Stjohn's RV-7

1 hours.
I put the nutplates on the fuel select bracket and cover box. I totally brain-farted too. I forgot how you’re supposed to handle nutplates on thin-skinned material. I made doublers for the flanges on the cover box, countersunk those, then dimpled the holes in the cover box and used flush rivets. it works just fine, but I have to go over the handbook and find out if it’s cool to put nutplates directly on the backside of dimpled holes. I’m pretty sure it is, but I want to know, not guess.

4 hours.
made the reinforcing angles and spacers for the fuel-tank support brackets. That’s kind of a weird design, seems like a bit of a hack, but I guess it works. It’s probably a lot easier to do on the slow-build version, since the skins aren’t riveted on when you’re supposed to make these things. As it was, I had to stop because my #12 (3/16) countersink bit has joined the ranks of missing items, and I couldn’t do the bottom holes for the AN screws, so I’ll be getting back on that when my MSC order comes in. Also did the cable bearings on the baggage bulkhead wall, and finally, riveted the aft seat floors down. I’ll probably kick myself for that later, but I think I can make all the wiring runs to the tail with the openings provided in the center tunnels.
next is the cabin fuel line covers and fuel valve bracket. The plans say to slice off the front of the fuel valve bracket if you have electric trim, but I might leave it on there in case I need to mount something there. A clock, or a wet compass, maybe.
No pics, nothing terribly interesting this time.

1 hours.
Tired of bad brake puns yet? Me too, so I’m glad I’m done with these for a while. Brake pedals are drilled to the master cylinders and everything is bolted up. It’s now at the point in the manual where it says “remove and store assembly.

Pedals and cylinders, in and assembled.

Closeup of the master cylinders on the Left side. I”ll probably paint the pedals, but it’ll just come off, so I’m wondering if that’s not a waste of time.

7 hours.
This is kind of a double entry, from today and yesterday. In this episode, I fitted and drilled the plastic bearing blocks for the pedals, drilled the pedal mount points out to proper diameter, and fit the center bearing support. Then, in Act II, I made the brake pedals. Like so:

Here’s everything clecoed into place. Bearing blocks are not yet drilled to the longerons, that was done right after this photo. That was definitely a “Please, [insert deity of preference], don’t let me f**k this up” moment, because the metal they bolt onto runs the length of the plane and replacing would suck. A lot. It actually went OK. I haven’t drilled the extra holes for adjusting the positioning of the pedals. I’ve came to these measurements by sitting in the ship with a cold Tecate, simulating the optimum pedal location. I just need to find a CFI roughly the same size as me, which is pretty normal.

Detail of the bearing block and the pedal clecoed to the bolt hole on the weldment.

Pedal clecoed together, countersunk and roughed up. I’m going to paint them later, so I figured I’d just rivet them together now.

3 of 4 pedals ready for riveting

Here’s where I messed up and put the weldments in with the wrong pedal forward.

4 riveted brake pedals ready to go. The misconfigured weldments has since been fixed.

3 hours.
Wow. What a crapfight. Finally got WD409 drilled to F-711 as well as keeper-riveted to F-712. For those of you not following along on your plans, that’s the tailwheel spring mount and the two aftmost bulkheads. Since the QB kit already has the two bulkheads riveted in, you get to take out the aft-most bulkhead, f-712 and work your magic from there. That’s what I did last time, and it suuuuuucked. But it’s all back together now, except for the 4 rivets on each side that I just plain can’t get to. I ordered some cherrymax rivets to go in there, but surprise! My el-cheapo pop rivet gun from 1994 or so can’t close on the cherrymax stems, so I’ll be hittin tha’ Spruce again for a proper blind rivet gun.

3 hours.
Going through the construction manual and looking over all the steps sometimes reveals things that weren’t done by the quickbuilders, which is why it’s a really good idea to check their work as if it was your own. For one thing, I ran into the fun and exciting process of setting up the tailwheel spring mount, WD-409. This device comes partially assembled in the QB kit. The mount and spring are match drilled and the tailwheel fork is matchdrilled to the spring. What’s not done for you is installing the mount between the F-711 and F-712 bulkheads, a process which was definitely not easy, for such a simple task. First I had to heat up the mount to get the spring loose. I gave it a few licks with the propane torch and finally managed to twist the spring out of the mount. AFter the mount cooled down i was ready to try fitting it in the fuselage. Well, guess what. You have to drill out a bunch of temp rivets and take the F-712 out so you can drill the holes for the two keeper rivets that hold the mount in place while you drill the holes for the verticle stab bolts. And then, friends and neighbors, you have to get the thing back in. This is not easy. And there is a trick to it. For one thing, if you rivet the mount to the F-712 bulkhead first, you’re hosed. You won’t be able to get the bulkhead into the magic position that lets you get all the tabs inside the skins. Even then, it’s a really tight, nasty fit. Cutting the “mouse hole” where the tube sticks out of the lower aft skin makes it even worse. I wound up drilling off the rivets on the side between the F-711 and F-712 bulkheads, which helped a little, but it was still a royal pain. Methinks nobody brought this up when the qb kits went into production, and even if they did, it’s not like there’s much you can do about it. The WD-409 has to distribute its load between two bulkheads, because just one wouldn’t stand up to the stress of 3-point landings and taxi-ing down force for all that long. Of course, me being the dumbass that I am, misread the plans for the keeper rivets and wound up using 1/8 rivets instead of 3/32. No big deal, I’m sure, but those keeper rivets are going to stay kept.

Here’s the F-712 bulkhead clecoed back into place after my tender attentions with the drill.

This is the WD-409 mount after a coat of paint. The hole in the top is where the bolt goes through to hold the spring. It’s extremely important to get this vertical, because side forces on the tailwheel fork suck.

Here’s a shot down through the top deck. You can see the mouse hole down there in the lower skin, which is cut to clear the mount tube as it angles down and outward.

This is the section of the drawing that shows how it all goes together. One of the notes off to the side is “Some parts removed for clarity.” I wonder why.

1 hour.
Aft top skin is now drilled. Tomorrow, i’ll take it off and deburr everything, as well as check out the F-788 clip that seems to be a little too close to one of the holes for comfort, in such a way that I won’t be able to have a properly expanded shop head in that area when I put the skin on if I don’t do something about it. It’s going to be easier to puzzle that out when the skin’s not clecoed on, so I’ll tackle that after the deburring process.

4 hours.
Got the right seat finished, everything seems fine, so I started in on the aft top skin, the forward one. This thing is a bit difficult to work with, especially when you forget to drill out all the temp rivets the QB kit has for you. I spent some quality time with the soldering iron and removed the blue plastic along the lines of holes, then clecoed it on to the fuse. It looks like this will be the second part of this project where I will need some help riveting. I can’t reach deep enough in there to buck all the rivets, and since I forgot to deburr the edges before I started messing with it, even evaluating the process is risky. But I’m not about to take all those damned clecoes out. I’ll drill it, then unhook it and deburr everything right before I dimple it.
I still have a couple of details to finish on the flap actuator, like drilling out a slot for the servo bolt on one of the covers, and drilling the actuator arm to final size for bolting to the rod-end bearing on the end of the servo arm, but I was just so geeked to see everything bolted into place, I didn’t feel like unbolting everything again to finish up.. Maybe I’ll do that tomorrow morning.

3 hours.
Finished, as in, flyable but not pretty. All this interior stuff is going to get a coat of paint anyway. Deburred, primed and riveted the parts for the left seat, which have been sitting around clecoed together for a couple of months. Also finished up the flap actuator stuff, except the bolt connecting it to the servo. Baggage floors are riveted in, and yeah, i’ve just cut off access down there, but to be honest, I really don’t think it’s worth the effor to put them on with nutplates or make access doors. Maybe I’ll feel differently when it comes time to mount the strobe pack and ELT, who knows.

Seat in place.

Seat back adjust assembly. seems a little hacky, design-wise, but it works great.

Seat back retaining assembly.

Flap actuator and riveted baggage floors.
Pictures are a little blurry.. I’m using my iPhone as a camera, and when the light gets low, the pics get bad.

Here are a few pics of the last round of builds. Seats, flap weldment, actuator housing, and tunnel cover. All clecoed, nothing riveted yet. Still working some things out.