Commercial Certificate

Well I know it doesn't have much to do with the RV, but today was the day I passed my Commercial Certificate checkride. Now on to the CFI certificate to find a flying job! Thank you Dad and family, for all of your help and support.

Flap Assemblies

Today was another productive day on the RV, we got started on the flap assemblies. After poring over the plans for a bit we began to get a picture of how they were constructed and what went where. We jumped to this because we're still waiting to buy more primer, and besides it hasn't been the nicest out for priming.

The construction of the flaps starts by clecoing the end and center ribs to the flap spar and match drilling all of it. The holes for the center ribs are punched a bit small, and they get drilled out to #30 to accept the LP 4-3 blind rivets that are supplied. These rivets hold all of the flap ribs to the spar. We also fabricated the small spacers that fit underneath the trailing end of the end ribs. Once this was done we clecoed the assembly to the bottom skin and match drilled it. It started to look like a flap!

The manual tells you to look out for small gaps that may occur between the "trailing edge" of the bottom skin and the center ribs, if there are any, you have to make small spacers to fit the gap. We only needed to make two of these and made them out of the ".025 T-3 sheet. This fit perfectly and made for a snug fit.

We began to work on the piano hinge for the flap and decided we would follow our friend Dwayne's idea and split the hinge pin into two pieces that secure to the flap brace on the wing towards the center of it. This requires a few of the links to be removed in order to be able to access the pins. We're going to save this for a later date though once we have our pile of parts primed and once we catch up!

Aileron Skin Work

Today Dad and I were able to get quite a bit of work done on the project. We started the day out with breakfast at Bambi's Hangar One cafe on the airport and chatted with our friends Jack and Dwayne. We saw a couple of regular RV's sitting outside; an -8 and a -6A, both beautiful aircraft. After a quick bite and a couple cups of coffee I made my way over to the flight school to speak with my flight instructor/good friend Ed Matthews while Dad opened up the hangar. Today we scheduled my checkride for the commercial license and figured how we were going to work it. It feels great to finally have this thing scheduled, and once it's over there'll be more time to think about the RV! Also it had been over a month since the last time I flew so I decided to knock some rust off and practice the commercial maneuvers. It felt awesome to be back in the air!

I had finished cutting and shaping the aileron stiffeners a couple of days ago so we decided we would finish match drilling them to their appropriate skins. Once that was done we moved on to dimpling the parts and cleaned up the edges. I used the hand squeezer to dimple the stiffeners and Dad and I continued to use our backdimpling method for the skins. Needless to say they turned out flawlessly! We're still having a blast working on the project and the progress keeps us motivated for sure.

Wing Jig Work

Jeez, it's been nine days since I've put a new post out for the RV, and that's way too long! For the past few days Dad and I have been preparing the rest of the ribs and have gotten them all ready to be primed. We're trying to build up a pretty good sized pile just so we can knock a lot of the priming out at once. Since this'll be the first time we use our spray gun (we've been using cans of self etching primer) we want to make sure we have enough parts to make it an efficient process. Dad banged out most of the rib preparation and I helped him when I could. I've been working quite a bit lately and going to school and I've been having a hard time to put into the project. But this semester is almost over and I'll have more time!

Also, we were able to construct the wing jig. The thing is as sturdy as a house, and it came out very straight. We used lumber to construct ours, and it's a shame that this won't have much use once the wing is done, but it'll serve it's purpose. We've been contemplating on how to do our conduit holes in the ribs and we've decided we're going to use 3/4" thin-walled PVC pipe. We picked up three 10' pieces at Lowe's yesterday, but they must have been marked wrong because they're 1"! Oh well, a quick return and we'll be back in business. Hopefully we'll be able to prime soon and get the wing set on the jig!

Match Drilled Wing Ribs

Well today dad and I were able to get the ribs all match drilled to the main and rear spar and we have something that resembles a wing! We only had enough time to do the left wing, but we also got all of the ribs prepared for priming. We're not too sure if we're being to picky on the scratches, but we're making sure we get all of the scratches out with either scotchbrite or sandpaper if the scratch is deep enough.


The ribs don't have an alclad layer on them, so they don't have a protective film on them when they are packed so we want to make sure we have them nice and buffed out before we spray them with primer. Tomorrow we should be able to get the right wing done as well.