Matt's RV-7 Project

All I've had time to do this week is to match drill the new rudder skins to the old skeleton. Deburring, dimpling, and riveting will have to wait a while, since I'm leaving on a trip for the rest of June.

I worked on the new rudder on and off this weekend. On Friday night I match drilled the stiffeners to the skins. (This was a mistake; taking the wife out on Friday night instead of working on the airplane is smarter and causes fewer difficulties.)

On Saturday I deburred and dimpled the skins, which was harder than it sounds because my DRDT c-frame tool was 50 miles away in coworker John's RV-9A workshop. Mary and I threw the skins in the car and made a day out of it, stopping at a couple other places and driving around in the country a bit. We also stopped by briefly to look at RV-7 builder Bill Gill's project – or rather I looked at the airplane, and Mary played with Bill's dogs. Everyone was happy.

After we got back to town, I primed the skins:

On Sunday morning I got up before it was too windy and primed the stiffeners too:

I spent most of the middle of Sunday messing with the air compressor – the "off" position on the switch has never worked since I bought it, and despite my best efforts today it still doesn't work. Then in the evening I back riveted the stiffeners to the skin:

The complete rudder is now clecoed together and looks like a rudder, all right:

The next step is to match drill the skins to the skeleton, deburr, and dimple, but I'm too wiped out from the gym. Plus I'm going on a week long business trip soon so I suppose it's in my best interest to pay attention to the Mrs.

Made a bunch of rudder stiffeners tonight:

The balloons attached to the second fuel tank have been inflated for about a week now. That's more than ample proof that the tank is not leaking, I think. Hooray for proseal!

Mary came out and helped me wrestle the wing back into the wing stand. Barring something unforseen, the wings should be staying in the rack for quite a while.

Look at this. This is the trailing edge of the rudder. It's so wavy it hurts to look at it.

I know I said I was happy with it, but now that I've really stared at other RV's and seen how it's supposed to look, I hate it.

So, I'm going to re-skin the rudder. I started tonight by drilling out all the rivets holding the top rib in place.

Then I drilled out about 300 more rivets, until the skin was completely detached from the skeleton. The skeleton is in good shape – only a small handful of rivet holes got elongated, and they can be fixed with oops rivets.

So, now all I need to do is make new stiffeners, rivet them to a new pair of skins, and put the new skins on the old skeleton. Luckily I decided I was probably going to do this a few months back, and I have all the materials I need sitting around.