Ready to Rivet Aft Fuselage

I've finished all the match drilling, deburring, dimpling and priming and have assembled the aft fuselage for riveting. I'll put the upper skins on to ensure it's straight but shouldn't be long before I'm finished and on to the the center fuselage. I had to look ahead to see how the empennage attaches in a few places to understand how things go together but other than that, it wasn't too difficult.

Took Paula Flying

Took Paula flying today. That's definitely a look of shear joy on her face! Actually, she was being silly and took several photos and seemed to enjoy the flight.

Here's a good one of Canyon High School. The original is large and high resolution so you can zoom in quite a bit. I sent a copy to one of the teachers that I know and hopefully she has some good use for it. Maybe my picture will become as widespread as Paula's cougar picture that she had made when she was the basketball mom. It's everywhere now including the football scoreboard and websites and t-shirts.

Ready to Match Drill Aft Fuselage

I'm ready to match drill the aft fuselage. Lots of little tips to make thing better. Below is one on bulkhead F-712 where a tab needs to be trimmed to prevent overlap with the bottom F-779 skin.

This is a wedge spacer I made to smooth the transition between the overlap of the two aft bottom skins where the stringers attach. It tapers from .040 to .016 and matches the width of the stringer on its rivet face and will transition over 3 rivet holes. Without, it would leave an ugly wrinkle on the outer side skin near  the rudder cables exit.

Here, I've put the two upper aft fuselage skins on to make sure the lower aft fuselage is straight with absolutely no twist before drilling. It will be safe in the garage tonight as it looks like a porcupine with all the clecos.

I much preferred fitting the two aft bulkheads to the side skins prior to fitting the bottom skin. They took quite a bit of flange bending to get them to match the taper of the skin. 

I also had to hand bend the bottom skin to add more curve. Mainly on the most aft bend and mostly on the left side. After about an hour of tweaking flanges of the two aft bulkheads and bending the bottom skin and repeating, I got the bottom skin to easily slide up into position. This picture shows the perfect alignment of the tie down guide hole in skin through the tie down bracket.

Putting Skins on Aft Fuselage

I finished the longerons last night and started putting skins on the bulkheads. Paula was happy to get the bulkheads (aka "nesting dolls") out of the living room. Van was right - it really is fun to start putting big pieces together. It's surprising how rigid things get when you put on the skins. That's semi-monocoque aircraft construction where the skins carry part of the load. If you follow the link in the previous sentence, scroll up one paragraph as there is a picture of an RV-7 with the caption "The Van's Aircraft RV-7 fuselage is slender for high speed flight". I like speed!

Bent the Longerons

I finally got the longerons bent. Van's instructions mention that bending aluminum angle can be "maddening". Now I know why. You bend it in one direction and it moves in another seemingly random axis. Oh well, it's done and eventually came our really good. I match drilled the "elbow rest" pieces and they match the curve perfectly. I also checked the downward bends against the side skins and they look good.

Here's the length of the longerons. It's going to be a tight fit in the garage.

Finished Fuselage Bulkheads

I've finished all the fuselage bulkheads (or nesting dolls as Paula calls them). Next comes the longeron bending and then on to some skins!

Shelby's cat Hadley takes a look at the last bulkhead, F-712. It's the tail of the plane where the vertical stabilizer attaches and where the tail tie-down is.

Working on Aft Fuselage Bulkheads

I've finished 5 of the 7 aft fuselage bulkheads. Paula said they looked like nested dolls stacked like this.

Here's the 6th bulkhead F-711 that I'm working on. The bars that stick up will be where the tail attaches.