Stjohn's RV-7

.5 hours.
cut and flared the tubing on the pitot/AOA probe. My tubing bender tends to make the corners a little sharp on 1/4″, I found out, but I got the tubes cut and bent so I can get it into the mast and fitting in the wing. Not much guidance for this, other than leave the fittings in a position where they’re serviceable thru the access panel near the bellcrank.
I also used a couple of Adel clamps to keep the tubes out from under the bellcrank and from chafing on the structure or each other. So now the list to finish the wings is thus:
Glass in Archer antenna
wire runs to end of R wing
drill/tap pitot probe for mounting screws.
T’ree t’ings, mon. Den we finish wit wings.

3 hours.
I’ve been off the wagon for a week or two. Shelley got a bunch of fruit trees and we had a load of dirt delivered, a good bit of which is still sitting in the driveway. The last available weekend was consumed in basically moving dirt around, since we had to fix the front path, and move dirt forward into the driveway so a car could be parked. I’m done moving dirt to temporary places. We’ll build the beds for the fruit trees in a week, maybe two, then the dirt will go in them, along with the trees. Last Sunday, I got hit hard with the flu. high fever and blinding headache for three days, followed by sinus and lung congestion. But I digress. You’re here to read about results and accomplishments, so I’ll give you one: Finished the wingtips. Installed nutplates on right wingtip, along with wingtip rib. I sincerely hope I did it right, because I’m not sure how much effect the wingtips contribute to a potential heavy wing situation. I also got the Archer VOR antenna installed in the left wingtip, but not glassed in yet. It’s too cold and too late to start messing with epoxy goo.
So the only things remaining on the wings are:
Mount pitot probe to mast
install pitot/AOA fittings to connect plastic tubing
Run light/strobe wires down R wing and drill a hole in the conduit for a future AP servo wire.
And that’s it. Wings be done. I want to move my wings into the garage before the end of this month and get my drill press, toolbox, and grinding wheel/bandsaw table into the shop. Right now, that space is full of new windows that are going in next week.

5 hours.
Nav lights, strobes, and wingtip lenses are all done. Oh, and by the way, add fiberglass to the list of things I detest working with. Plexiglass as well. Cutting the wingtip lenses was a ratbastard, but the Dremel fiberglass/plastic shaping and cutting wheel works really well. It’s just that the position I had to use it in was the position required to shoot hot crumbs of molten plexiglass from the cut into my hair, face, and occasionally bounce it up under my safety glasses, which is molto uncool. I had to switch to full-on goggles. Whatever, here are some pics.
This is the final-cut lens taped to the wingtip so I can drill the mounting holes in the corner.

Here’s the lens, after the platenuts are installed. I”m using the countersunk washers I got when I thought I needed to use a bunch of them for something, but only two are necessary. For now.

Remember a while back I said I was clecoing things into place as a storage option? Here’s the panel and associated ribs, clecoed in to get them out of the way and make me feel good.

The local hardware store provided me with some high-temp silver paint, so I did the cutouts with it. Van’s packing paper makes an excellent mask. These are going to look badass when the rest of the tips are matte black.

The right wingtip, with LED nav light, landing light, strobe and metal heatshield/reflector installed.

Both tips, ready for attachment to the wings.

Here’s both tips with all the equipment in them and the lenses on.

1 hour.
Didn’t have a lot of time to build today.. Actually I did, so it’s more my fault. The landscapers came today and moved all the compost and bark into place for our front yard. Supervising them took until noon, but they did a fine job. Then it was lunch time. It rained all day and every place I went for lunch was either too crowded or not open, so I just gave up, got Subway, and came home. Then I surfed the internet and gawked at engines for a while, then finally got going on the left wingtip. I cut the strobe heatshield/reflector plates for the outboard facing surface on the wingtips, which was a royal pain. The flycutter can’t do a 1″ diameter cut, and I don’t have a 1″ hole saw or punch. I do have a 1″ wood bit, which didn’t work at all. I finally made a 1/2″ hole and expanded it with a spare rotary burr chucked into the drill press. Time-consuming, but effective. I managed to make a bit of a mess, so I think a 1″ unibit is on the list for acquisition because only Cthulhu knows how many 1″ holes I’m going to have to drill around this airframe. On the plus side, I cut the plexiglass lens bubble in half, and this photo shows it taped into position with the cutout edges marked. The strobe bulb is also in, but I’ve got the black protective foam around it.

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Looks like everything I need to finish the wings has shown up. My pitot/AOA plumbing kit is here from SafeAir1, the 60 watt 4 way strobe kit is here from Strobeguy, my antenna and power wire is here from spruce, along with the hardware I need to finish the wingtips. So here’s another checklist for finishing (making ready for long term storage) the wings:
Fab up strobe reflector/mount plates for cutouts in L/R wingtips
Temp-install CreativAir nav/landing light combo in R wingtip (L is done)
Glass in Archer nav antenna in L wingtip
Run wires for strobes, nav light, landing light and Antenna in L wingtip
Run wires for strobe, nav light and landing light in R wingtip
Run pitot and AOA lines through L wing ribs
Bend/cut Pitot/AOA probe tubing to fit.
Drill pitot mast and probe for fastening probe to mast.
Cleco wing skins back on
finish trimming wings near elevator
Install nutplates for wingtip attach
Install wingtip ribs
cut wingtip lenses, install nutplates for wingtip lens attach
Paint wingtips flat black, paint cutouts silver.
install lenses, cover with protective substance (van’s wrapping paper should do.
It’s supposed to rain all weekend, so painting is probably out, but I can do the rest of it if I can devote a large block of time to it.

1.5 hours.
Trimmed wingtips and got the LED nav light/landing light combo installed in the left wingtip. Mostly. Too many chickens and too many eggs. What I got done was cutting the holes and temp-installing the LED nav light board and the landing light bracket in the wingtip. No paint or anything fancy, and it’s not really that difficult of an install, but as usual, never having done it before, it took a lot more time than I think is probably necessary. I did get the wingtip edges trimmed so they clear the ailerons and they fit nicely into the wing skins. Once the strobes go in, I have to make the wingtip lenses out of the plexi that came in the kit, but once I’ve done those, I’m gonna call this done until it’s time to actually wire the wings and install the wingtips, which will happen a lot later. OH, and good news. The tanks are sealed! The balloons lasted two days without any appreciable deflation, so it looks like my splotch job with the proseal worked.
But back to the wingtips. Eventually, the side of the wingtip cutout holding the nav/landing lights will get covered with red/green scotchbrite tape, if I can find the right size/color.
Now the only things standing in the way of the wings being done is pitot/AOA plumbing and riveting on the bottom skin, which will also get deferred until I figure out what to do about an autopilot. Ideally, I’ll mount the servo in the right wing to counterbalance my fat ass when i”m flying solo, but if push comes to shove, I can mount it on the end of the wing and run a longer control rod, later, after it flies even.
So here’s the tip, with a sharpie mark on it, in an attempt to actually measure where the light is going to go.

Just a quick lineup test of the right wingtip mocked up to the wing to test the trim job. Looks good to me.

This is one of the CreativAir nav/landing light setups. The metal bits hold an MR16 lamp and the red bit with the LED clusters on it goes outside on the cutout.

Here it is in place. The landing light aim is adjusted by long bolts which keep the lights aimed by spring tension. Simple, neat, easy. Props to Bill Von Dane for this setup.

1.5 hours.
Testing the tanks. I made capped lines for the vent lines by squeezing the end of a section of 1/4″ tubing in the hand seamer with a regular AN fitting on the other to connect to the vent line nipple. Got to use my new tube bender, cutter and flare tool. Sixty bucks off eBay. Then I put a balloon in an AN fitting and that over the fuel line fitting with some vaseline on the thread, for a decent seal without ripping the balloon. Then forced air in the fuel drains to inflate the balloons and gaffer tape over those holes before the air ran out and the balloons deflated. I then measured 2 marks on each balloon, wrote down the distances between them, and the time. If the balloons stay inflated over the course of the day, and the distance between the marks stays roughly the same but doesn’t decrease overall, then my tanks are sealed. I’m expecting those distances to fluctuate with temperature somewhat, but a leak should make itself evident within 48 hours.
Meanwhile, I’m waiting for FedEx, who is theoretically showing up with my wingtip light kit and strobe kit at about 1:30. I’ve gotten the wingtips down out of the rafters, so I’m thinking about glassing in the Archer antenna and making the doubler strips. I suppose I could just do CS4-4 rivets, but I’m not into drilling those out eveyr time I need to change a landing light bulb or troubleshoot the VOR antenna. Either way, I need to do the wingtip ribs.
I’m also trying to decide whether or not to buy the Trio avionics autopilot now so I can install it in the wing and be done with it. OTOH, if I don’t close the wing skins until much later, I can worry about it then.

5 hours.
Prosealed the access plates and fuel senders to the tanks today. And yes, I’m counting setup, pondering, and cleanup time. The last time I messed with the toxic nougat, it was the rudder, and the actual sealing properties weren’t as important as just gluing the bits together so they didn’t shift under stress from riveting. This is the real deal. I made damn sure every surface to get gooed was cleaned thoroughly with MEK, and that the tankside surface of the access plate was scuffed up beforehand. Access plate. That’s a good one. If you slather a ring of this crap around the outside of it and screw it down, you ain’t accessing anything in the tank for a long long time. Following the advice on VAF, which made sense to me, I discarded both the cork rings for the access plate and the rubber gaskets that came with the fuel senders. Supposedly Prosealing it will give you a much better seal and the cork gaskets tend to deteriorate over time and eventually leak fuel. This I believe; when I was a kid, we had gaskets on our boat tanks made of the same stuff and they leaked like a bastard. I just hope they seal, because if they don’t, it’s going to be a very, very bad day, which could set me back several hours if I have to somehow get those plates off and fix/modify anything inside there.
The blogware’s probably going to cut off the right hand side, but here they are, sealed and curing.

As you can see, I haven’t dialed in that ‘beautiful proseal job’ look yet. I’m just hoping it works. I made sure there was enough goo, liberally applied on the surfaces in question. I even put some around where the weld for the sender insulator is. You never know. But I bet I wind up sealing that over once I’ve got a wire on it. that’s no big deal, I know how I’m going to do that: Hook the shop-vac up to an adapter going into the fuel fill hole to provide negative pressure and daub a wad of the gray all around that fitting. Hopefully Stewart-Warner has thought of and made the unit airtight already.