Hey Look! Andrew’s not dead! Yeah, I’ve been working on some house projects. Back to the left elevator tonight, though.
I managed to catch myself up with where I was and push on today. I need to get that counterweight drilled.
Here you can see the counterweight, counterbalance skin, and the two end ribs around which the other parts reside.
After placing the weight in position, you cleco on the skin (difficultly) and get ready to match-drill. Of course, I met the same challenges I did on the right elevator…namely, I broke a drill bit (#40 size). After getting a pilot hole drilled, I took everything apart and separately enlarged them all to #21. Air tool oil was used with great success after the pilot hole was drilled.
Ready to start drilling.
I didn’t take any pictures, though, because I was getting frustrated. (At first, I was dipping the drill bit into the oil, which meant I had to take the lid off. Then, after stepping away a few minutes later, I placed the screw lid (with the flip-up spout) back on the oil bottle and immediately flipped it over to aim oil into the pilot hole. Guess what! I forgot to tighten down the lid. There goes the lid, and about a 1/2 cup of oil…all over the counterweight, table, and floor.)
Now do you see why I forgot to keep taking pictures?
Anyway, after that debacle (which of course gets counted in the build time…it’s time spent building, right?)
Anyway, here is that same assembly (sans weight) before clecoing on the skin.
In preparation for clecoing on the skin, I needed to handle E-606PP, which is the trim tab hinge spar. Since I was looking ahead earlier and dimpled the hard-to-reach holes (you can see in the skin below), I need to do something with the spar to accept those dimples. If you read ahead in the directions, the spar is countersunk on the top flange (because the hinge is riveted beneath the spar flange, it can’t be dimpled), and dimpled on the bottom flange.
June 10 Update: After countersinking these four holes, I later did some more research and realized that the countersinks called for (due to the hinge) don’t really apply here, because the hinge stops short of these four holes. I could have (and wished I’d ) dimpled. Boo.
Here are the two parts that need to fit together nicely.
Finally, I got the skeleton and skin clecoed together.
Wuhoo. It looks like an airplane.
A solid hour. Maybe more this weekend.
Andrew's RV-7 Build Log 