More wing riveting

May 7th, 2006

RV hopeful Dave Blair came to check out the project and help rivet on the left wing's outer bottom skin. He got the hang of the rivet gun pretty quickly. By dinnertime we were cranking the rivets out one after another.

Don't be fooled – this is a lot less comfortable than it looks:

We got it about three quarters finished. I'll pester Mary to help me drive the last few dozen rivets sometime this week.

We put about the same number of dings in this wing as the other one that got riveted last week. Meanwhile, the pre-riveted part of my quickbuild wings have exactly one small surface imperfection that I've been able to detect. How in the world do the quickbuild factory people do such a flawless job? Do they have some kind of ultra precise robotic rivet-driving laser beam out there in the Philippines?

Posted in Wings

Belt puzzle

May 4th, 2006

I didn't have much else going on tonight, so I got out the parts for the crotch strap anchor kit. Step one is making cutouts in the seat pans to let the belt pass through, although it turns out that this is already done for you. Unfortunately my Hooker rotary buckles are way too big to fit through there, so I'll have to enlarge these holes once I get a better idea of how everything lines up.

The big surprise was that the metal tab on the end of the crotch strap doesn't seem to be the right length. If you put the bolt where it's supposed to go, the thick part of the webbing where it loops around the metal tab is down between the two anchor brackets. This will push them apart by about 3/8", which will cause the alignment of the upper part to be all out of whack. Hmm.

I sent an email to Hooker to see if they have any suggestions. I suspect they might have a different style of strap with a longer attach tab, which would solve my problems.

P.S. I just realized this site is probably now the top-ranked Google search result for "hooker crotch". Great.

Posted in Fuselage

Flap positioning system

May 3rd, 2006

Tonight I installed the parts for the flap positioning system. This is an optional cockpit convenience item, and is not absolutely necessary for flight – however, I really wished I had one when I had the last RV, so into this airplane one will go.

The normal flap system involves a toggle switch that you press and hold to move the flaps up and down; you keep holding the switch until the flaps get to where you want them to be. This is the same arrangement as early Cessna 150's and my old Grumman, among others.

Instead of that setup, my airplane will have this sensor thingy attached to the flap motor – a very clever and simple arrangement involving a machined rod sliding between two microswitches – and a control box mounted nearby. Bumping the flap switch briefly down will automatically lower the flaps one notch each time, and flipping the switch to the up position will run them all the way up. Very cool.

I mounted the control box to the inside of the seat back brace with screws and nuts. It's kind of a pain the way the flap motor and control box are permanently wired together – it certainly makes handling these parts problematic. I'll probably cut the wire bundle and splice in a connector so the flap motor can more easily be removed for maintenance.

Posted in Flaps, Fuselage

Riveted one wing bottom skin

April 30th, 2006

Fellow KC-area builder Scott came by this afternoon to help rivet the outer bottom skins onto the wings, which is a task I've been procrastinating on for a while.

I had the long skinny arms so I got to buck all the rivets. Long sleeves are a must for this job. Also, this picture makes me hungry for Cozy burgers.

We planned to get both wings done in a couple hours, but we ended up taking all afternoon to get only one wing finished. We'll do the other one some other weekend.

This one didn't turn out too bad, although there are some dings and smilies here and there (especially back by the rear spar where it's hard to buck). Paint will hide them though. We only had to drill out two rivets, both of which were due to us misreading the callouts and using rivets that were too short.

Posted in Wings

Tank attach hardware

April 30th, 2006

This morning I fabricated the parts that strengthen the fuselage where the fuel tank attach bolts come through the side skins. There's a big bracket attached to the nose of each fuel tank root rib, each of which bolts to another big bracket that sticks out of the side of the fuselage about midway between the spar and the firewall, and those brackets bolt to the forward cabin bulkhead through these angles and spacers:

The holes where all this stuff attaches were already dimpled and filled with rivets in my quickbuild kit. Apparently the quickbuilders got a little carried away. I just drilled the rivets out.

Here are the angles and spacers all match drilled to the fuselage skins and each other. You can't really see it in the photo, but I dimpled the thin spacer and machine countersunk the thick one, to let them lay down properly over the top of the already-dimpled skin and bulkhead.

Posted in Fuselage

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