Almost Done with the Right Flap

July 29, 2012

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Taylor and I came SO close to finishing the flap today, but my amazing fiance had some chicken parm in the oven, and by the time the clock struck 6pm, we had to head in to get cleaned up.

Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. (The chicken parm was SO good.)

Anyway, I started the day off by finishing up some dimpling, cleaning, and priming of the two very small shims that go on the aft two holes of each end rib.

Not very exciting, but here they are.

Then, I clecoed on the top skin.

I”m so excited it’s going together for the final time.

While Taylor worked the cleco pliers to get the flap assembled to “every other hole,” I grabbed the flap side of the hinge from the wing and prepped it.

Deburred, and filed down the stump where there used to be an extra “eye.” Yes, that’s Dentyne in the background.

Gotta have fresh breath while building.

Here’s Taylor putting some rivets with tape in every other hole.

Nice action shot. I don’t get many of those when I’m building solo.

After blazing through the lower skin and ribs (goes really fast when one person is doing the clecoing and rivet-placing).

I love this part of building.

I did run into a small problem though. On the left flap, I waited to rivet the nutplate on the backside of the inboard rib. On this flap, I did it early, but then got stuck with one of the rivets. not enough room for a bucking bar, so I reverted to a blind rivet.

That one right in the middle. No big deal.

After flipping over the flap and getting all the top side rivets done (including getting the spar blind riveted into the ribs and the top skin rivets to the spar…

Oh man, we’re so close!

We don’t have that many more rivets to do. (Most of the outboard rib rivets, then the hinge-spar-lower skin rivets. That’s it.

1.5 hours today, but Taylor was so productive, I’m counting all his hours, too.

3.0 hours on the clock, 179 rivets.

PROGRESS!!!!!

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Dimpled Right Flap Top Skin

July 28, 2012

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After mowing the yard today, I was all hot and sweaty, so I decided to put in a half our on the right flap. (If I had gone inside to shower, then come back out, I would have gotten hot again, and ultimately decided not to work on the airplane at all, so I’m calling this a win.)

Anyway, the upper right flap skin was already deburred, so all I had to do was get the c-frame out and get some dimples hammered out.

After a few minutes…a freshly dimpled skin.

A more normal picture.

Half hour. But very close to starting to finish the final assembly.

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More Right Flap Work

July 25, 2012

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Alright, another night in the workshop. And, tonight was a super-night. Not because I’m super-rv7-builder (I am), but because my cousin Taylor came over to learn about the airplane.

After a little talking, I put him to work.

First task, empty out the LP4-3s that just arrived from Van’s (my first airplane package in awhile) into one of my empty yellow bins.

Not off to a great start, Taylor.

He quickly started exceeding my expectations though. To get going on this flap, the next few steps are tedious, but the two of us working helped to lessen the pain.

We focused our attention on prepping the right flap lower skin deburring, dimpling, priming, etc.

Here’s the right flap lower skin. Not a really helpful picture. Oh well.

After showing him each of those “d” activities, We stuck the skin outside and proceeded with my new non-psycho masking prime job.

(If you remember from a few posts (months) back, I’m only going to do the straight-line vinyl trick with areas where someone can see. Parts that are closed off will get this treatment.)

Priming along the rivet lines.

Next up, the same trick on the interior ribs.

Deburr, dimple, scuff, clean, and prime.

It started to get dark out, and I needed the flash. Sorry.

Then, so we could end on a high note, we studied the plans a little, read the instructions (a novelty!) and started clecoing everything together to get a sense of how we should assemble this flap.

Here, the ribs and spar are clecoed to the lower skin to lock everything together.

It’s starting to look like an airplane!

Flipped over for some more clecoing.

We decided we could start by grabbing the four AN470AD4-4 rivets at the aft end of each interior rib.

Beautiful! (Stefan, look! another shop head!)

One of Taylor’s (damn, looks better than mine!)

Just to prove he was there, I took a picture of his toes. (And an airplane part.)

Since he was so productive and really saved me some time, I’m going to count his hours as straight hours.

2.0 hours (but logged as 4.0). 4 rivets.

I know 4 hours per week won’t be super speedy, but it’s a hell of a lot better than I did between January and July of this year.

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Lebanese stuffed peppers

July 21, 2012

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Ingredients

• 4 medium red bell peppers
• 1 teaspoon black pepper, divided
• 1/2 cup beef broth, divided (We used this new vegetarian meat stuff from Morningstar. Very delicious. And yes, a little part of me died inside. Here’s one of my man cards).
• 1 cup cooked long-grain white rice, cooled
• 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 3/4 pound ground sirloin
• 2 cups water
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley, divided
• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• 3/4 cup chopped onion
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 1 cup canned crushed tomatoes
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/4 teaspoon sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/8 tsp crushed red pepper
• 2 tbsp plain Greek yogurt
• 4 lemon wedges

Preparation
1. Preheat oven to 400°.
2. Cut tops off bell peppers; reserve (We threw them away). Discard seeds. Place peppers in a microwave-safe baking dish; cover with damp paper towel. Microwave at HIGH 6 minutes. Let stand 5 minutes. (DO NOT TOUCH THE HOT PEPPERS WITH YOUR BARE HANDS. Ask me how I know.)
3. Combine 1/2 teaspoon black pepper, 1/4 cup broth, and next 5 ingredients. Divide beef mixture among peppers; top with tops. Pour 2 cups water into dish; cover. Bake at 400° for 45 minutes. Sprinkle peppers with 1/4 cup parsley.

This last step is for some sauce. The original recipe didn’t say what to do with it, so we just spread it around the peppers. Delicioso.

4. Heat a medium skillet over medium-high heat. Add oil to pan. Add onion; sauté for 8 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add garlic; sauté for 30 seconds. Add 1/2 teaspoon black pepper, 1/4 cup broth, tomatoes, and the next 4 ingredients; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer 30 minutes. Stir in 1/4 cup parsley and yogurt. Serve with lemons.

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He’s Alive (Right Flap Rib Work)

July 20, 2012

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Hello everyone! I’m back! (But seriously, let’s not call it a streak or anything.)

I’m still here, I promise.

I’ve had a lot of crazy things happen in my life (all of them positive…I’ll mention them eventually) that have been keeping me away from the garage, but today after a nice dinner with the fiancée, I decided a little garage time was in order. The other day, I spent a few hours cleaning off my workbench, so really, the next step was to take the clecoed flap apart, and start prepping it for final assembly.

Here’s the right flap as it’s been sitting for about 6 months.

As I was disassembling, I started to remember where I had left off. Oh yeah, I had done the two half-hinges trick, and had cut away some eyelets.

I’ll be sure to clean these up when I’m prepping the hinge.

I decided that instead of just deburring a whole bunch of parts, I wanted a nice little chunk of work. So, I grabbed the end ribs and the inboard rib’s reinforcement plate (I gotta go back and study the plans to start memorizing the part numbers again) and got to work deburring, dimpling, etc.

Here are the ribs I’m going to focus on tonight.

After standard deburring and dimpling where I could reach, I grabbed my 1″ steel bar with the countersunk hole in it and did my flush-set flush rivet dimple trick.

Here’s the setup. Grab the flush set and let ‘er rip.

And, the final product.

Good end-of-rib dimples. I’ve still got it!

Then, inside for some cleaning, and back outside for the artistry.

By “artistry,” I think I mean “I got more primer on the cardboard than the part.”

While those parts were drying, I continued disassembly of the other flap parts, including trying to remind myself of the controversy about the right flaps internal ribs not having their flanges mirror the flap plans. I kind of remember that all the left and right flap internal ribs were the same part number, meaning that they wouldn’t be mirrored.

Just a picture to help me remember where I got them from.

After a few short minutes, the end ribs were dry.

I forgot how much I love primed parts.

After I whipped out the Main Squeeze and some AN470AD4-5 rivets, I had a little mini assembly. Wuhoo!

7 rivets! No drilling.

Then, I checked the plans for the nutplate callout, and started looking through my rivet and nuts and bolts bins.

A couple flush rivets and a K1000-4 nutplate, and we’re in business.

Whoa! nine whole rivets!

Just to show you it’s real, here’s the backside.

1.0 hour. 9 rivets. Not quite back on track yet, but at least still interested.

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Right Flap Hinge Retention

January 22, 2012

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Alright, with all the excitement of getting the flap on the wing, I decided that I might as well continue with the flap hinge.

Currently, the flap hinge pin hangs out 2 feet on the inboard side of the wing, so let’s get that thing cut down to a reasonable size.

I’m following the method of cutting some hinge eyelets from the middle of the wing/flap and attaching two halves of the hinge pin in the middle. At the end of the last session, I had marked the middle eyelets.

Here's me unbending the two middle eyelst on the wing so I can cut them off.

Where's my file?

Can’t find it. I’ll have to clean those up later.

I cut the hinge pin in half and 90° bent them.

OMG, more toes!

With some careful measuring, cutting, and bending, I got one of the halves right where I wanted it.

Like a glove.

Then matched the other side to that.

Like some other builder’s, I’m going to use the hinge eyelet method of securing the hinge pins.

During this whole process, I kept thinking how easy it would be to drill a single hole in the flap brace and just safety-wire these two hinge pins in, but I couldn’t bring myself to not finish with the original plan. More later.

Two of my hinge eyelets from scrap.

The hardware I’m going to use.

I'm using the 2-lug, MS2169106 (I think that's right) and the AN507-6R6 screws.

There's a nutplate under there.

Rivets set.

The two eyelets are not countersunk or dimpled. I'll eventually need to replace this countersunk head screw with a panhead.

After getting the hinge pins secure, I checked out the outside.

Yikes. I'll definitely need to clean those up.

2.0 hours. Really? That was 2 hours? I couldn’t believe it. Maybe I fell asleep or something. I have a visitor coming this weekend, so maybe I’ll try to prep some flap parts before then so we can bang some rivets while he’s here.

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Drilled Right Flap to Wing

January 17, 2012

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Warning: My blog is not a drinking game.

But, if it were, and you had to take a drink every time I logged some build time…

You would not be very drunk.

Hello, everyone. In case you forgot (has it been two weeks?), I’m Andrew, and I’m building an RV-7. Today, I actually got a lot done on the airplane.

It was really only a few drilled holes, but they were important for two reasons.

1) Everyone freaks out about drilling the flap to the wing, and

2) I drilled the flap to the wing prior to the flap actually being riveted together. I know it’s out of order, but I made the decision that the flap was super-sturdy and aligned when it was clecoed together.

(Also, it’s late, and I’m at the step where I need to make a lot of noise with the c-frame, so drilling was quiet by comparison.)

Let’s get to the pictures (and video!!!!).

First up, I wanted to knock out some of the smaller tasks that need to be completed before moving on to priming and assembling. First up is to cut down one of the spar brackets to final size.

I wish I had take a picture of the original piece, but here’s after the cut.

I'm still using my jigsaw for these.

After some scotchbriting.

Then, I moved on to dimpling the spar (I had deburred the holes a few centuries…I mean weeks ago.

Dimple holes. No biggie.

Also, I countersunk the appropriate holes for the nutplate around the flap rod-end attachment hole.

Standard flush rivet in the background, an oops rivet up front.

Here’s where I made a big decision. I was looking for something quiet to do, so I decided to cleco up the flap and just set it on the wing.

First, I needed to get the lower outboard skin clecoed in place.

Clecoed.

Then, I just clamped the flap in place.

Whoa. Looks cool. Like a real wing!

At this point, given the sturdiness of the flap, I decided I could drill the flap hinge to the wing. Even if I totally hose it up, all I’d have to do is order a new flap hinge. (I can order that along with my new RUDDER, which I still haven’t accepted as needing replacement yet. What was that….a year ago?)

Anyway, let’s just clamp everything in place and see if it still makes sense.

Looks like I need 1/4."

Two 1/4″ drill bits, two Popsicle sticks, and two clamps later, I had a flap ready to be drilled.

For the record, this was not the first, nor the last, of the many attempts at a) a good picture, and b) aligning the trailing edges.

Looks pretty good though. Not perfect, I need better alignment along the trailing edge.

For most of my alignment, I used my 4′ level on the trailing edge, then used my iPhone level app to get down to the degree.

Here I'm making sure the transition lines up, then I'd move the level to the flap, measure the absolute angle, then move it to the aileron, and compare the absolute angle.

After about 10 iterations, I drilled the first hole.

Sorry about the blur. The good news is that it's still making sense and aligned.

After working a little down the line (Drill, cleco, measure, measure, measure. Drill, cleco, measure, measure, measure), I stood back to take this picture.

Looks straight to me.

Almost forgot, another one of the measuring tasks was to measure the gap between the flap skin and the lower wing skin.

0.2965" the whole way. Can't get any better than that.

A little interesting note…the flap brace didn’t perfectly line up with the lower wing skin, so I had to improvise a little.

I didn’t want to be matchdrilling the hinge through two other holes that didn’t line up, so I wanted the whole flap brace perfectly in position prior to drilling. I grabbed the smallest -AD3- rivets I had and stuck them in every other hole to act like clecos (I could have use clecos, but that pushes the hinge away from the backside of the flap brace.)

This kept my skin and flap brace holes aligned all the way down the row. As I’d get close to the next rivet, I’d just pull out the rivet.

This worked great for me, but your mileage may vary.

Of course I forgot to take a picture when I was done. I did “lower” the flap all the way to measure, and then mark, the three hinge eyelets I will be using for future hinge pin access.

I've marked them for future modification for the hinge pin insertion, but you'll have to wait another day for that.

Here are some of my “after” pictures.

Looks straight to me.

Looks so good.

Like a real wing.

I was so excited about it, I had to get a video.


So, 2 very productive hours. I’m sure some of the builders out there will insist that all will go to hell after I rivet the flap together, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. So far, all the match-hole kit parts are lining up perfectly, and the clecoed flap is very sturdy and true.

Now, I need to get back to prepping the flap for final assembly. But first, I need sleep. Goodnight.

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Breaking news: Feathergate continues.

January 16, 2012

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I regret to inform you that “Feathergate 2011” has now been renamed “Feathergate 2011/2012.”

Only 1 victim has been identified.

More details to follow.

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Some Right Flap Work

January 8, 2012

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Oh wow, it’s the first post of the new year! (Too bad it’s already January 10th…yeah, yeah, I’m posting a few days after this build session actually happened.)

I got a little bit of tedious work done on the right flap before being called over to a coworker’s house to help with his brand new TV. Here are most of the right flap parts.

all the flap parts after matchdrilling (last session). Time for deburring and dimpling.

One of the things I noticed is that I forgot to enlarge these holes to #30.

Before.

After.

Next, I deburred all the spar holes, and got to work on edge finishing. This includes all the lightening holes, which are a PAIN IN THE BUTT to deburr. Because I have an AWESOME sister, she got me some good 1″ scotchbrite wheels. Previously, I had bought a bag of 50 “general purpose” wheels from Nebraska Surplus, but they were a little soft for work on the RV.  My sister got me some of the 6A-Medium wheels, which did the job perfectly.

The correct grade on the left 6A-medium. Don't get the general purpose ones on the right. They are too soft.

After edge finishing, I decided to get the spar set up for a little countersinking session. If you remember from the other flap, the bottom skin is dimpled, so the spar has to be countersunk so the hinge (on the other side of the spar) isn’t affected.

Set up, just need to cleco the hinge in place.

You can see here, I've clecoed the hinge in place and countersunk "a few clicks" deeper than flush.

I don’t know that I’ve ever shown this, but back on the empennage, I made a couple scribe lines on my microstop countersink cage to indicate perfectly flush for an AN426AD3- rivet.

Marked for a flush rivet.

Here are my "few clicks deeper." Four clicks work for me. YMMV.

After countersinking all the holes…

Pretty countersinks.

Oh man. I need to deburr the back of this soft hinge.

Burrs! Burrs!

Sorry about the bad picture, but this is after deburring.

With the blur, you'll just have to trust that it's properly deburred.

1.5 Hours. I’m struggling to get outside even for 30 minutes each night. Tonight, I set a reminder on my phone to buzz at me every night. Maybe it will work. (Nope, it didn’t work tonight, but I managed to post this work session. Maybe tomorrow.)

Until next time.

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Started the Right Flap

December 29, 2011

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So I’m writing this a few days in the future, so bear with me if I can’t recall everything in detail.

Today, Joe came over to assist in some airplane building, and I figured it would be a good time to start in on the right flap.

First, though, I spent a little time with the aileron bellcrank and pushrod. I adjusted the rod ends to equal length on the screw ends, then turned each a turn at a time until I got the aileron perfectly aligned with my “alignment stick.” (BTW, “alignment stick” reminds me of a disciplinary tool used by catholic school nuns…shudder.)

Here's the large view.

And a closeup. Can't get much better than that.

Oh, and with the rearrangement of the exercise room and guest room upstairs, I’ve been…”strongly encouraged” to get the airplane parts out of the living spaces.

Notice she waited until after I put a ring on it to tell me to get my airplane crap out into the garage. Just kidding, she’s wonderful, and I’ve been meaning to get things hung up in the garage for awhile.

Here’s the horizontal stabilizer hung (very securely) with some red hooks through the pegboard and into some 2x4s.

That's the largest piece that was upstairs.

Joe showed up, so we started gathering the left flap parts. Here are the skins, the spar, and some of the ribs.

We pulled the blue vinyl off everything instead of worrying about doing lines with the soldering iron. I think I've given up on that for good.

We followed the directions carefully (except for the part where they want you to edge finish first. I like to do it before final prep) and started clecoing parts together and matchdrilling.

Here's an action shot of Joe working the cleco pliers. (I'll need a second pair if he's going to come over and help a lot.)

When we started working on the interior ribs, all hell broke loose. I had been carefully explaining that we’re building the right flap, so everything is reversed from the plans. All of the flanges on the left flap pointed left, so we assumed the all the flanges on the right side faced right. Well, the holes weren’t lining up correctly. We sat for a few minutes and finally figured out that maybe I built the left flap with the right flap’s interior ribs, and that I could probably swap them here, too. I made a mental note to confirm this with Van’s support after the holidays when Joe noticed this note RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FLAP DRAWING.

Whew. That explains it. Glad I didn’t mess this up, too. We flipped the flanges over (so they faced the left) and all the holes magically lined up again. Build on!

A big note, right under my nose.

After matchdrilling the ribs and skins to the spar, we moved on to the hinge.

Picture below is the same procedure I used on the left flap, carefully constraining the flap to make sure there was perfect alignment.

I used the four clamps in between each hole to maintain perfect alignment. After a few holes, we'd remove the clamps and verify we had good hinge movement.

As we progressed down the flap, we got a little braver, and stopped using the sideclamps. I had C clamps about every 10 holes, and drilled a hole next to the previously drilled and clecoed hole. We maintained perfect alignment the whole time, and it saved a ton of time not having to remove 4 clamps, check movement, add 4 clamps, drill 4 holes, cleco 4 holes, and then remove the 4 clamps.

In no time, we had the right hinge drilled.

We're moving right along.

Finally, we stuck the top skin on and Joe got busy matchdrilling.

Nice shiny top skin.

While he was busy doing that, I started fabrication on the flap angles (I forgot the part numbers, sorry).

I didn't make the final cut on the angle yet, I'll do that later.

After a little marking and bending…

Marked and bent. (Aiming for 6.3° is silly. It's much easier to bend it a little, then check fit against the flap.)

The first try, I overbent it a little.

See the wedge-shaped gap there?

After a few more tweaks, it was perfect, so we started matchdrilling the angles to the ribs/spar.

I don't remember the significance of this picture. Must be the matchdrilling...

Then, we positioned and drilled the holes for the K1000-4 nutplate.

Nicely done, Joe.

Then, we disassembled everything and THOUGHT about started preparation for priming.

Want to start the tedious prep work?

No way, it’s lunchtime, and Joe had to go meet his better half.

3.0 hours with Joe today. Since we really didn’t work simultaneously on anything, I’m going to count it as straight time. I’ll count his time as double when we aren’t watching each other work. See you guys next year!

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