RV Blog

Finished prepping side skirts

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 17:33:50 -0700

I spent lots of time at the airport this weekend. That allowed me to almost finish the prep work on the canopy side skirts. They have been fit and installed, but no primer as of yet. Vans wants them assembled with clecos and screws before you start working on the aft skirts. The left side looks great, however, the right side has a very small space between the bottom of the skirt and the side of the fuselage. I still need to tweak that just a bit before I will be happy. Once that is done, I can move on and tackle the aft skirts. The instructions say those are one of the most difficult things to build on the entire RV! Oh boy, can’t wait to get started.

This photo shows me using the Avery chatterless countersink bit on the plexiglass canopy. After cracking the canopy spine with my old countersink bit, I have switched to this new one. So far so good. All the holes on the bottom edge of the canopy look fine. No more cracks! More photos have been posted on to the FK page two. ( Click Here )

Drilling Canopy Side Skirts

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:49:37 -0700

Tonight I moved on and started drilling the canopy side skirt. With the plane sitting up at the builders hangar, it’s a bit harder to get work done. I can’t just step out into the garage after work. I have to get in the car and drive up to the airport. That extra time adds up. Anyway, I’ve been traveling for work and Ann and I had a party at our cabin last weekend. That all add up to not much progress made on the plane. So, as always, it was good to get back at tonight and make some progress. In the photo above I am working on the side skirts for the canopy. There are three parts that have fit together on each side. Vans doesn’t pre-drill anything, so you have a bunch of holes to measure out and drill.

Brett from Bonoco also stopped by. We are working on new fuel lines from the tank to the Andair valve. Brett is making them out of flexible material that should hold up better then then the aluminum tubing that I bent. My tubes had a few ‘flat’ spots that were bothering me. So I decided to upgrade.

Oshkosh 2008

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:37:17 -0700

It’s been a couple of weeks since I got back from Oshkosh, so I decided It was long overdue for me to post up some of my favorite photos from the trip. The photo above was my personal selection for BEST OF SHOW. This was a gorgeous RV9A built by Patrick Halama. The quality of work on this plane was awesome. If mine turns out half this good I will be very happy. Anyway, it was great show and I took lots and lots of photos. I also managed to get a ride in the Vans RV9A demo plane. A quick 1/2 hour flight over the lake was great fun. I can’t wait to get mine built! Enjoy the photos posted on the Family and Friends pages.

Working on the canopy

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 15:20:34 -0700

I haven’t had an update in awhile. I was on vacation for a week followed by a week on the road for work. I was very happy to get back to the plane this weekend! In the photo above I am drilling out the plastic blocks that hold the rear ‘dogs’ on the canopy frame. You have to match two different angles, so it’s a fun set up on the drill press. With all my time on the road it feels like nothing is getting done. However, looking at the canopy today, I am now ready to start working on the side skirts, so progress is being made. It’s just slow. B.T.W. I have started a new page for the canopy and finishing kit. It’s found at ‘Canopy Page 2’.

Airport Move Phase II

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 11:19:09 -0700

This weekend I loaded up the fuselage and moved the rest of my plane up to the Cable airport. It’s located at the EAA Chapter 448 builders hangar. The photo above shows the fuselage in its new home. I will finish construction of the plane here, and with any luck, I will also get a hangar for storage when its done. Moving was quite stressful, as I had to worry about the drive up to the airport in the rental truck. I had the fuselage strapped down so tightly, that when I tried to wiggle it, the truck moved. in the end it was all fine. The move was completed without any issues. Thanks to all of my helpers on both ends of the trip! I posted a couple of photos on the Finishing Kit page.

Windscreen is drilled to roll bar

Tue, 8 Jul 2008 15:23:44 -0700

I took some time off for the fourth of July holiday, but got back to work over the last couple of nights. I called Vans about the height adjustment on the windscreen. The instructions say to raise the slider to even with or slightly higher then the windscreen. This didn’t make sense to me. It turns out what they really mean is to raise the slider to even with or slightly higher then the windscreen, so you can shim only on the windscreen side to make them perfectly even. Once I figured that out, a couple of shims on the middle three holes has the windscreen and slider height perfectly even. Cool, drill and move on. That’s what I’ve done. The windscreen is drilled and now I have countersunk and deburred all the holes. Oh, I used a different countersink bit so as not to crack the windscreen like I did with the slider. I bought a ‘chaterless’ bit without a pilot from Avery. I have a photo of it posted on the finishing kit page.

Gap on lower windscreen

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 07:20:17 -0700

I have about a half inch gap on the lower aft edge of the windscreen. The entire leading edge fits great, but back here there is this big gap. Vans calls for the bottom edge of the windscreen to fit abutting the top edge of the forward skin. I haven’t quite trimmed out the final 1/4 inch of that, and that may help with this gap. Vans also calls for installing ‘clips’ to hold the windscreen to the skin, before using the fiberglass layouts to close everything up. I’m afraid to clip this, as the half inch would put to much stress into the plexiglass. I think I will post this up on the VAF forum to see if anybody has an idea on what to do with this issue.

Trimming the windscreen to size

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:30:30 -0700

I took some time off last week. Ann and I did a woodworking project that took a few evenings to complete. We also spent the weekend up in Big Bear, and my poor plane just sat in the garage. Now that I’m back on the case, I’ve started to trim the windscreen down to size. Vans says to trim down to where the forward edge sits flat on the contour of the fuselage. Then make sure the height is proper between the windscreen and the front bow of the slider. In this photo, I have made three cuts. The fit to the fuselage is pretty good, but I think I have another 1/4 to 1/2’ of material to trim away. I am going slow, making small cuts. I don’t want to put it on and find out I have trimmed to much.

Cracks drilled out to larger holes

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 11:06:22 -0700

I decided to drill out the holes with cracks to a larger diameter. Five of the seven holes have no cracks at 1/4”, just like the photo above. This hole is just bigger then the width of the dimple in the C653 cover strip. I think these will be just fine. The other two holes had to go slightly bigger, 5/16”. Still not to bad. Looking back I wish I had used a different type of countersinking bit. The normal countersink had to much chatter, and caused the cracks. I used the special plastic cutting bits, from Avery, to enlarge these holes. Those bits worked great on the plexiglass.

Small hairline cracks in the canopy

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 14:53:41 -0700

During the past week I have been able to drill out the canopy to the slider frame. I used a normal #40 bit and drilled through the canopy into the frame. I then removed the canopy from the frame, and used a #30 plastic bit to enlarge the holes. At that point I had to start countersinking the holes for rivets. This is where the problem started. In the photo above, you see one of three holes on the top spine of the canopy, that cracked as I was using the countersink bit. BUMMER! I called Vans and they said to use Weld-On Plexiglas Glue. The stuff is water thin and should wick into the cracks. I also called Airplane Plastics. They are in the business of making plexiglass canopies. They said the Weld-On may last for years, but a better solutions would be to just drill the hole out to a larger size, as there are plenty of other rivets to hold the canopy down. Now I don’t know which advise to follow...