Well, I haven’t worked on the airplane in a week. Bummer. I’m never going to finish at this rate, so I need to start getting my butt in gear and start working again.
One notable thing from this week…it got cold.
So, I fished out the space heater, and put my VORNADO up on the shelf.
See you next spring, VORNADO!
Okay, let’s talk about why we’re all here…AIRPLANE BUILDING.
Previously, I had matchdrilled the flap brace, but didn’t drill any of the nutplate holes that are required to hold the rod end in place.
I disassembled the inboard rib and supporting braces from the rest of the spar/skins.
Ready for more drilling!
Per the instructions, I enlarged the aftmost doubler hole to 1/4″ and temporarily bolted in a nutplate.
It was hard to hold for the picture, hence the gap.
After drilling the two #40 nutplate attach holes, deburring, and a little countersinking (only on the left, aftmost hole) you end up with this:
That's an Oops rivet
Next, I needed to trim down one of the angles (you can see it sticking out too far in the picture above). Here it is after trimming.
Sharp edges, time for some deburring!
I fired up the scotchbrite wheel and got to work on those angles. After a few minutes, I ended up with a nice, smooth assembly.
Looks like I did a little dimpling on the rib, too.
With about 10 minutes left until bedtime, I decided to get the lower spar countersunk. The dimpled skin sits in these countersinks, which leaves the flap hinge unaffected underneath (well, above in absolute terms).
Just like a few other places in the kit, Vans suggests using the flap hinge as a countersink guide to make sure the holes are square.
Every other hole, pre countersinking.
I guess this is a closeup pre-countersinking.
Yup. That's a countersunk hole.
And finally, an AN426AD3- rivet sitting a little deeper than flush (intended) in the countersink.
1.0 hour of fairly boring flap work, but now I get to actually start preping stuff for priming and assembly.
STAY MOTIVATED ANDREW!
Andrew's RV-7 Build Log 