We’re still riveting the whole forward fuselage. We’re doing an hour or so each evening this week. We’ll surely have all the rivets set by the end of the week.
Here are some pictures of me (the builder for FAA documentation) up inside the upside down fuselage during riveting.
It was a great four day holiday weekend for building. Thanksgiving day, Tanya and I were up early to prime the pile of parts that compose the entire forward fuselage. It was a three hour priming session, all done by noon. We then took off to go sailing while the parts dried. Back from sailing, Thursday evening, I started riveting small sub-assemblies and nutplates.
The next day I spent the full day with small assemblies and clecoing the full forward fuselage together. The trick here is getting the side skins put together in the correct sequence to pull everything into alignment. It took me at least a full day to get everything clecoed together. Tanya’s initial comment was “Wow, that is a lot of rivets that we have to drive.” So we started riveting at the center bulkhead and moved forward and aft from there. We shot rivets for a total of about six or seven hours this weekend and are about half done. This is very rewarding work. Most of the details of funky rivet placement and situations have already been documented elsewhere (Checkoway) so I’ll spare you the details. I did do a fair amount of cutting slightly longer rivets than were specified for correct length in some locations.
A productive weekend indeed on the forward fuselage, although not a whole lot to show for it. Tanya let me work in the garage the whole weekend. I’ve been disassembling, edge and hole deburring, dimpling, machine countersinking, and scuffing. Most of the small parts are ready for primer. All of the skins are ready for primer. I got center section and longerons removed and ready for hole prep.
Customization: I spent at least six hours planning and fabricating a bracket for the parking brake valve to replace the brake hose bracket on the firewall. I used a piece of hat channel riveted to the firewall (used the existing holes) and some .032 scrap to make the cable mount and valve arm stop. I have spent a lot of time pondering this contraption. It is all done and riveted to the firewall. I also decided to do a little reinforcement of the side arm rests. I just used a single piece of .063 3/4×3/4 angle run lengthwise. It won’t be bullet proof, but is better than nothing. As designed, the arm rests can’t take any load from a person using them to get out of the cockpit. My addition won’t accept full load, but might help. If you really wanted to be able to use the arm rest to pry yourself out of the cabin, you would need to use 1/8″ angle and tie it into the bulkheads. That would be more weight and effort than I was willing to do.
Still working on it. Progress has been a little slow for the last week as real work got in the way. I have completed fabricating and drilling all forward fuselage parts and am now taking it all apart for deburring, machine countersinking, dimpling, priming…
I completed the rudder pedal mount setup. I drilled for three positions at about 1-1/8″ spacing from the forward most position. The last thing before disassembly was to frame up the baggage compartment. I found that Vans had mis-labeled one of the F-724 bulkheads such that I ended up with two left parts where I need a left and a right. I immediately picked up the phone and called David (RV7A builder a few blocks away a little behind me in fuselage construction). He was kind enough to lend me his F-724-R from his kit while Vans ships a new one to me. It sure is nice that the -7 and -9 use most of the same fuselage parts. With the baggage bulkheads done, I moved on to the side skins. I didn’t notice any mention in the instructions as to the need to trim them but they clearly have to be trimmed to fit. I actually haven’t looked at the instructions in many weeks. Really all they say at this point is something like “build the airplane as shown on the plans”.
Before disassembly, I made some notes and marks for some final bend adjustments that I want to make on the lower aft of the forward side skin. How about some pictures.
