Scott & Tanya Card RV9A build log (N4822C)

This is a BIG batch of parts that I have ready for primer. I spend most of the evening on Saturday washing parts in prep for primer on Sunday. It started getting late and I kept finding more piles of parts that were ready to be washed and primed. I ended up washing parts until after 11pm (way past my bedtime). Oh, yeah, Tanya helped too for a while (she went to bed). I think she may have felt sorry for me. So with all the parts washed and dried overnight, it began raining Sunday morning. This isn’t exactly ideal for priming, but oh well. Knowing that it was going to take a good while to prime all these parts, Tanya and I rolled out pretty early and got to it. With both of us doing our part, I shot primer and Tanya arranged parts on the trays and moved them in and out of the booth, I was in the monkey suit for about three hours. Not too bad, but I was definitely ready to be done. I have included a picture of how I store all of the hose and masks for the forced air breathing system.

Later in the day, with everything cleaned up and the parts dry enough to work with, I started assembly. This is the fun part. It basically amounted to sitting down with the rivet squeezer and the pile of parts and riveting everything together. I had completed all of the sub-assemblies by the end of the day. After a couple of weeks of work, it all goes together in half of a day.

You may notice that I have adjusted the priming process for the fuselage. We are no longer acid etching and Alodining all parts. All parts get a quick wipe with MEK to remove all stamp and layout ink, then they get scuffed with a scotchbrite pad, washed with soapy water, and primed.

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

Ok, where are we… Oh, yeah, bulkheads, bulkheads, bulkheads. I fabricated all of the parts and pieces that are made of various stock. I’ll admit that there was a fair amount of head scratching trying to figure out some of the assembly details, but no rocket science involved. I got a cheap little 6″ cutoff saw to cut the longer lengths of angle. It is a pretty aggressive little tool that seems to melt the metal just as much as it cuts it.

With all of the bulkhead parts roughly stuck together, I got out the bottom skin for some more pre-assembly and adjustments. There were two things that I wanted to get accomplished by putting things together with the bottom skin. First, it seems that every -7 and -9 kit that I have heard of has fit issues between the forward most bulkhead, the bottom bellcrank rib, and the bottom skin. The problem is that with all these parts put together, the holes in the bottom skin don’t match up with the bellcrank rib at all. This seems to be a clear kit issue that everybody encounters. My solution was to do some creative minor part reshaping. A little here, a little there, and the holes come into alignment. First I made a little jog in the lower (forward facing) bulkhead that essentially pushed it forward about 1/16″-3/32″. I used some wood blocks, clamps, and a mallet to accomplish this. I jigged it up very carefully so as to only effect the section above the flange and not get the whole thing all bent out of shape. I gave the doubler plate a little bend at the bottom to accommodate the new shape. I also made a small adjustment in the forward flange of the bellcrank rib. I pounded it down and over kind of in the direction of the arrow in the picture. I only moved it about 3/64″. Now all of the holes all line up! This adjustment sequence took about an hour an a half.

The second thing I wanted to accomplish with all the bulkheads arranged on the bottom skin was to try to roughly work on the flange alignments on each bulkhead. Usually most parts require the flanges to be adjusted to exactly 90 degrees. The bulkheads are different in that the skins are not perpendicular to the bulkheads, so the flanges have to be bent at an angle. I used a piece of aluminum angle as a long straight edge along all of the bulkheads to gauge the angle to bend the flanges to. I did this around each bulkhead. Also included in this process is a little fluting here and there. It took me about two hours of this to get the flanges roughly in shape. I know that they will have to be tweaked when it comes time to really aligning things with the skins, but at least it will be close.

While we have things setup, I thought I might as well prepare the bracket for the TruTrack autopilot pitch servo. Just a heads up for the next guy, the TruTrack drawing is incorrect (pictured) in the way that it depicts the flange on the bottom of the bellcrank rib. I just improvised and put a few more rivets in the bracket web.

Then it all gets taken apart for hole and edge deburring and scuffing for primer.

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

I got out all of the parts for all of the other fuselage bulkheads and got to work edge deburring all this stuff. Edges are much easier to deburr before fluting so that is what I did. Most of these bulkheads come out of the forming process pretty warped. It is the job of the builder to flute the edges to try to straighten them out. It took a full work session just to get all the parts straightened out enough to start pre-assembly and match drilling. I will probably roughly cleco most of the bulkheads to the fuselage bottom in sequence before priming just to try to get the flange angles as close as possible.

 

  

  

  

 

With the bottom part of the F705 bulkhead done, it was time to move to the top section. There are a bunch of little parts to fabricate and match drill to the upper channel section. Since I’m building the tip-up canopy version, first I made the canopy latch angles. These are made from 3/16″ thick 2×2.5″ angle. It is a good thing that I have a decent band saw or else these kinds of tasks would be a real pain. Three other parts are fabricated to form a sort of long clip for the top of the seat backs. One of these parts is made out of .040″ sheet and requires a 4 degree bend lengthwise. I used my box-pan brake to accomplish this bend. It took a bit of time to get all of this stuff figured out and match drilled to the channel.

Then I moved on and drilled the flap bearing blocks. I just marked them and drilled them in the drill press. Perfect. I installed the four nutplates on the uprights using -3 NAS10?? rivets. They only require a small countersink that can be done with a few turns of the deburring tool. Next, I took it all apart and deburred all part edges and holes, and scuffed everything in prep for primer. I did all the easy to get to surfaces with a piece of scotchbrite to the bottom of a velcro pad on the bottom of my D/A sander. Then Tanya did the rest by hand. It only took her about ten minutes.

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

Yee Haw! On to the next assembly. This building thing is seriously addictive. I’m having a ball. The best days are when I come in from the garage in the evening with my feet hurting from standing all day.

This is the start of the 705 bulkhead that is just aft of the seats. It actually provides an number of structural needs: This is where the top of the seat backs are supported, this is where the seatbelt anchors are attached, and the bottom of this bulkhead is were the rear wing spars attach. I started by spending about 20min. in the parts room finding all of the pieces for this assembly. Much of it was just raw material stock that had to be identified. With all the materials spread out, I started marking the materials that needed to be cut for part fabrication (spacers, blocks, brackets, etc.). Measure twice, mark the part, and measure again before going to the bandsaw. Then I spend some quality time at the bandsaw, belt sander, and scotchbrite wheel (oh, there was also plenty of filing by hand too) to fabricate all the needed parts from sheet, angle, and bar stock. How many times have I said this before: The instructions are now very brief, like “Assemble parts A, B, C, D, E, and F per drawing 20.” Well, you first have to make those parts from the correct stock…

With most of the parts made, I back drilled the lower aluminum bar on the drill press. This worked out very well. Getting all of these parts to come together in alignment is kind of tricky. I sure have a lot of respect for those that built these things before pre-punched kits were available. With the lower bar drilled (a couple of hours of work), I moved on to the seat belt brackets. The sequence on these is to measure, mark, and drill all of the left brackets, then jig things up to match drill the right brackets. This is where I left off.