Yes.
That’s the answer to the question “Hey Andrew, are you building an airplane, or what?
Yes, yes. Of course I am. But, I am taking my time. Not out of “choice”, but out of “holy crap, there are eighteen thousand other things I have to do today”…which was the theme of the day for the last two weeks…
But, I can’t complain too much. Last weekend, I was in Chicago for Zanetoberfest, and just yesterday, the girlfriend and I headed up to Virginia to a winery.
What a hard life I lead!
Anyway, I promised myself (and my girlfriend…no more middle-seat once the airplane’s done, I promise!) that I would get a little bit done today.
So, I headed out to the garage, dusted off two weeks of non-activity, and got to work.
Last thing I had done was to (very successfully) drill the flap hinge to the left flap. It’s still a little long, though, so I need to trim it up a bit.
I know I’m going to use the “secure-in-the-middle” technique, so I used some snips (with a wide berth) to snip the soft hinge, but left the pin intact. Once I can get the wing flipped over, I can figure out which middle eyelet to remove and trim down this pin, but for now, it’s going back on the shelf as a whole until I can get it figured out.
Here's the hinge just after snipping. Notice the intact pin.
Then, We cleco on the top skin and start matchdrilling.
Sweet.
I had to do a little maneuvering to get the spacer lined up (the sandwiched thin spacer below), but I ended up getting it matchdrilled okay, too.
The shadows make these parts all look distorted, but I assure you, they are not.
I also found the AA6x125x1.5x2x10 (whoa, that’s a hell of a part number) and started marking some holes and lines for trimming.
I drew both up before trimming.
I didn't trim the shorter flange down yet. It's 1.5" now, and it needs to come down to 0.75", but I want to wait and see how everything lines up first.
After matchdrilling the three right-most (in the picture) holes from the spar, I flipped it over and drilled the five left-most holes from the angle. I had previously drilled those from markings to #40, so it was easy to drill everything up to #30 all at once.
Aluminum shavings. I've been missing you in my life.
The other portion of this support is delivered from Van’s as a straight piece. Due to the wing-to-fuselage geometry, the spar-to-rib angle is 6.3° or something. Really?
They show you where the bend line should be, so I marked it, then clecoed the only matched hole to the rib, just to make sure the line would be in the right place.
Sanity check complete, let's bend!
Of course, I didn’t take any pictures of my bending, but it worked just like everyone else; one side in a vice, the other side sandwiched between two pieces of wood. Then, some big-a55 pliers…a little finesse…Perfect. 6.3°? On the dot.
OMG, THOSE PARTS NEED DEBURRING!
Then, some more match-drilling…
I haven't been building in a few weeks, but I think this is where I'm supposed to say "TADAAAAAA!"
1.5 hours. I hope this is the start of a string of building days. We’ll see.
Andrew's RV-7 Build Log 