Got both flap spars clecoed to their respective lower skins and ribs. That was pretty satisfying after all the irritation I’ve experienced with the ailerons. The clamp in the second picture is just to hold the rib in place as one cleco is removed for drilling.
Flight with my friend Jim in his new RV-7
Over the last two weeks I came closer to quitting the whole project than I ever have before. If you’re the one person (either my wife or my mother, I can’t tell from the IP address) who still visits this website, you’ve noticed that I had some issues over the summer deconflicting job stress from everything going on at home. Well, I guess that wasn’t the end of my problems, because I found myself back in the same “hurry up and do something” mode when riveting this aileron together. Long story short, I screwed up a couple of things. My TC didn’t think they were a big deal, but I wasn’t happy.
So…I put the left aileron aside for a few days and had some serious discussions with Ellen. She set me straight, as she usually does, and I decided not to quit. But I did decide to build a new left aileron. I didn’t want to be reminded of of my screwups.
One thing that helped my motivation level was a flight with my friend Jim in his new RV-7. I had a work trip to Seattle and lured Jim into giving me a ride with the promise of free food and beer. So…I arrived in Seattle and headed straight for Jim’s hangar at the Auburn airport. Jim had only recently finished his 40 hour flyoff and his airplane was sans pants. Didn’t matter to me, I was psyched.
Jim’s airplane has one of the nicest interiors you’ll see in an RV. The Classic Aero Design seats were wicked comfortable!
We took a quick hop to Chehalis, WA for gas, then bopped back up to Auburn. Jim tried out my new Lightspeed Zulu headset, he seems to like them.
The sun was setting rapidy, but I managed to snap a halfway decent shot of Mt Rainier before we encountered some severe helical turbulence..that was a lot of fun!
Aside from being just plain fun, this flight was my first opportunity to get some stick time in an RV-7. It was stable, yet responsive and the visibility was absolutely awesome…it validated my decision to build a tip-up. And most importantly, it gave me the shot of motivation I needed to reengage on my own airplane. That’s just what I needed…thanks Jim!
Pulled my trusty flat surface
With the most difficult part of aileron riveting complete (or so I thought), pulled my trusty flat surface – a cheap hollow-core door from Home Depot – and set it on the bench. On top of that went the left aileron, clecoed together and weighted down by a couple of pieces of MDF. I checked the surface in several places using the digital level just to make sure that there was no twist in the aileron…and there wasn’t.
Back into the ailerons
Got back into the ailerons today after doing some bits-and-pieces work on the wings. I’d previously clecoed the aileron skins, leading edge and spars/counterweights together for both ailerons and persuaded Captain John to help rivet the upper skin/leading egde/spar rivet line. Taking a cue from Chad Jensen, I attached a couple of pieces of 2″x4″ to the workbench and placed the aileron nose-down between them. A couple of small screws hold them in place. This makes it relatively easy to do the riveting, but it still works best with two persons – so Captain John came up to help.
After a couple of hours we were done and proceeded to our favorite beer-and-nacho joint, the Sunset Tap and Grill in Allston, MA.
Started in on the flaps
While waiting for some riveting assistance on the ailerons, I started in on the flaps by deburring the flap spars. Nothing tricky or visually interesting here, so no pictures.
Right landing light wiring
Spent the last couple of days routing wires from the landing lights into the now-permanent conduit. Nothing tricky here, except that I routed the wires through the outboard spar lightening holes and that meant some extra work securing the wire.
Nothing particularly sexy on the right side except the use of some heated and hand-formed poly tubing to keep the wire from rubbing against anything…
The right side wire is bundled with pneumatic lines from the Advanced Flight Systems AoA probe. This actually made it easier to run the line, because I was able to use a Click Bond standoff.
I used self-fusing silicon tape to seal the holes and prevent chafing where wiring enters the plastic conduit. With all this fun complete, I went back to working on the ailerons.
Made the conduit installation permanent
I had already pulled lengths of Van’s corrugated black conduit through the wings, but hadn’t bothered to permanently attach them. Didn’t have anything else to do today, so I mixed up some proseal and made the conduit installation permanent.
Prosealed conduit
I also caught up on one smaill detail. I had previously installed local ground studs in each wingtip for the landing and nav lights, and had used steel AN hardware to make those studs. I had a sneaking suspicion that galvanic corrosion could result from running electrical current through steel fittings in contact with aluminum, and after some digging in AC43.14, I found that was indeed the case. I ordered some special aluminum washers from GAHCo and reworked the grounds so that only those washers are in contact with wing structure. Problem solved.
Wrapped up work on the heated pitot
I wrapped up work on the heated pitot by wiring up its electrical connector. I purchased the pitot as used-serviceable from our local flying club; got a great price, but the connector wasn’t with the pitot. That meant buying one from Aircraft Spruce for the exorbitant price of $57.75. But it has an inspection stamp on it, so it must be worth the price. Soldering the pins on the connector was no problem; 14 gauge Tefzel wire was chosen to support the expected 10 amp current draw from one of the cockpit electrical busses. Here are the soldered pins…
Connector pins soldered
The only tricky parts here were routing wires to the connector so that it could be removed with the pitot tube, and installing the ground such that the crimp connector could be visually inspected and disconnected if necessary. Some plastic tubing and a couple of tie-wraps made a good standoff.
Pitot heat wiring
Left wing’s pitot line plumbing
Over the last couple of weeks decided to take a break from the ailerons and start working on the left wing’s pitot line plumbing. I was considering two ways of doing this; per Van’s plans with a piece of aluminum tubing and some bulkhead fittings, or with the plastic lines and push-to-seal fittings that came with the SafeAir pitot-static plumbing kit. The fact that I’m installing a heated pitot actually made it impossible to use Van’s original design, since it only calls for a simple aluminum tube pitot connected to a bulkhead fitting. On the flip side, the heated pitot could melt the SafeAir plastic tubing. So…I came up with a hybrid approach.
The pitot tube end was easy. I just moved Van’s original bulkhead fitting from the wing underside to the wing rib just inboard of the pitot tube, then bent and flared a short piece of tubing to connect the pitot tube to the bulkhead fitting. This is to allow the pitot tube to be disconnected and removed for maintenance in the future via access from the outboard inspection hole. Although you can’t see it in the first picture, there’s an AN fitting hidden by the pitot mast.
Pitot-to-bulkhead connection
The other side of the bulkhead is attached to a piece of aluminum tubing that extends inboard under the aileron bellcrank and into the middle inspection bay…
Bulkhead-to-line connection
…and is connected there to an AN-to-1/4″ NPT fitting (available from GAHCo) onto which is threaded a SafeAir’s push-on connector. Plastic line is run inboard from there through the wing root. The short piece of aluminum tube acts as a heat sink, keeping the plastic tube from melting. And using the plastic line inboard will make it easier to route the line through the wing root area to the cockpit.
Aluminum-to-plastic connection
Why no bulkhead fitting at the aluminum tube’s inboard end? Pretty simple.
Away on a work trip
My website updates are happening so infrequently these days that I doubt anyone still hits the site. I’ve been away on a work trip for most of the last month, acting as program manager and test director for a large DoD interoperability test event in the beautiful – but damn hot – California desert. Here are the folks and airplanes involved during a checkout flight test at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland. I’m in there somewhere…
