Stjohn's RV-7

VS closed up, blue stuff taken off, but still need some blind rivets for the middle rib.

Everything nice and secure, good rivets all around.

Hinge brackets looking good…

This is where the Three Blind Rivets go.

And Steve Galle, holding up the (almost) finished product. only 14900 rivets to go!

5 hours.
Wow! What a day! Started at about 10am doing the final blacksmithing on the VS, making sure all the holes line up, no gaps.. Forgot to dimple a hole on the forward spar, that sucked.. had to uncleco the skin, dimple it (yes it was drilled and deburred), then cleco the skin back on. But I drafted some help in the form of Derek Spears and Steve Galle. I was the shooter, Derek was the cleco puller/rivet inserter, and Steve was the Bucker. It went factory fast. Now, if someone could invent an autoloading rivet gun that pulls out the clecos for you and magicks up a bucking bar against the shank on the backside, that would rock. Not going to happen. But I can dream. Only had 4 or 5 bad rivets in the whole assembly, and it really went together well. One tip: make sure the taped up part of the bucking bar isn’t the surface you’re bucking with.. Tape doesn’t make such a good impact surface and your shop heads will slide around like water on oil. Derek took off early and we grabbed a burrito and talked engines. More and more I’m leaning toward Jan Eggenfellner’s six-cyl Subaru FWF package. No offense to the rotorheads, and much respect, but I hear a lot more engine-out stories from rotary guys than Subaru guys. Most of these issues are builder/operator related rather than the engine itself, but the devil is always in the details, and I’ve been on the rotary list a lot longer than I’ve been on the subaruaircraft or airsoob list. Either way, when somebody comes up with a FWF package for the rotary that costs less than 25k, it might be an option again.. Personally, I don’t mind flying behind an experimental engine, as long as its principles, engineering, and practical application is sound, but I’m well aware of the non-existence of an engine that puts out 300hp, weighs 10 pounds and will run for 900 miles on the smell of an oily rag.
Still no frigging pictures. VPN server at 3jane is not happy, so no ssh for openbar.

These are pics from the process of closing the HS. All this happened in mid november 2005.

Here, we’ve closed up the skin. Fitting the middle ribs was a real ratbastard of a chore, but as soon as the zen took over, it became considerably less so. This pic is of the rear spar assembly clecoed and somewhat riveted to the rest of the HS.

Shop heads all looking good, gauged at the proper width and thickness. Used the 4″ thin-nose yoke on these.

Left side ready to rock.

Lined up, looking good, no gaps between the skin and spar, even with just clecoes on there.

An overview. By the way… You see that lamp? I hate it. I want it to be crushed to singularity in a massive black hole. The only thing making it useful are a couple of c-clamps. The only thing keeping it in existence is the fact that I haven’t motivated myself to replace it.

Sombody told me I can polish all that stuff out.. I hope so.

BOOYAKASHA! A horizontal stabilizer. And the spokesmodel sporting a Made In Detroit t-shirt! I tried to get the obligatory flying-lawn-furniture shot, but I didn’t have the time and my wife didn’t have the patience.

Perfectly balanced…

Even the horrendous ding in the skin kind of came out once all the parts were lined up.

And there it is with the blue stuff taken off! Love it!

And now it’s time to do the VS. Much simpler structue, and now the happy builder is armed with the painful lessons of the HS.

Well, I promised you some pix, and these are them. Finally we have our VPN sorted out with our ISP, so SSL and FTP now work. Which is good, because for a while, I was SOL.

This is the new longeron yoke on the squeezer.. Believe it or not, it works. Next to it is a rivet gauge. It checks shop heads for minimum width and height.

Riveted on the hinge bracket for the VS.

Blurry art-house pic of the flush rivets on the VS forward spar.

Better pic of the forward spar. Notice flush rivets where this part has to somehow connect with something on the fuselage.

Doubler clecoed to VS forward spar. the NO NO NO NO NO thing is something I made up to keep myself from riveting the holes where the rib goes on. P-touch to the rescue.

Flush rivets and clecoed spar/doubler/hinges.

4 hours.
After cleaning up the shop (I always like to make a fresh mess), I tore into the HS rear spar.. If you recall, last time, we got the HS ribs and forward spar riveted in.. But something about the aft middle rib I didn’t like, so I drilled off the rivets and went to work on why there were gaps between the flange and the skin. Turns out, after some serious mangling to try to get it in there properly, the rib didn’t sit well in the dimples anymore. This time around I tried it a little differently, that is, not clecoing the forward flange of the rib to the forward spar. Well, dang. Still wasn’t perfect, and I was still dealing with the ding I put in the skin last time around, but it was damn close enough. No actual gaps between riveted flange and skin, and the ding actually popped back into shape.. somewhat.. But the thing that was warping the rib enough to make it not line up to the dimples in the skin was the fact that it was being twisted when the rib-to-spar clecos were in.. Not much, but enough to mess it up. But after riveting the rib to the skin, it didn’t take much to get the rib-to-spar holes lined up (read: drill) and the blind rivets went in without any trouble. Still, I had to use NAS oops rivets on that rib, top and bottom. But it turned out ok, so I was ready to move on to the final step: closing the HS by installing the aft spar, which by now has had all the hinge brackets and everything installed properly and securely. Yeah, I don’t want my elevators coming off in mid flight, so you can bet I paid close attention to that.
There are a buttload of rivets on that aft spar/HS skin setup. I did all of them. Except one that I missed and it’s staring at me right now with its baleful empty eye. I have pictures, but I still can’t upload them because my server is bollocks at the moment. SFTP and SCP are both down. But the HS looks pretty darn cool with all the rivets (except that one I missed) in, and all the blue stuff taken off! And the rigidity of the structure is absolutely amazing.. I LOVE monocoque construction!
Next time I update this, I hope to have pictures.

2 hours
Since I had to wait for my AN426AD4-8’s and -9’s, I figured I could get some work done on the VS.
Cleaveland tools delivered me some much needed things, like a longeron yoke, a 4″ thin-nose yoke, and some flush squeezer sets, as well as the pop-rivet dimpler in 3/32 and 1/8 sizes. My squeezer is definitely a piece of work, and I need to hack off the safety so I can have better teasing action.
So I was able to get the VS drilled countersunk, and ready to rock. That’ll be next after I close out the HS.
I have some pix, can’t seem to ftp them to the site at the moment. Grr. pix as they become available.

2 Hours
Today my housemate Sean graciously volunteered to buck a few rivets on the HS for me. We got the right side nose and main ribs riveted on to the skin and the riveting job is perfect.. No gaps, no funny business. The only regret I have is that i messed up riveting the end rib to the forward spar, and make a freaking ugly hole.. No matter though, I followed Van’s advice and made a new hole in the flange for that part. I know I measured 1.5d for the rivet distance, and it’s holding together just fine.. We’ll see what the TC or DAR says. In addition to the skin work, I attempted to fix the couple of bad rivets on the HS main spar. There were only a couple, but they all gave me a raft of grief. There’s one where the hole is way too enlarged, and no AD4 rivet is ever going to fill it and make a decent shop head, and my current AD5’s are too short. This is also the case on one of the elevator hinge brackets. Grr. I hate having 10 things unfinished, but I suppose I’d better get used to it. Anyway, I ordered some AN470AD-5-8’s and 9’s, which was dumb, because not only did spruce lose my order, those are the wrong kind.. I need AN426’s. They are on the way, should be here this weekend, and I should be able to finish the HS, assuming I destroy nothing else.

3 hours
OK, so maybe the HS wasn’t ready to close. What I didn’t remember from the handbook, is that gaps between the skeleton flanges and skin are a no-no. Dan Checkoway had a look at the photos and the verdict was that the skin would have to be drilled off. But today, he came over and showed me how to rivet and check rivets correctly. He also demonstrated that it’s nearly impossible to do the nether parts of the HS solo.. You need a shooter and a bucker. We did the hard parts of the left side HS (fwd spar to skin, mid ribs to skin). The good part of that is that we were able to salvage all my old parts. The not-so-good-news is that I now have half of an HS that I ordered from Van’s thinking I was going to have to replace a bunch of it.
Thanks a gozillion, Dan! It’s so great that people like you are willing to share the knowledge and skill you’ve accumulated over years of work and practice, and I hope I can pass it on someday as well.

these are a few pics of the state of the Left side HS. This primer sucks, it’s not doing a wonderful job of hanging on under the duress of the bucking bar. But that’s a lesson learned for next time.. If I have to prime anything else, I’ll use a 2-part epoxy primer and alodine the parts like I’m supposed to.

This is the current state of the empennage.. One side at a stopping point while I determing whether or not I can close it up.

This is a shot of the space between the forward spar, outboard of the middle rib. The rivets that are done are for the top side.

Another shot of the aft middle rib, which shows the blind rivets securing it to the forward spar.

Yet another shot of same, a little closer. Still working out the best way to photograph this stuff.

Bottom side rivets on center and center nose ribs. Yes, there will be some buffing and polishing. Or that’s where the black stripe on the HS will go at paint time.

Top side rivets.

Middle Nose rib. Notice the dings in the primer. I’m going to sand these down where there are deep scratches and shoot some primer in over them before closing.

Another view of the middle aft rib connecting to the forward spar.. The weird ghosting is from camera jitter (my jitter).

Same rib, this time showing the aftmost rivets

Middle nose rib again, but this shot’s just cool.

Wider angle of fwd spar and middle main rib.

This is part of the aft spar, showing shop heads on the thicker channel (they’re not all facing this way, but the metal’s not warped).

Elevator hinge with 5/32 rivets instead of 1/8. See earlier entry for details.

Back inside now, looking at the oops where I patched a hole from a missed dimpling hit. The notch cut into the spar is fully deburred, and not contacting the patch rivet, even though it looks like it. This oops is about 3/4 of the way outboard from center. BTW, I’ll be going over those scratches in the primer as well.

Pointing to the space along the span where the oops is..

For perspective, this is where the oops is, but on the opposite side of where the mirror’s pointing to. This is just to show how far outboard the oops is.