Stjohn's RV-7

2 hours.
lined up and drilled the attach holes for the canopy using the template on DWG 48. I think I get it. But the plans say ‘work carefully’ because they have you drilling holes and cutting slots in the left side skin. I did a great job of measuring and cutting the slots, but of course, in my attempts to file the edges and square them off, I managed to rake the skin with a file.. Should have worked on it from the inside. But I was able to move on to fabbing the bracket for the release handle and ratchet. I skipped a step: I didn’t rivet the subpanel to the fuse because I need to paint the subpanel parts first. I need to get down to B & B and pick up some gloss battleship gray before that happens. Some gray, and some white, because the canopy latch bits are powder coated white from Van’s. There’s other stuff hanging in the breeze, I still waiting on some stainless plumbing fittings from Earl’s, then I can finish the cabin-side fuel system.

4 hours.
It’s always exciting when I get to transition from one set of plans to the next one in the sequence. It feels like progress. Not that there aren’t details to attend to later, little things like wing mating, for instance. But that’s going to be such a mission, and I need to prep for that, and I need as few loose ends and as much structural integrity as possible. But I did finish the bend for the pump-to-firewall section of the fuel line. I’m currently waiting on a stainless steel bulkhead elbow from anplumbing.com for the actual firewall interface, and it looks like I’ll need two SS elbows for the brake lines just to be safe, but the only nagging little bit left with the fuel plumbing is an Adel clamp on the left front gusset for the vent line.
The project at hand was the construction and installation of the hinge blocks. The C-617 and C-618 hinge blocks are made of UHMW plastic and they get sandwiched between the F-745 and F-644 ribs on the front deck.

This pic shows the clecoed subpanel and ribs sitting on the bench, where I begin to puzzle out the mechanics of getting holes drilled all the way through to the attached F-644 ribs. Those are the little short things next to the ribs with the 3 big lightening holes in them, the F-745’s. What you have to do is this: You have to take the subpanel assembly apart, and I’m really glad I didn’t jump the gun and rivet that whole thing together right after I’d gotten the brake pedals in. Basically, you have to use the F-745’s as drill guides for the UHMW blocks, then use those to match-drill a 1/4″ aluminum spacer, then put that whole assembly together along with the upper deck skin to match drill all the holes through the F-644 ribs. The reason you need the F-745 ribs off the assembly is because the holes in the UHMW blocks and the C-619 aluminum spacer need to be done with a drill press, so you get a straight, even hole. This is your canopy attach point, so it behooves you not to fark this up. The RV-7 was not designed for open-cockpit operations.

Here’s the midpoint of the process. I thought I could be clever and match drill a temporary plate to take the place of the forward deck skin, allowing easier access. A nice theory, but theory doesn’t count for squat when it comes time to fit parts.

Here’s the other side. This has the canopy frame wedged in there to test the fit. Good thing I checked this. The C-619 spacer had to be filed down in order to allow the hinge to pivot around wheere the 1/4″ pivot hole is going to be with enough edge distance. Scary stuff.

A wider view, showing the canopy frame sitting in place.

The forward deck skin is nw clecoed on, and the green masking tape is suspending the ends so I can get a drill in there and drill the 1/4″ canopy hinge pin holes. These hinge pins are part of an elaborate canopy release mechanism that looks to be more trouble than it’s worth, and quite a few guys have eliminated it altogether. The most elegant solution I’ve seen is where the release arms are Adel-clamped to the F-745 ribs instead of going all the way to the torsion mechanism. This allows for release of the canopy for maintenance and upgrades, but secures the pins tightly in place during flight.
As far as I know, the next phase of this fracas is going to be the initial work on the canopy frame.

3 hours.
Installed left and right vent lines, but still short 1 Adel clamp to secure the left vent line to the firewall/longeron gusset. Boo. Also took a crack at fuel lines and lemme tellya ladies and germs, that process sucks. The Andair valve is zero help in this situation, and it looks like I’ll have to buy and install banjo fittings for it so the fuel lines can clear the pump output fitting. Grr. I’m also thinking about using the Bonaco braided steel fuel lines instead of the aluminum tubing, which, I’m not pleased to report, I’ve used up most of in botched attempts at bending the fuel lines. I’ll attack this tomorrow and see if there’s a little less suckage in the shop than there was today.
I knew I was dreading this step for a reason.

.5 hours.
Maybe it’s not that significant, but it’s significant to me. It’s another mid-level piece of airplane not on a shelf anymore, and it’s one of those things I had to wait on until the interior was painted. The cables are in, but not rigged. The empennage is still upstairs in the attic, but I suppose I should just bite the bullet and bring them down, stick them on, and rig the rudder, elevator, and pitch servo, which includes making the little tabs that go from the rudder pedals to the cable. Is there any reason not to use aviation-grade turnbuckles or clevises here? I also have yet to fit the wings to the fuselage, drilling for final incidence and sweep. At that point, I can rig the ailerons and flaps. But that’s going to be a mission. So much planning and prep, it almost merits its own list.

3 hours.
Condensed, of course. Got the autopilot pitch servo mounting bracket from Trio Avionics (They rock, by the way) and finally got it all lined up just behind the elevator bellcrank. I also got the aileron trim servo installed. The next thing, which I absolutely dread, is bending the fuel and tank vent lines, but once that’s done, I can start on the canopy. I’ve been lax on this whole thing, because sometimes I find it a damned sight easier to sit in front of the computer in my pajamas for a couple of hours in the morning than to nut up and go bang aluminum or puzzle out a part fit. This has got to stop. I need to haul ass out of bed, get into the shop and get it on, because I’ll tell you, I’ve been waiting and watching, and so far, I haven’t had a visit from the Aircraft Elves, who show up in the middle of the night and finish your aircraft by morning. Nor is my RV7 a flying Christine, capable of rebuilding herself from scratch. Still trying to think of a good paint scheme. Maybe a steampunk motif, since I’m drawing quite a few parallels with HG Wells’s The Time Machine, in which an eccentric scientist spends years in his laboratory, building a machine capable of crossing great gulfs of time and space.

6 hours.
I just got back from Japan, but in between bouts of jetlag-induced coma and insomnia, I managed to get a couple of things done. I finished up the cabin-side brake lines and got the trim servo mounted. The brake lines went fine. I just have to finish up the firewall interface for them and we’re done there.

Of course, I still have to play with the routing to minimize chafing, but that’s no big deal.
The trim servo is another story, the sad ending of which is that I’m gong to have to take out the servo and bellcrank assembly so I can put a cotter pin through the clevis bolt on the bellcrank. Yep. Nothing about that install is easy. sockeet wrenches don’t fit on nuts for the servo, no room to get a screwdriver in there, or hands for that matter, springs under tension, stick alignment, and lack of physical leverage. Plus it was way warm in the shop yesterday, so I was hunkered down in the fuselage making attempt after attempt to place clevis bolts, washers, etc. I still can’t get one of the cotter pins bent. I have no leverage and no pliers small enough to hold the end while I bend the tabs. So the whole servo/crank assembly has to come out. This is no fun, because it’s hard to get to the screws and nuts holding it to the seat rib. Then, after I put it all back in, I have to reattach the forward elevator pushrod to the control column, which is another small-space washer-alignment nightmare. Wiring will suck less, because I can at least get to those.

sorry about the blur. It’s freaking tight in there, especially with the pushrod in.

A view forward. Springs are hooked up, all is well.

Another advantage is that the springs hold the sticks straight up and down, keeping them out of the way, for the most part.

6 hours.
Over the last couple of days I’ve been reassembling some of the bits and pieces I had to take off to paint the interior. The flap motor and brace is back in, the fuselage gussets are in and torqued, and the roll bar is finally in and torqued with the center channel riveted on. I also dimpled the firewall for the panel support ribs. That’s the good stuff.
Now for the fail. I tried to install the trim servo. I messed up drilling the bearing block, but that was OK, I was able to salvage it. The crap part is, I cut off the trim servo arm a little short. There’s not enough shaft left to drill the cotter pin hole. Ordered new part. Grr.

6 hours.
I have finally painted the cockpit. It’s not an award winner, and in some places it’s not even pretty, and in a few other places, it’s downright abhorrent. But it’s done, and that’s what counts. Yesterday, I did my raft of chores, then began creating the Dexter-scene in the shop that was to become my paint booth. Fortunately we had a roll of painter’s plastic left over from a drywall job that I was able to use.

Here’s the beginning of the tent. This stuff is mostly to protect the rest of the shop from overspray. HVLP guns are better with overspray, but if you suck at painting like me, you need all the help you can get.

Here’s the coccoon from the outside. Shelley thought it was creepy, and I sort of agree. Looks like something unsavory is going on under there, and that’s not far from the truth.

This is before I shot any paint, right before Hell on Earth was brought forth and the Great Old Ones erupted from the Stygian depths to unleash unspeakable horrors on my project. Everything’s taped up, using the packing paper left over from an A.E.R.O. shipment. I could care less about the control tunnel, but I definitely wanted to protect the bearings and control column hardware, as well as the spar. The spar’s the prettiest part of the plane so far, why shoot a coat of gray paint over it? Everything on the firewall was masked off too, but that’s where I got lazy: I masked off everything forward of the brake pedal mount holes and left the rest to fend for itself. With carpeting and everything else down there, it’s doubtful you’ll even see it, and trust me, I’m an expert in the field of visual triage.

I didn’t shoot a lot of photos between the last pic and here, because the process turned into an epic nightmare never too far from corkscrewing into the hardpan of abject failure. I followed the directions; I prepped the metal using EkoClean (which is great if you don’t put a big oily handprint on a major surface you’ve just done), then shot a light mist coat. While that was drying, I mixed up another batch of my Stewart Systems EkoKote interior paint, then went outside to shoot some other parts I didn’t do last time. This is when the fun started. I leaned over to examine something and the top popped off my gravity-feed reservoir, letting a significant amount of catalyzing paint loose on the concrete patio. The swearing brought Shelley over, and she started asking what she could do to help. Of course I had a respirator on, so she couldn’t understand a damn word I was saying, and that was before the compressor started up. She grabbed a rag and soaked up the spilled paint, then left me to my own devices. While I was shooting the second coat, my inline water/oil filter and regulator started leaking, maybe it wasn’t tight, maybe the teflon tape wasn’t good enough, something. So I started fiddling with it, gun in hand, gloves, resp and goggles on, trying to silence the annoying hiss. The compressor started up again, which for some reason, amplified the urgency of the catalyzing paint in the gun’s reservoir. But the universe wasn’t done messing with me, not even close. In my fumblings with the air stuff, I dropped my paint gun on the shop floor, indoors, on my nice plastic garage tiles. Before I could pick it up, ten bucks worth of paint had spilled out and I was now in trouble: Not enough hands, no place to hang up the paint gun, a major air leak, and catalyzing paint in the gun and all over the floor. Shelley soaked up the paint once again and brought me a hook, which I screwed into the workbench and hung up the gun long enough to get it together and fix the air leaks, clean up the mess, and get back to work. But now, half my batch was on the floor, so I didn’t have enough to finish the job.. I mixed up the rest of the paint and finished.
This picture is the end result of all that pain and suffering. Was it worth it? Sure, I guess. Does it look good? Well, no, not exactly, but I’m not about to sand it off and start over. And any future painting is going to be done with the tried and true method of the Rustoleum rattle can, unless I paint the exterior matte black, by myself, in the dead of night, in a lone hangar out in the desert, in the middle of a lightning storm.

The next day (today), I had to get my motivation back. The whole point of painting the interior was so I could go on to install systems over the paint. Like any comp, you get your background layers first, then start putting stuff over them. I peeled the tape and plastic off, then put a few of the previously painted parts in place. Much to my surprise, it’s not utterly horrific. There are some pretty big drips on the floor, but guess what, those’ll be covered by either seat cushions or carpeting. I may have to touch a few things up with a rattle can, but that’s no big deal, battleship gray is a pretty common color. Since the plan is to get the Classic Aero Aviator package for the interior, the paint really just has to cover up the parts the interior package doesn’t. Of course, if budget becomes a factor and I have to go for the cheap option (van’s foam, homemade upholstery), at least I have some semblance of a cabin.

Looking aft.

Pilot’s side looking forward. You can see the splotches on the seat floor where my oily fat hand touched the metal after the prep job. I think I had used an oily rag to clean up some leaked oil from the engine, which sits on a stand aft, outboard, and to the port side of where you’re looking. For some reason, it decided to piddle a load of preservative oil on the floor prior to paint day, so I had to clean that up before I got started.
So yeah, it’s done. Cause for celebration, maybe not, but at least now the main obstacle to things like fuel lines, electrical runs, rudder rigging, and pitch servo installation is out of the way. I can even rivet the subpanel, which I was going to paint, but didn’t. Maybe I will, with rattle cans, but I’ll leave that for another day.

4 hours.
Drilled deburred, dimpled F-711 skin, matchdrilling to the firewall flange. Stainless steel is a bitch. It’s really not advisable to run your finger along the underside of the holes to feel for burrs. That stuff is sharp, and it has a taste for fingertips. Imagine what it could do to your eyes. Even so, I managed to get it all debured and dimpled, as well as drilling the center subpanel rib attach angle. The skin is now off and put safely away while I go to town on the remaining bits. I’m also entertaining the idea of not painting most of the interior and going with a Classic Aero Designs interior, which should give the ship a more polished aspect. Of course, that stuff is heavy, but if I’m going to be riding in it for significant lengths of time, I want a nice, comfy ride. Check out their stuff!