Priming, Panting, and starting on seat pans..

I needed to get a lot of peripheral stuff done before I move onto the rear baggage bulkhead.  I have been working fairly consistently over the last few days but not posting.  First, as I looked forward to the baggage compartment I made sure that all parts were drilled and prepped, then primed all the rear top skins and baggage compartment parts.  After that I final top coated the baggage floor and side walls, as well as the appropriate visible piece of the forward top skin.  This turned out fairly well.  While that was all drying, I started mapping out the hinge components on the seat pans.  The seats in an RV-7 are adjustable, but only on the ground.  There is a hinging system that allows the bottom of the seat backs (where they touch the seat pans) to be in 3 different fore and aft locations.  Pretty slick, but this take a lot of time and patience to lay out and drill..

Static Ports

I wanted to get my static system in before putting the rear skin back on, but didn't have any pro seal to do the job..  This is a bummer because such a small amount is needed I didn't want to buy a whole new tub.  Luckily, I was able to borrow some from a fellow builder just down the road which was just perfect for my situation..  Basically for the install,  I cleaned away the primer around the 1/4 inch hole, scuffed up the surface of the skin and the surface of the static port.  Then using a thin layer of pro seal I mounted both ports on each side of the fuse.  I drilled a hole in a small block of wood so that the port was unobstructed, then used a clamp on both sides to ensure pressure while it sets up.  Looks good and will have a definite seal since I drilled some holes in the port to ensure the pro seal got a good grip...   I am concerned though because as I screw on the 90 degree fitting for the static tubing, it needs to set vertical for my plumbing run.  I just attached the ports with no concern of where that 90 degree fitting would end up when it is finally screwed in.  I hope there is some wiggle room tomorrow when I test it out..

Conduit, under the seats.. Well that was tougher than I thought..

Not that it was too tough, but it just took a bit longer than I expected.  ( However, it didn't interfere with Bekah and I watching the Superbowl..    :-)   ) 

In general, I intend on following the plans and rivet the seat bottoms and baggage floors into place.  Some people choose to screw these down, but my thoughts are more along the lines of simplicity and strength..  I think riveting is a better more secure solution.  However, it makes it difficult to access under the floors for wiring etc..  So I decided to run some conduit..  Lots of people do this in lots of different ways, but I chose to pop rivet some conduit standoffs between F705 and 706.  This will allow for running wire under the seats..  Looking forward to the wiring part now that this is done..  Should be much easier with the conduit in place.

Also....   Just a quick side note to the astute viewer..  In the pictures above, and who knows how many other historical pictures, you might have noticed something I forgot to do, or sort of a mistake..  If you notice closely on the baggage compartment vertical bulkhead I forgot to open up (drill out) the rudder cable pass through..  Well, I have since now done this and corrected the issue.  Access wasn't easy, but it was overall a simple fix.  I blame this on the plans, because even though they do mention it; in the picture they don't show the hole opened which is an inconsistency from other areas.  No problem though, issue fixed and moving on.

Top Skin Rib

Today I fabricated and drilled the small angle that attaches the center top skin rib to F707..  This wasn't easy, but by lifting the skins and using the long #30 bit I was able to get in between the skin and the J Channel to drill the hole.  Difficult to see, but is shown in the first picture.  To drill through the F707 itself, I had to raise the rear skin and come in from the aft.  You can see in a lower picture that I had to go into both sides and basically remove almost all the clecos from the skins..  So while the skins were up I went ahead and drilled the bulkhead gussets to the longeron and riveted them.   I had used a clamp to hold them after aligning them when the top skins were on.  Also,  now that the skins were almost all the way off.  I thought why not bite the bullet and take them off for all the prep work that is necessary..  So I was able to debur, dimple and soon will prime the skins before they go back on.  Getting the boring stuff out of the way now so I can move faster later.  ;-)

Top Skins Drilled

Tonight I put on the forward top skin and finished drilling both of them along with the Top J Channels..  I can't believe how much this changes the look of things.  It looks really cool and I am very excited to be at this point in the build.  The only concern is that it will look similar to this for quite a long time..  Lots of work goes on inside the plane for the next few months.  There is still a small attach angle that I need to drill to the top skin rib, and F706 under the forward skin, which is supposed to be fairly difficult, I will wait to do that over the weekend.  Just enjoyed staring at this thing for a while tonight..

Also, I was able to work on some conduit attach angles that I will mount below the seats and baggage floor to support conduit runs.  This will come together probably over the weekend.

Rear Top Skin

Some odds and ends complete and lots of progress on the rear top skin today.  First I finished the second J channel and thought of a pretty good way to keep it centered for drilling.  Basically I drilled the first hole centered on the rear most point on the J channel where it would overlap F-708 bulkhead.  Then I used those two points to start the clecoing of the rear skin.   The first couple pics show this..  Once I was finished clecoing, sure enough, the center lines drawn on the stringers lined up perfectly and will be drilled soon enough.

After I installed the skin, I worked on completing the Bell Crank support rib and finished riveting it to F-706.  Also, I worked on some tabs that will support the conduit runs under the seats and baggage compartment.

Ordered Finishing Kit.

I might be a bit premature on this order, but Van's pricing goes up every Feb 1st.   I wanted to get my Finish Kit order in before the prices went up, and during this time Van's is usually backlogged anyway.   I wrote "no rush" on my order as I did last year with the Fuse Kit and it took about 3.5 months for delivery.   If it takes that amount of time this year for the Finish Kit I will be good.

Also, They say the Finish Kit is the 1/2 way point in the build..  So at this pace, I can say it looks like I have a couple years left before this thing can get off the ground..  !

Looking forward to this Kit because it includes the Canopy, Engine Mount, Cowling, Landing Gear, and lots of other non aluminum goodies..   ;-)