Matt's RV-7 Project

After putting some protective tape over the end of the slider frame latch tube, I flipped the canopy over and laid the frame inside.

The goal is to get the frame aligned on the previously marked centerline, in the fore-aft location that results in the best fit along the center spine tube. Then you mark the location of the latch tube and drill a 5/8" hole. I got as far as marking the hole location, but the temperature didn't get up nearly as high as I thought it would, so I had to give up on drilling/trimming the canopy for another day. Bah.

In an effort to find something else to do, I dug up the subpanel pieces, dimpled the top rib flanges, and clecoed the whole works into the fuselage.

Then I deburred the forward top skin, which I hadn't yet bothered to do. I dimpled where I could reach along the edges, leaving the holes along the firewall undimpled for now - the cowling attach hinges still need to be match-drilled there, much further down the road. Then I packed up the skin and drove over to John's to use my DRDT to dimple the rest of the skin. Not a very efficient use of building time, but it felt like a good day to spend a couple hours driving.

Somewhere in there I did some more filler work on the left horizontal stabilizer tip fairing. I've had this clamp for at least ten years and I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've ever used it.

Also, I stopped at Lowe's and tried to buy a new belt sander, but they were out. Bah.

I spent the whole day in the garage but didn't take many pictures. I guess I didn't actually get all that much accomplished - mostly I puttered and cleaned up the garage. It was great to be outside in the nice weather though.

One of the pre-tail-mounting chores I've been meaning to do is drilling the holes for the strobe and nav light wires that will go through the vertical stabilizer spar into the rudder. I picked the same location as Dan for much the same reasons - with the taildragger there aren't many other good choices for where to run these wires. I drilled a 5/16" hole for the strobe cable and a 3/16" hole for the nav light wires. Both holes are a little oversized so I can use a few layers of shrink tubing and some RTV to protect the wires from chafing.

Another day, another round of filling and sanding empennage fairings. I'm just doing a little bit every work session, fitting the glass work in between other tasks that are more fun.

I rearranged the garage a bit, and made a little table out of a sheet of plywood and a couple sawhorses. This is where the canopy is going to sit while I work on it. Yes, I've decided to work on the canopy some more before I put the airplane on the gear and mount the engine. Matthew convinced me that it'll be easier to get to it while it's down low and not high up on the wheels. Plus it seems to be warm enough these days to start thinking about working with plexiglass again.

I got out the canopy frame to make sure it still fits - yep:

The plans call for you to install nutplates along the F-709 bulkhead where the fiberglass empennage fairing and the forward end of the aluminum empennage gap fairings will attach, and then drill and tap holes in the longeron underneath the stabilizer to attach the gap fairings along the rest of their length. I decided to install nutplates everywhere instead of tapping the longeron - a tapped hole has no ability retain a screw and I remembered how one or two of these screws were always backing out on my old airplane.

Installing nutplates here took only a few extra minutes and was no big deal to accomplish. I did check with Van's before I did this, since I was wondering if the extra rivet holes would do anything structurally back there. Here's what they said:

I think they must have an automated process that sends that reply anytime they receive an email that starts with "Is it okay if I…"

After double checking my todo list to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything, I vacuumed out the tailcone one last time and bolted the horizontal stabilizer on for good.

Here is one of the empennage gap fairings installed. The topmost hole is left open because it's shared with the fiberglass empennage fairing. I used the hand seamer to get the forward edges of these fairings to lay down nicely on the fuselage skin. I'm not sure what to do about the forward end of the rubber channel - maybe I'll trim it at an angle to try and help keep the wind from peeling it up.

Before turning in I reattached one of the horizontal stabilizer tips and put on another coat of filler to help smooth out the forward edge where the fiberglass and alunimum come together.

Still not too much time to work on the project lately. I did have a chance to reinforce the balsa ribs on the horizontal stabilizer tip fairings with a mixture of epoxy and flox, and to fit and install the 4-40 nutplates that will hold the fairings on.

I mixed up the usual batch of micro filler and smoothed out the transition between the tip fairings and the stabilizer, with an extra blob at the nose to allow a perfect fit after it's all sanded down later. I also put a big glob of filler on the outboard corners - a lot of this will get sanded off, but what remains will be the the first step of building up the tip fairings to match the contour of the elevator tips.