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PmWiki /
CabinSeatsAmount of hours spent on cabin and seats: 102 August 1, 2010 - 1h Installed the joysticks onto the sticks today. I cut about 2 inches off the copilot stick and 3 inches off the pilot stick.
July 18, 2010 - 5h I decided to fabricate a cover for the fuel pump structure today. The aluminum sheet had been standing around in my workshop for many many months now and the time had come to cut it up and do some bending (with the bending brake I recently bought; see the Tools page). I measured the length of the cover to be 24.5 inch from the fuel valve to the front of the firewall, keeping about 2.5 inch space open for now. I cut the sheet with normal metal cutting snips; that worked fine.
Bending the metal was pretty easy with the new brake. I wonder how I would make 90 degree bends with this tool though; not that I need 90 degrees, but I don't think it's possible with this brake. Anyway I only needed 18 and 68 degrees bends in the metal and that worked without problems.
 
Next was fitting the cover in the cabin for the first time. As expected the part at the fuel valve didn't fit as I need to do some more cutting in that area.
 
After making these cuts the fit was better. I need to find a way to fill the triangular-shaped holes on both sides of the cover, but that's for later and shouldn't be too hard. The front also needed a small cut on both sides to make it fit with the firewall reinforcement brackets in that area.
  
Next was making the large round cut for the andair fuel valve and the four holes to install the fuel valve to. I drilled the hole with a 1 inch hole-saw after having marked it on the cover.
Now it was time to drill the cover to the floor angles and the fuel pump structure with my angle drill. The idea is to install platenuts on the inside of the fuel pump structure and screw the cover into these platenuts through the floor angles. Simple but effective! I marked the holes 5/16 inch from the top of the angle on the cover and drilled #30 holes. That was a mistake though... I didn't notice that the cover is just a little short at the back and doesn't reach all the way down. And thus the pre-drilled holes are too high as well. Since this holes will be covered by floor carpet, I just decided to drill the holes at the correct height 3/8 inch in front of the first hole. The picture where I screw the cover to the angle shows one of the 'wrong' holes in detail.
These pilot holes got drilled out to #12 next (I didn't have a #19 bit for my angle drill) and the parts where taken out and deburred. Following was drilling the platenuts to the fuel pump structure and rivet them on.
 
A test that all the screw holes still lined up showed that they were :-) You also see the first pre-drilled hole here that I had to redo.
Last but not least a couple of pictures of the cabin with the cover. Doesn't this look cool!
 
July 17, 2010 - 2h Now that all of the wiring had been routed from the back to the front of the cabin it was time to rivet in the baggage floors and sides. The doors came out very sturdy after the angles had been riveted on. The floor gets riveted with LP4-3 blind rivets while the back flange gets done with normal AN426AD3-4 rivets.
  
July 15, 2010 - 1h Tonight I did something I wanted to do for a long time: I reinforced the doors in the baggage floors. The 3 pieces of 1/2 inch angle I got from ACS were cut in pieces and drilled to the doors. I also countersunk the holes in the angle to accept the dimples in the door skin which I will make tomorrow.
July 5, 2010 - 5h Today was time to open up my old proseal can and mix some for the naca air ducts. This stuff was definitely a lot stickier then when I was doing the fuel tanks!
Cleco'd the ducts onto the skin and quickly riveted them with AN3-4.5 rivets before the proseal would harden.
  
Next was bolting the sticks control column back into the fuse (now that I hopefully don't have to drill any more holes through the spar). It took a while to get the two 10L washers in between the elevator pushrod (what a pain!) even with the washer tool to hold them. Don't have a picture of it as you've seen one before already.
June 30, 2010 - 0.5h Countersunk the naca duct flanges and dimpled the holes in the skin. These will get riveted as soon as I feel handling the proseal :-)
June 29, 2010 - 1.5h I did find out how the naca ducts get riveted to the fuse. One needs to create a set of small shims that get used on top of the rivets and make sure the plastic of the ducts doesn't get squeezed in the process. The ducts get sealed to the fuse with proseal or some other sealant.
The other things I did tonight is blind-riveting the upright caps on the F704 bulkhead sides. This gets done with LP4-3 rivets. On the left side I can't get to the hole where the canopy lock angles are, so I might just keep that open or find a solution for that later.
 
June 28, 2010 - 0.5h Drilled the inlet air NACA ducts to the fuse. Not sure yet how these things get riveted in, but I'll find out soon.
 
June 24, 2010 - 1.5h Installed the left and right brake lines in the cabin tonight. These run from the left side of the firewall (where the pedals connect) through the center (underneath the fuel pump structure) to the AN fittings on the left and right gear weldment. A little bit of a struggle but I got them in eventually. I have to find a good way of torquing the fittings as it is really hard to get a wrench around the nut with the weldment in the way.
  
June 5, 2010 - 4h I finished the installation of the manual trim today. Didn't make too many pics except the end result. When I install the wings (much much later from now) I'll do the sping part of the installation as well.
May 24, 2010 - 1h Started work on the manual aileron trim. Fabricated the holes and resistance slot in the umhw block and drilled it to the 6124 bracket. Used a unibit to drill the 0.5 inch holein the bracket.
  
April 27, 2010 - 1h Bolted both the vent lines into the cabin for good. Was pretty easy!
April 24, 2010 - 8h Pretty productive day today! I painted all the inside cabin parts (bagage floors and sides, seat floors, etc) and the sides of the cabin itself. Looks really nice in the shade of white that I decided to use for this.
 
 
Again, a pretty productive day :-) March 16, 2010 - 0.5h Bolted the left weldment back into the cabin. Still not a perfect fit for the bolts, but I'm not sure what I can do more to improve the fit.
March 15, 2010 - 1.5h Took the left landing gear weldment off tonight and did a lot of filing to make sure the standard bolts would slide through the spar (and weldment) easily and the close-tolerance would fit with some pushing.
March 10, 2010 - 1.5h Bolted the right weldment back on the spar, this time with the longer AN13 bolts instead of the 12.
March 7, 2010 - 2h Today I took the right landing gear weldment off to do some more filing to the holes as the fit isn't as good as it should be according to my fellow rv builder Jeff Vaughan. I also need to put 13 length bolts in as opposed to the 12 I put in earlier. It took some effort to take all the bolts out, especially the ones all the way at the bottom.
January 9, 2010 - 1h Due to the bad fit with the canopy roll bar I decided to drill out the hinge on the bottom of both seat backs and redo these. Was pretty straightforward and the fit is much better now.
December 27, 2009 - 2.5h Primed seat backs, cabin seat floors, baggage floors and some other smaller pieces. My new hobby-air fresh air hood worked great!
 
These will need a coat of the whitish color I chose for the interior.
October 24, 2009 - 0.5h Match-drilled the 704 bulkhead covers to the bulkhead sides.
October 3, 2009 - 2h Based on an idea of George Fischer I fabricated the scrotch strap brackets today that go in between the seat ribs. Remember that I installed two of the ribs the wrong way around and thus couldn't use the kit Van's sells. So I fabricated a structure with angle and some 2024 alu pieces.
 
September 20, 2009 - 4.5h Worked on the bagage deck openings today. I got two latches from George that I Installed in the doors. Used my dremel with a cutting wheel to cut out the latch openings and files and sanded these to the final form.
Then I fitted to two lengths of angle to the bagage ribs to have something to rest the door on and latch them to.
 
Later I cut some of that away to make the latch fit properly. Here is a picture of it all fit and done.
 
September 15, 2009 - 0.5h Installed the tubing on the static ports and put a T in that will connect the tubing to the EFIS later on.
September 13, 2009 - 2h Installed the brake pedals back into the fuse (not forever yet as I still need to paint the inside of the cabin).
George Fischer came by to check out my project and had some good suggestions for the scrotch harness belt connection and the bagage floor doors. Using some angle and web I should be able to put a simple structure together to attach the harness belt to. Cut 4 pieces of angle and drilled holes for the bolts in them.
September 9, 2009 - 1h Did some work on the brake lines tonight. Installed the high pressure tubing between the brake cylinders.
 
September 7, 2009 - 3h I primed the small push rod that runs from the bellcrank to the control column and put it back in the fuse for good. Bolted and torqued it to the control column and also torqued the control column to the control column brackets. This stuff id all staying in from now.
 
Then I started with the brake system. I put one of the brass elbows on the brake tubing and screwed the elbow into one of the master cylinders. Used fuel lube to seal all the threaded connections.
September 5, 2009 - 4h More time on the left weldment. But this time I have figured out why the holes don't want to line up. It's this sneaky rivet all the way down next to the weldment side where the 5 bolts go.
This high rivet is causing the weldment side not to slide all the way to the back. Using the rivet gun and bucking bar helped make this rivet a bit lower and solved the problem! Bolted and torqued the left weldment in for good.
 
And here is a picture of both weldments in the cabin.
I also bolted the two harness holders to the longerons in the back as well. Kinda hard to crawl in the fuselage back there, but doable.
September 4, 2009 - 1h Been working on the fit of the left landing gear weldment. Somehow I cannot get the bolt holes of the weldment to line up with the bolt holes in the spar.
 
When it does line up there is a large space between the back of the weldment and the spar which is not good.
Have to figure out why this is happening!
August 29, 2009 - 5h Worked on the landing gear weldments today and drilled and bolted the right side to the fuse and 704 bulkhead. To get the bolts all the way down in between the 704A and B bulkheads was really tough and took a lot of time and patience. Not looking forward to doing the same on the left side tomorrow, but I'll have to anyway :-)
 
 
Last but not least I also riveted the rivets on the longerons below the canopy front deck; wished I did that before the canopy decks went on, because some of these rivets were tough to get to. Had to do one on each side with a blind rivet. Somehow at the time I thought some top skins would be riveted there, but I guess that's not the case.
August 9, 2009 - 2h Decided the reinforce the bagage deck openings a bit and riveted some alu strips in.
 
Felt a whole lot stronger after I clecod these in again.
June 27, 2009 - 1h I received the start solenoids from Robert Paisley this week so these got mounted to the right battery rib.
 
Since that was the last task for the ribs, I riveted them to the fuse bottom with the help of Michela who was bucking while I was using the gun to shoot rivets under the fuse.
June 13, 2009 - 3h Got some more work on the battery boxes done today. I riveted the left rib and angle together.
Used my closed quarters dimple die set and blind rivet gun to dimple the bottom skin and clecod both completed ribs in.
 
I then fabricated the 4 pieces of angle that will go on the sides of the battery holders.
 
These angles were match-drilled with the battery holders and everything got dimpled and countersunk for flush rivet heads on the inside of the box.
 
Later in the evening I primed and riveted these parts together. They will be mounted on the ribs.
June 11, 2009 - 1h Started to prepare the ribs that will carry the battery boxes behind the baggage compartment.
Match-drilled the two ribs to the side and the bottom skin. The picture shows the blue protective film on the right rib and the holes for the left rib.
Trimmed the left rib to the height of the 706 bulkhead. Cut two pieces of angle to reinforce the ribs and match-drilled of of them to the left rib. Deburred and scotch-brited the left rib and angle in preparation for priming. Dimpled the left rib flange.
June 7, 2009 - 2h I measured the location of the pitch servo bracket today for the dynon autopilot servo. Drilled it,primed it and riveted it to the rib and bottom skin.
Also decided where I'm going to mount the batteries and clamped the two new ribs at the new location. Both battery holders will be mounted to these ribs with aluminum angle and bolts.
June 1, 2009 - 1.5h I painted the rudder pedals yesterday with the paint I'm planning to use for the inside of the cabin as well. They came out nice and I mounted all the hardware for good tonight using the official bolts, castle nuts and cotter pins.
 
 
May 17, 2009 - 2h It has been a while since I worked on the plane and the main reason is my new job. Since two weeks I work for a new company and there is lots of stuff to catch up on. Because of that I have worked 12+ hours per day and had no time to do work on the 7A. Bu this weekend it was time to get into it again and I also received the 5/16 inch reamers I ordered from cleaveland, so I drilled/reamed the gear legs to the gear leg mounts.
 
Next was getting the mounts into the fuse and that took some trimming of the holes in the floor I made a while ago. At first the bolt holes didn't line up with the ones in the spar, but after some work with a sanding drum on my dremel I got it at a point where the fit was good. And nicely enough ALL the bolt holes lined up, so I don't have much extra work there.
 
May 2, 2009 - 0.5h I finally finished countersinking the holes for the screws that tie the skin and the lower longeron together (below the tank attach brackets).
For the record, here are some pictures of the fuselage and some of me finally taking seat in the fuse!
   
Can you see this thing fly? I do!
May 1, 2009 - 2h Finished the flap system installation today. I remade a bracket to mount the motor in the channel and this time I linked the flap weldment arm and the actuator arm together before drilling it. This time it came out okay and I made some movies of the moving arms: Attach:flaps-up.mov (move up) Attach:flaps-down.mov (move down). Both movies are in quicktime format.
Then I clecod the covers to the front channel and drilled holes for the nutplates in the back channel.
Deburring, priming, riveting nutplates, yada yada. You know the drill :-) For the end result see the following images (I put the seat backs in as well).
  
I made a mistake and riveted the two nutplates to the 705 bulkhead instead of the back channel, but I solved that by trimming the some of the side off the channel and screwing it on the backside instead of the inside. That worked out well!
April 30, 2009 - 6h I worked on the front cabin and electrical flap system today. I drilled most of the front cabin stuff today, but probably won't use most of these except maybe for the fuel valve plate and cover.
Started with drilling the holes out for AN4 bolts in the flap weldment. this was followed by drilling the center flap bushing block. It had to be shortened a bit so I used my bandsaw to do just that. Then on to the drill press to drill the two #10 holes, followed by the bandsaw again to cut the piece in two. After drilling the block on the bagage skin, I fitted the nutplates that will go here when the skins are riveted on.
 
Next was drilling a small hole in the flap motor actuator tube for some safety wire. I bought a 1/16 inch drill bit a long time ago that finally became useful :-) I managed to drill the hole, but about 3/4 through the drill bit broke; go figure. Anyway, there was enough of it left to finish drilling the hole in that particularly hard material. I put a short length of safety wire through it in the picture below.
Next was the fabrication of quite a number of small brackets and plates.
The brackets that mount the front channel to the floor are riveted to the channel and nutplates get riveted to the inside of the channel (for the covers).
 
In the next image you can see that I am drilling the 767 plate that will mount the front channel to the 705 bulkhead. Guess what, I did it the wrong way around!. After making a new bracket, things look better.
  
I made a mistake: drilled the bracket that holds the motor to the channel before linking it with the flap weldment arm and that made it look like this:
It wasn't aligned correctly! Have to make a new bracket tomorrow and redo this.
Last but not least a picture of all the flap components in the cabin.
Hopefully I can finish this tomorrow and on to the landing gear mounts!
April 29, 2009 - 5h Finished the seat bottom skins today and riveted the three hinges on. I found some old hinge stock from a flap (the one I drilled wrong) that I used for this.
 
I also deburred the edges of the stick covers. Also drilled nutplates to the bagage cover underneath the wearblocks.
 
Next was fabrication of the tunnel cover. First the two brackets with the bandsaw (which I finally replaced with a new saw). I bend the cover plate in my vise at the indicated distance from the edge.
Drilled the holes for the screws in the base of the brackets and clecod them to the skins. The cover plate was then clamped in the correct position.
 
I removed the structure, drilled the cover plate to the brackets, deburred, primed and riveted the tunnel cover together.
 
I did noticed that I forgot to put two nutplates on the 704 bulkhead; will have to put these on tomorrow.
April 28, 2009 - 4h Worked on the right bottom seat hinges today.
  
Started the left seat brace and cut out lightning holes with the flycutter.
  
This was followed by drilling all the pieces of angle and hinges to the seat back.
For fun I put the left side in the cabin next to the right seat, but I do still have to rivet the hinges to the seat bottom. Problem is I don't have enough hinge left I think. Will have to check again tomorrow, because I can't imagine Vans wouldn't provide enough of this stuff!
This looks so cool! (but uncomfortable ;-)
April 27, 2009 - 2h Finished the right seat back today. Still have to do the seat bottom hinges tomorrow.
 
April 25, 2009 - 2h Went to the EAA hangar today to help cleanup the trailer next-door and make space for a fifth airplane project. When I was there I also checked out the PC680 battery in Glenn's Glasair, because I had the feeling the battery trays Vans send me where a bit small. But I didn't had to worry: they will fit fine!
Started the seat backs today and deburred the edges. Cut the sides from angle stock and drilled two of them to the right seat back.
 
 
April 24, 2009 - 5h I started drilling the rivet holes for the nutplates on the F706 bulkhead. Deburred and dimpled the holes and riveted the nutplates on. I didn't do the ones on the bottom row as the floors are not riveted on yet. I'll do that after I've figured out if I need more wiring holes through the bulkheads.
I riveted the hinge halves and the bagage floor doors and floors themselves and joined them together (no picture).
This was followed by screwing the bagage covers on the bulkhead so that the channel cover could be fitted. Initially this didn't fit at all (first two pics below), but when putting the channel flange behind the cover, it did fit better (third pic below).
  
Then I cut the bagage side covers with snips and deburred and primed them on the back. This was followed by an easy fit and riveting the nutplates on the bottom flange.
And here is a picture of the whole bagage department.
My order from Vans for the batteries mounting stuff and the scrotch belt system also arrived today. I kind of fitted the battery parts in the back behind the cover.
  
The battery trays looks a bit small and I doubt that the PC680 batteries will actually fit in these. I need to find someone with these batteries and try it out (I asked Glenn Long at the EAA chapter).
April 23, 2009 - 3h Reached the 700 hour mark today! First I trimmed the top bagage cover according to plans. Using a unibit I cut two 3/8 inch holes for the cutouts for the wearblocks.
 
After drilling the cover to the 706 bulkhead I drilled the wearblocks (pieces of UMHW) to both the top and bottom covers after having drilled them for lp4-3 rivets and cut out a slot for the shoulder harness cable to go through. I also cut the 8 washers using some snips (the bandsaw would take too much material away).
  
I noticed that I drilled one nutplate hole wrong: because I made a mistake a long time ago on the bulkhead, the place where the hole is also had some rivets in the back :-( So I had to drill another hole further to the left to fix that. Don't know yet what to do with the wrong hole.
After everything was drilled, I took both covers off and deburred and primed them on the back (the parts you'll never see). After 20 minutes of drying time, the wearblocks got riveted to the covers using lp4-3 blind rivets.
 
April 19, 2009 - 2.5h Today I cut out the door openings from the bagage floors and fitted hinges and the doors themselves that I cut previously.
  
Then I fitted both floors in the bagage compartment together with the side panels.
 
Last but not least I fitted the lower bagage bulkhead cover and drilled both sides to F706.
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