Stjohn's RV-7

4 hours.
Cut, primed, drilled, deburred, riveted, and temp-installed elevator pushrods. I’m now working on temp-installing the control column because, dammit, I want to see the elevators go up and down when I move the stick. I’m also re-thinking my original position on cutting access notches in the two ribs 2nd outboard from center. But another disadvantage to making these post-QB stage is that there’s no way in hell the platenut for the cover attach screw is ever going to line up again. The solution is probably to make a drill jig from a strip of .032, bent to the contour of the rib and cover, and matchdrilled through the cover. This sounds like a pain, and I think maybe time would be better spent getting really good at installing the control column the way Van intended.
Nor is the fiddling done on the stick bearings themselves. The way I understand it, the steel hinge in the stick base rotates around the brass bushing, rather than the brass bushing rotating around the bolt. That’s nice, but the bushings are still a very tight fit in the tube. My guess is, whatever person or machine welding control columns that day left his/her/its juice turned up too high and warped the work just enough to make the fit suck. So I have to pull the bushings out, chuck them into the drill press and sand them down a couple more microns so they slide into the stick bases easily. Now, given the fit of everythign else on this column, I’m expecting a fight when I have to bolt the main control bar to the bearings on the spar. After that, I have lots of crawling around back there to do; I have to run conduit aft for the strobes and antennae, autopilot servo, and AHRS sensors, plus install the static port kit I got from SafeAir1 many moons ago. I also have to manufacture the access covers for the tail and the rudder cable fairings. the fun bit on that is convincing a helper to crawl down the Jeffries tube and buck the rivets for them.