribs. Wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, and I had the distinct pleasure of seeing the big bubble hinge up and down just like it’s going to when it’s done.

Canopy up!

Got the side skirts drilled too, but not to the frame yet. I still have deep-seated fears of cracking the plexi when backdrilling the screw holes, but I can use the plexi bit to find the position and finish drilling them out with the drill press.

7 hours.
Everybody told me the suckage truly begins at the canopy. This, boys and girls, is true. After some epic procrastination, I got back on the ball today with the canopy. First thing that needed to be done was a plan. Everybody says not to expect the final position of anything until the canopy frame is riveted and the struts are in. OK, fine. I primed the underside of the canopy skin along the rivet rows, with a light dusting everywhere else, as well as the canopy frame near all metal-to-metal contact points. Then I riveted the skin on. That one sentence sums up about fifteen types of hell, and some truly lip-smacking victories along the way. There are several rivets that do not lend themselves well to any of the bucking bars I have. They’re nested near intersections of welded parts, so getting at them was interesting. The fit of the skin to the frame around the lower sides isn’t great, and requires a lot of pushing and straining to get the dimples to seat in the countersinks properly. Honestly, at this point, I’d rather have the old Me-109 style canopy made of flat panes and angles. Screw the view.

This photo shows the canopy on the bench, which allowed me to do the bottom side rows withe squeezer. After that, It went back on and I redid all the rivets I’d screwed up earlier. Only about three or four, though, which isn’t bad considering the contortions I had to employ to get sight, gun and bar all in the same place at the same time.
But all the suckage gave back one good thing: The gap between the forward edge of the canopy skin and the trailing edge of the deck skin closed up to a livable 3/32″, which was nice. I thought I was going to have to plaster it over with ProSeal. It also reduced the classic ‘air scoops’ outboard of the hinges, but these are still there. with a combination of rubber seal and rolling the skin forward, I think I can make them go away completely.
Then it was time to do the nitrogen struts. These have a little spring-steel clip on each end that grab a ball inserted into the end mount. To get the strut installed, you have to disengage these clips. You have to be careful with these. If you take them all the way off, there’s a chance they’ll go pinging away into the shadows of the workshop, never to be found again, or worse, burying themselves in the skin of your forehead. Wear safety glasses any time you mess with spring-steel clips under tension. The hardpoints for the struts aren’t exactly easy, either, especially on the left side where getting big fingers in past the latch release mechanism damn near impossble. As it was, I misdrilled the left-side aft hardpoint, so it’s at a slight angle, but it’s within spec, and it does work. But the suck part is getting the washers and nuts on. Here’s how:
put something sticky on your fingertip. Stick the washer to it. Run the screws through the mount pieces, through the holes, and reach up in ther with your finger and slip the washer over the end of the screw. For the nut, put a piece of tape on one side of the box end of the wrench. Seat the nut in there so it sticks to the tape. Get that up in there and get it started, then tighten it down.

The other side was more cooperative. But after all that, I wanted to see it work. So I took out the top clecoes on the forward skin, clamped up the aft channels, and let it rip. Stupid, stupid man. Thanks to the struts and the riveted skin, the gap between the skins was no longer enough to clear during opening, so the canopy skin caught and bent itself. Struts work, though.
After that, I took the frame back off and cajoled the skin back into a rough semblance of its original shape along the front edge and filed off some more metal. It still catches, so I’ve got to keep working at it. But at this point, it’s good enough to finish the process of drilling holes in the plexiglass.

The canopy is back on, waiting for final trimming and edge processing, after which I’ll drill the holes in the WD-725 side rails and the aft channels. The end isn’t in sight, not by a long chalk.. There’s also the bondo-fest that’s necessary to blend the plexi into the skin, and of course, the filler I’ll need to deploy to further un-mangle the forward edge.