Stjohn's RV-7

3 hours.
Drilled the stops for the seat backs, and had planned to get more done, but wound up pondering the plans and the manual for most of that time, which I guess is good. I should have stuck to the agenda and just built the seat backs like I planned, since they’re a fairly discrete part of the process, but I went down the rabbit hole when I wondered ‘just how does that flap torque tube go in there?’ It’s a valid question, it’s attached to the same part as the seat back stops, in that it’s all about the baggage compartment bulkhead in that area.

In the above photo you see how the stops are clecoed together. There are two levels of adjustment for the seat back position. There is an angle attached to the aft flange of the baggage compartment bulkhead, which has room between it and the bulkhead for the seat back support, then another piece of aluminum forward of that, lifted by a shim, which provides the second. The first one I did was a little rough, since this is the first time I’ve had to drill upside-down. Important safety tip: Make damn sure there are no gaps between your safety glasses and your eyes. All the chips come right at you or close enough to be hazardous. If I was a D&D dork, I’d say you get -5 luck vs aluminum shavings in this situation.

The photo above is where it got interesting, at least to me. This was the point at which I realized I had to start pulling out the floor panels, which are screwed in on the quickbuild fuse when it arrives. The baggage floor panels and the flap access panels have to go so I can get in there and mount the UHMW bearing blocks for the flap torque tube. This only reared its ugly head because currently my subprocess involves drawings 20 and 23, 20 being the meat of the baggage bulkhead and 23 being the seat backs themselves. This is where going through the construction manual and verifying the build on the quickbuild is key; you don’t want to skip any steps. Not only that, you want to know what all the odd little parts look like when you need them, and if they were supposed to be installed in an earlier step and they’re not, you have to backtrack, and the longer parts are out of mind, the more chances are they’ll get misplaced or miscategorized. It’s all very well and good when you’re checking off the packing list and you know you’ve got everything, but it’s quite another when you have to find something later you haven’t seen in a few months, unless you’re frighteningly anal about how you store everything.

This is just a gratuitous overhead photo showing the new shop layout, sans wings. Sort of. Note how much room i’ve got to work now.