RV-7 N890GF

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  • Finished Wings

    After rigging the ailerons and flaps and making sure everything was aligned, I needed to remove the wings one more time in order to finish up some critical items. The to-do list included finishing the Root Fairing seals and drilling two more holes for the Pitot and AOA tubes (for the left wing). The Root…

  • Rigged Flaps and Ailerons (and new Canopy struts)

    With the wings on the fuselage I got the flaps onto the wings so I could fabricate the flap pushrods. I started by cutting the pushrod stock to length. I then tapped both ends of the rods for 1/4-28 rod-end bearings. The plans call to use a CM-4S bearing. The problem with this is that…

  • Installed Wings

    This weekend I hit a huge milestone – my buddy Norio and I installed the wings on the plane! We started by first leveling the plane to make sure we had the ability to, as well as thinking it would make sliding the spars into the fuselage easier. Once the plane was level, we began…

  • Finished Rear Window

    I came back the next day to see how the window set up. Everything turned out perfectly. I removed all the clamps and check the alignment with the canopy. The gap was just around 1/8″ of an inch. I got all the tape removed and then set up some more SikaFlex to create a nice…

  • Installed Rear Window

    Today I had two goals: rivet the side skirts, and install the rear window. I began by removing all the clamps and half the clecos. I then installed the appropriate rivets and used my squeezer to knock those out. I had to use longer rivets in a couple places where I used washers to get…

  • Installed Side Skirts

    Today I installed the side skirts to the canopy. I began by completely prepping the surfaces of both the skirts and the canopy/canopy frame. Since I bonded the canopy to the frame with SikaFlex, I also am bonding the side skirts to the canopy. This requires following the same steps as before: activator, primer, glue.…

  • Canopy Side Skirts

    With the Aft fuselage skin riveted in place now it was time to fit the side skirts. I needed to fabricate the two sideskirts out of some stock aluminum. They needed to be trimmed down to the required dimensions and then aligned with the aft skin. This took some iterations, but eventually I got a…

  • Finished Riveting Aft Fuse Skin

    Today I finished the riveting the aft skin now that the window is trimmed to the final size. Once I finished riveting I then spent some time finishing the surface prep for the SikaFlex process. I also added a 1/32″ monofilament line to set the gap between the window and the skin for the SikaFlex.…

  • Trimmed Rear Window

    Now that the aft-fuse skin is riveted in place (mostly) I decided to continue trimming the rear window for final fitting. I Spent quite a while trying to make the leading edge of the window as straight as possible, and also aligned with the canopy. This was an iterative process, but adding a 1/8″ gapping…

  • Riveted Aft Top Skin

    Today I spent some time getting the aft top skin riveted. My wonderful wife helped my in driving the rivets while I was squished inside the aft fuse with the bucking bar. It was also a day that was a billion degrees, so we tried to get things riveted quickly. Some of the most challenging…