Stjohn's RV-7

6 hours.
Left wing: installed flap brace and flap hinge, aligned flap. This was a bit of a quandary, and I might wind up redoing this, and here’s why: With the aileron in neutral, the flap, based on where it was drilled, is about 1/16 short of the trailing edge of the aileron. Now, I drilled the flap hinge on this way because I wasn’t comfortable with the amount of distance from the rivet to the edge of the hinge. I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that as long as the other flap is done the same way, it’s not going to affect flight. A lot of folks on VAF wound up getting the next wider type hinge for this op. I’ll ask Van’s what they think, but it seems silly to have to get a different type of hinge than the one included in the kit just to give you edge clearance between the rivet and the edge of the hinge. So here’s what I did: I used the ‘Dan’ method of using keeper rivets to hold the flap brace and the skin together while I clamped the hinge and flap to the skin and brace. After drilling the hinge is done, you drill out the keeper rivets and countersink the flap brace just like the plans say, then you put the whole shebang back together like you’re supposed to. One mild-to-medium suck: My cheap Arrow blind rivet squeezer won’t take a 3/32 rivet, which is what the CR3212 CherryMax rivets on the ends of the flap brace are. I think I can make at least 4 of them happen with regular AN470AD4’s, but I’ll have to either find a decent alternative or get a rivet squeezer capable of dealing with a 3/32 shank. Other than that, it’s all good. the flap moves freely, the pin goes in without too much trouble, and the end result looks suspiciously like an airplane wing.
Here’s one of a keeper rivet and the clamp on one end holding the hinge in position. You progressively drill and cleco your way down the line. Then you can take the clamps off.

Gap between flap and aileron is the plans-specified 1/4 inch. My camera doesn’t do macro, so it’s a blurry mess. I spent the money on a plane.

Here, we’re looking down onto the rear spar. I used a slew of AN470 rivets to hold the brace in place on the spar while I hung and drilled the hinge. This shot is right after I’d gotten all the hinge holes drilled, except for the keeper rivet holes, which got done later.

Here’s the finished deal. By ‘finished,’ I mean everything done except the line of holes in the bottom outboard skin, which is currently clecoed on temporarily.

Here’s the big picture. The outboard bottom skin is clecoed on, ready for drilling. I need to get this out of the way so I can stow it while I have fun with conduit and pitot lines.