Matt's RV-7 Project

I finished fitting and attaching the nutplates that will hold down the baggage floors. I ended up putting a screw and nutplate in each and every one of the prepunched rivet holes. This is probably a ridiculous amount of overkill, especially along the F-706 bulkhead, but it's certainly strong enough.

After vacuuming out about a pound of aluminum shavings from all the drilling and deburring and whatnot, I put in about a third of the screws just to hold things in place. You can also see where I fitted and attached the baggage tunnel cover. The baggage floors are now completely removable but still entirely flush-mounted, which makes them look classy.

I liked the countersunk thing so much I actually drilled out most of the factory-installed K1000 straight nutplates that are used to attach the forward seat pans, and replaced them with K1100 countersunk nutplates too. I figured, why not go all out so everything matches? Also, I was remembering how the panhead screws in my last RV used to tear little holes in the seat upholstery.

I am officially sick and tired of installing nutplates, as well as actually being sick and tired. Now, to rest so Mary can stop worrying. Can you believe she doesn't think it's a good idea to stand up in the garage all weekend when you have a cold? She has these crazy notions about "getting lots of rest" and "drinking plenty of fluids".

I decided to attach the baggage floors with screws and nutplates instead of blind rivets like the plans call for, so I can put the strobe power supplies under there and still have access later. These are just some "before" photos I took for my own future reference. Looking forward from aft of the baggage bay:

Overhead view of the port side baggage floor:

Looking aft from the area of the pilot's seat:

Overhead view of the underfloor area of the starboard side baggage bay:

I put in the three pop rivets per side that attach the F-750 aft baggage covers to the sidewalls. These covers are already partially riveted in the QB kit, but they leave you these fasteners to put in. I wonder how they thought you'd go about deburring those holes? Luckily, I have this handy Burraway blind deburring tool! It's pretty nifty. You can also see where I got myself with a roloc pad in the die grinder a couple days ago. Gruesome, eh?

Hand deburring bit plus angle drill equals backside-of-rib-flange deburring rig.

This morning's project was the seat back supports on F-705. I started with a pile of random aluminum:

And, some time later, the seat back supports are built and fitted to the bulkhead. These allow you to adjust the angle of each seat independently.

It's fun making parts from raw stock that's not sized or punched for you, but I wouldn't want to build a whole airplane that way. In the olden days you had to practically mine and smelt your own bauxite – not for me, I wanna fly.

I also spent a quick couple of minutes fabricating the elevator bellcrank. Since I know I'll be installing an autopilot pitch servo, I went ahead and drilled the extra hole in the bellcrank for the servo linkage.

Mary is taking a nap now so I knocked it off with the air tools and the noisemaking and the etc.

Here you can see what I was talking about regarding the stringers pushing the F-706 bulkhead out of line. In this photo I've already trimmed them back some, but the bulkhead still has a wave in it from being pressed from behind.

Once the stringers are trimmed and the aft top skin is clecoed in place, the bulkhead becomes straight again. I subsequently trimmed the tabs on the stringers to be flush with the bulkhead flange.

The aft end of the F-688 gusset gets beveled to make the skin lay down against the underlying structure:

Then I drilled the stringers to the top skin. Unfortunately, I goofed one of them up! Somehow I managed to let one of the stringers slip out of position while drilling, which introduced a slight twist over the forward-most few inches. You can see in the photo below that the last four or five holes in the stringer don't have enough edge distance. Argh!

Here's my fix. I unclecoed the forward part of the problematic stringer, clamped it securely back where it needed to be with no twist, and re-drilled the offending holes. This resulted in some elongated and figure-eight rivet holes, so I put in another bunch of rivets, spaced evenly between the problem ones. The result is a strong and straight stringer that just happens to have some doubled-up rivets in the forward part. And of course, me being me, I had to do the same thing to the stringer on the opposite side just to make things come out symmetrical, even though that stringer didn't have any problems. Now it looks like I planned it to come out that way. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Before calling it quits for the day I managed to get the F-6111 stiffeners drilled to the aft top skin. These took a ton of fitting, twisting, fluting, and flanging, but they turned out a lot better than I figured at first. Aluminum really does not want to conform to a funny curve like that without a fight, but I managed to conquer this task. For what it's worth, this forum thread is a good place to start when installing these guys.

You can't really see it here, but I got the F-6111's to lay down against the longerons really well on their forward end. They don't really lay down very well against the bulkhead at the top end, but they fit the skins well, so I'll call this a victory and move on.