Stjohn's RV-7

4 hours.
This part isn’t supposed to happen for a while, but the weather stinks, so I can’t haul the ship out of the guest house and drill wing incidence. Nor can I do my control column, because I’m still waiting for 2 AN4 bolts to be shipped across the country for some reason. All the little fuel system cover stuff was done, and it’s really time to paint the interior, but I didn’t have the time to do that either, plus it’s too cold. I’m in Los Angeles, and there was a layer of ice on the shallow puddle of rainwater on the hot tub cover this morning. Not frost, ice. Shelley picked up a 1/8″ thick piece of it to show me while I was eating breakfast. So it’s suboptimal for anything involving paint, which is fine with me, I hate paint. But that means I’m stopped cold for installing systems like rudder cables, wiring, and the 5-bolt gussets in front of the main spar where the landing gear mounts on the A model go.
What got done yesterday in lieu of all that stuff was the positioning and drilling of the horizontal stabilizer.
I called up my friend Dave to see if he’d be interested in helping out and he was on board, so we got the HS down out of the attic and drilled the control horns.
I’m so glad Dave could come over and help with this, because as you can see, it’s a tight space and huge deal, and having two sets of eyes is invaluable.

After lots of measuring, and I mean LOTS, we clamped the HS to the aft deck just like it shows in the drawing, with the shims sandwiched between HS 714 and the aft deck. The manual says to put the hs right on the deck and drill it, then matchdrill the shims using the holes in HS 714 as a guide, which I do not get at all. What we did was measure the tips to the centerline, measure again, clamp the bejeezus out of it, measure tip distance after clamping, then step back and look for anything obvious. Then we drilled 1/8″ pilot holes through the HS/shim/deck/doubler sandwich. Outer holes first, then inner.

Then we measured again. All good.

Dave, measuring a third time, and checking edge distance inside with the flashlight and a mirror.

Then we drilled the aft supports. Dave made two perfectly 3/16″ thick spacers from MDF to support the aft spar at the right height while we drilled the pilot holes. MDF is great stuff for this. it cuts perfectly straight and smooth, and makes great shims without having to stack aluminum scraps together.

After that it was off for wine and traditional Christmas Eve sushi. Sushi is traditional Christmas Eve fare, right?
Big up to Dave for the huge help!