Stjohn's RV-7

6 hours.
The fresh air vents take in air from two NACA scoops, one on each side, just forward of the panel. Each one feeds a length of 2″ tubing that ends in an eyeball vent, similar to the ones on commercial airliners, the overhead ones that the inconsiderate nong next to you insists on keeping open and blowing frigid air into your ear while you’re trying to read or sleep. Rather than use the cheap plastic ones from the kit, I opted to spend the cabbage on the nice machined aluminum ones from SteinAir. The SteinAir vents are different in that they mount in a 2″ hole and are held fast by a threaded ring, while the Van’s ones are square and have four AN3 bolt holes designed to grip an angle bracket and a point on the panel. What this means is the mounting needs to be a custom fab, like so:

The next thing to do was dimple the angle for mounting to the side skin. Once that was done, and the part clecoed on, I could match-drill the panel attach hole, then put a nutplate on it. This took lots of measuring, then a bend, then some more measuring, then a few cuts, some drilling, and presto, it’s done.

The second one was easy, all I had to do was make the 90 degree bend at the right distance from the edge of a piece of scrap, then trace the outline from the original part on the opposite side from the bend. Some bandsaw and hole saw work and I got a mirror of the first one. Repeat dimpling/nutplate process.

With the eyeball mounted, it looks pretty sweet.

The only issue here is that the threads on the eyeball don’t go far enough. Minimum thickness this thing can clamp down on is about 3/32″, and my aluminum bracket is maybe half that, so I need to find or make a bushing for the backside so the eyeball can be screwed in tight.
After that, I deburred and dimpled the rest of the subpanel, plus I finished riveting on the weather seal angles. The left-side panel support rib, F-745-L has been truncated at the subpanel to make room for the EFIS. This is a common mod, and the F-745 ribs aren’t structural, so I figured I’d go ahead and do it. If you ask me, putting a panel support rib right down the centerline of the pilot seat is kind of dumb, but I can see where it maximizes efficiency in manufacturing, and it does stiffen the panel. The piece sitting on top of the subpanel in the photo is the aft-of-subpanel piece of the F-745-L rib. I’ll figure out another way to stiffen the panel.

Of course, the skin will have to go back on so I can matchdrill the firewall, as well as the center rib to firewall angle. I wasn’t quite ready to mess with the skin.. That forward top skin is a pain in the butt, so I decided to do something completely different: Start playing with the placement of the throttle quadrant!

The idea is to get the quadrant centered, and I figured I could mock that up by cleco-clamping it to some angle, then try it on for size. It’s easy to reach, doesn’t block the view of anything, and once it’s all bolted in with cables attached, should be solid. Not only that, the aluminum angle strung between the panel and the subpanel for the mount should help stiffen the panel.

This shows the placement relative to the pilot in fore and aft direction.

I have to consult the oracle of VAF to see if I’m even remotely on target with this quadrant thing, But it looks like it should be fine. I’m still avoiding painting the interior, go figure. But there’s plenty to do, like rivet on the firewall recess, fabricate the quadrant mounts, and maybe even do a couple of firewall-mounted items before I need to have a paint day. Then the next discrete step is that engine conversion, which, I gotta tell you, makes me nervous. More on that later.

4 hours.

The subject of todays efforts was the subpanel. When I had it all clecoed to the airframe, I drilled the F-644 and F-643 ribs to the skin. as well as the F-643B angle that attaches to the firewall. I’m not being to squirrelly about primer, most of these parts are alclad, and even the ones that arent will probably get a coat of gray paint, assuming I have enough left over from doing the interior. If not, big whoop. This is a sction of the plane nobody will ever see. In the plus column for painting is insulation. There’s going to be a buttload of wiring under here, and if something chafes or comes loose, contact with paint is going to make fewer sparks than contact with metal. In the minus column is that painting is a pain in the ass. In any event, today saw the riveting of the center subpanel, and for anybody playing at home or at work at the FAA, here’s a photo of me riveting the thing together. Not the most flattering pic in the world, but it’ll do.

The other thing that got done today was a loose end that’s been bugging me for a while. I got the brake pedal bracket riveted to the firewall recess angles. I hadn’t done it before because I needed to paint it first. It is now painted.

Speaking of paint, here’s a current state of the nation. The weather’s been gloomy, salt-damp, and cool, suboptimal paint conditions at best, so this is as far as it’s gone. The uneven splotch on the baggage compartment bulkhead is just an exploratory shot with the paint gun, just to see the effects of paint on a completely unprepared surface. Big surprise, it looks like ass.

I still have to fabricate mounts for the eyeball vents, then put in the NACA scoops for fresh air. That involves Proseal or RTV, and I’m leaning towards RTV. But I realized today, dude, you’re about ready to order electric bits. Of course, I still have to finish painting the interior, do the canopy, run fuel lines, and install the autopilot pitch servo before there’s much point in that. But at least things are happening.

2 hours.
Riveted and installed panel attach points. I still haven’t painted the interior, and i’ve got a crawl-under-the-panel task waiting for me. My gaskets have arrived, so there’s really nothing stopping me from doing the FI conversion, but I’d really hate having so many separate process branches unfinished. I keep putting off painting the interior, because one, I suck at painting, and two, it’s a process which requires hours of uninterrupted time, usually more than I plan on. This doesn’t encourage me to get it done. Not only that, I can’t just wash the interior with a load of soap and water, this needs to be done in such a way that no water pools anywhere I can’t get to, or runs out of the fuse onto my garage floor, where it will sit below the plastic snap-together floor tiles.
I know I need to just sack up and rock it out. They have a saying in Gilead, ancestral home of Roland Deschain, the Last Gunslinger: “Soonest begun’s soonest done.” Good thing I’m not from there.

2 hours.
F-703x panel attach brackets and panel reinforcing angle. The subpanel/panel is coming together, and it’s slow going. Because summer is starting, we have to do all that house-maintenance stuff that happens around now. I still have to finish painting the interior of the plane as well.

4 hours.
I’m too lazy to post pictures, so I’m just going to lay it out: Installed the roll servo in the wing, after cutting out a section of PVC wire conduit so the bracket and box could clear. Turns out I would have had to do this anyway, since I’d have needed to get the servo control wire out of it at that point, but this will turn out all right.. I have to run up to Kragen for some wire wrap, though.
The big thing today was the foray into painting. I need to get a better, faster measuring system for mixing the paint parts, but I was able to get going with the Stewart Systems Eko Poly. I suck at the paint, let me tell you. I might have to call this ship the Orange Peel Special. I painted the lower section of the baggage bulkhead cover, and even though I got some good practice in on the aft side, the forward side looks like ass. Turns out my paint was too thick and there was probably too much of it going on. The weird thing was, even in the blazing california sun, I couldn’t really tell if my light fog coat was actually going on. Tomorrow, I’ll start cleaning and roughing all the loose parts like vent covers, etc and cleaning out the cockpit for the eventual paint job. On the plus side, that Stewart Systems paint does actually clean up with water, assuming you don’t let it dry on the gun, which is badass. I’d say it’s the least painful option outside of a rattle can there is, and the low toxicity bonus is great too. I still don’t have the hang of reducing paint to the point where it will shoot correctly, but I wanted to go through the process from startup to cleanup and see how long everything takes. The HVLP gun, however, is genius. The flea-market Taiwan special has a 1.7 tip, I needed a 1.5 or a 1.3. Fortunately, there’s an auto body supply shop a few blocks away, and the crew there is nice and knows their biz. I picked up a Sharpe HVLP gravity-feed gun, some containers, a regulator and a gun-side water filter. The gun rocks, It’s me who’s the dumbass. But I’m getting the hang of it, and I should be able to knock out a bunch more parts tomorrow before I have to get shelley from the airport.
Oh, and yesterday, I got started on the subpanel mounting.. there are a lot of non-pre-punched things to do in this section, and I’m getting everything clamped up in preparation for drilling.

1 hour.
Havent’ had a lot of time to work on the plane lately.. crunch time on Terminator 4. I’m not putting in a lot of overtime, but there’s some, and there’s just enough to make me not want to do much of anything after the household tasks are done, which seem to be growing in number. But this morning, I made all the fiddly brackets for the subpanel. The ones on DWG 24, I had to pull from the preview plans, as i can’t find DWG 24 anywhere. I might have purged it when I saw that it was for the slider canopy. I did manage to drill the hinge brackets to the subpanel, but that’s as far as I got. And I’m very quickly running out of things I can do without painting the interior and all the assorted parts. Maybe I’ll get a paint day Sunday, but my schedule is currently at the whim of Skynet and its metal minions. Oh, and my bathroom sink is clogged again. Shelley, home from work on an extended vacation, tried to help out by freeing up the slow drain in the downstairs bathroom. Not only did she stop it up completely, but the plunging process has now half-filled my sink with noisome black liquid. So that’s going to be my Saturday, assuming I get one.
Even my dreams are filled with Terminators and broken plumbing.

1 hour.
Deburred some F-703 notches, then clamped the angle to the panel for drilling. Guess what. Even though the drawing says “Full Scale” on the detail for the notches in the .063 angle, the part as shown on the drawing isn’t drawn accurately to those measurements. What I did was mark a line on the angle, then placed the angle on the drawing and marked the notch cutout marks from where they are on the drawing. DO NOT DO THIS. The measurements called out are reliable. They will put the notches exactly beetween the holes pre-drilled on the panel. The notches as shown on the drawing aren’t even close. All the notches must be measured out as spec’d. Now I have to make a new one. Problem is, i’m out of .063 angle, so I’ll hit up AC Spruce when I’m done here.
In all fairness to Van’s Aircraft, there was probably something I read long ago in the construction manual about referring to measurements rather than the picture itself, but I don’t remember it. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense from a layout point of view, but dammit, when something is described as ‘full scale,’ I tend to interpret that to mean ‘full scale.’ Silly me. Now I know never to trust the picture, but always reference the actual measurements. Grr.
Regardless, I’m not going to get to it this weekend. I have to retrofit the doghouse as a chicken coop and help Shelley get ready for her chicks to arrive in the mail.

1 hour.
This went surprisingly quickly. The full-scale drawing of the F-703B angle was a big help. I was able to mark off the notches by laying the angle down on the drawing and marking everything. Of course, you should check, because there’s another ‘full scale’ part on that same drawing that’s 1/2″ longer than the stated dimensions.
The panel reinforcing angle is made out of .063 , and it stiffens the panel. Notches need to be cut into it along the length so it can bend around the curved edge of the panel. I haven’t deburred it yet, that’s another fun adventure waiting for me.

1.5 hours.
Picked up where I left off this morning and finished making and drilling the side seal support angles. That’s it! woohoo!
Not sure why that took so long. Oh, I know. It’s all the deburring of the notches.

1.5 hours.
Fabricated and drilled the center seal reinforcement angle. This goes on the center subpaneln and helps seal… Something. This is the first time in the kit where I’ve had to learn the technique of notching aluminum angle to bend around curved shapes. Not that big a deal, really, but it’s a good part of the subpanel work. Basically, you make some holes in the angle near the edge, then cut notches tangent to the hole edges, giving you a rounded notch. This allows you to bend the angle around a curve, which needs to happen on the subpanel, and later, the panel. It’s pretty cool, but it makes for a lot of deburring work. I got the center one done, and cut the length of one of the side ones, and I’ll try to finish those tonight after work, although I’ve just been informed I’m putting up shelves.