Finished Work on Z-Brackets

Today Dad and I picked up where we left off on the T-712 Z Brackets that attach the fuel tank baffle to the main spar. Since we finished priming and countersinking them, the next step was to rivet the K1000-3 platenuts to them in order for them to be bolted to the spar. We set all of the rivets and they turned out beautiful! 12 of the 14 had already been drilled to the spar and the remaining two were the inboard brackets, I'm not too sure why they have you hold out on these, but you're supposed to match drill these to the spar once the baffle is clecoed to the other brackets. After the spar was off of the wing jig and back on our work bench we clecoed the bracket to the baffle and got to drilling.

Well the first one didn't turn out too great, in fact it's unusable! A simple mistake led to a $2.50 replacement part. Our mistake? We held the bracket agains the spar too firmly which caused the baffle to flex, with it drilled in this position the hole is in the wrong location when the pressure is taken away. Oh well, our part should be here Thursday and we'll be back in business!


We also went over the wing ribs one last time and made some fine adjustments. After handling them so much getting the scratches out of them we realized they got a bit out of alignment, therefore we had to re-flute them. They're all straight once again though and hopefully we'll be able to prime them this week!

Z Brackets for Fuel Tank Baffle

Well after some breakfast with Dad and some friends at the cafe we decided to get to work, but we couldn't just yet. Just as we were leaving the cafe, a beautiful -8 pulled up and well, being RV builders we couldn't pass up the opportunity to chat about our similar tastes! The pilot's name was Barry and he was teaching a friend to fly, we talked about the aircraft a bit and became friends! After our chat Dad and I had to bring our trusty Cessna 150 over to the maintenance hangar for her annual today. The first few hours of our day was devoted to this task and found out what does and what doesn't need to be replaced this year. Oh the joy of airplanes, there's always something to fix on them!

After the maintenance hangar closed Dad and I headed on over to our hangar and decided to pick up from where I left off yesterday. Today we drilled the Z brackets to the main spar for the right wing today. Once we had these all match drilled we began drilling the platenuts to the Z brackets. A cleco here, a cleco clamp there, a drill press and some time was all we needed and we were able to get six of them drilled, we had to do some grocery shopping tonight so we had to leave time for that as well unfortunately.

Many reasons for the lack in posting lately, and I feel bad for that. Works been keeping us both busy and I've been spending some time at my mom's as well, dividing the time is hard when there's so much to do! Also, holidays always seem to delay something, whatever it may be. But we're still progressing on the project that's for sure!

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.