Ron's RV7 Factory: Rudder Completed! Hobbs: 88.0 hrs

Ron's RV7 Aircraft Factory

Welcome to my personal blog. This site was created as an informal description of my build progress in the construction of a Van's RV7 aircraft. A place where family/friends/builders/curiosity seekers can follow along. It is not intended to be a detailed description of every step in the building process as that would be much too time consuming. There are plenty of sites that do a great job in that arena, that is not my intention with this site. My intention is for this to be a philisophical/motivational/inspirational account of the emotional ups and downs of the life changing journey...and it will change your life. I hope this will give you an idea, through my eyes, of what its like to make this transformation. A note to other builders, I am not an expert so do not put your safety at risk by attempting anything you see on this site until you have done your own research, or send me an email so we can discuss it. Any deviations from the plans are not approved, nor endorsed by Van's Aircraft or myself. Thanks for visiting.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Rudder Completed! Hobbs: 88.0 hrs

Finally finished my Rudder. Actually I finished it a little while ago at the 82.0 hr mark on the HOBBS but I am a little late getting this posted. It came out pretty well. As I mentioned in a previous post, Van's recommends that you dont deviate by more than 0.100" from a straight line on your Rudder trailing edge. For a couple of reasons this is undesirable, first...it doesnt look good if you have a crooked rudder and second, in extreme cases it could affect the flight characteristics of the plane. So, this was important to do a good job on it. I would say, from my measurements with my calipers and a straight edge, I am within about 0.025-0.030" from straight. Not too bad...of course I would've like it to be perfect but gosh, that would be hard to do. My process was pretty much exactly how Van's recommended it: to glue the trailing edge with ProSeal...cleco it and let it sit for three days to cure. Then finished up by riveting the trailing edge with the 'double flush' riveting technique. I also alternated shop heads every other one to provide more structural integrity. I picked up this tip on the VAF forums and I liked it.

Rolling the leading edge wasnt too difficult either. I bought myself a piece of 1/2" pipe and duct taped it to the edge as Van's suggests and then took some vice grips and rolled it into shape. Finished up with my hands to tweak it. I also added a step of 'gluing' this overlap joint with RTV 'ultra blue' before riveting. I read that this is safe on aluminum. Probably not necessary, but it only took a minute and wont hurt anything.

So, all in all, I am pretty happy with the way my rudder turned out. I was a little concerned about this step and frankly it turned out to be a non-event if you are careful and follow the instructions. I am now fully engaged on the elevators....about to prime my skin stiffeners prior to riveting. Samira is going to do her first back riveting of the project on these!! :)

Here is a little added 'tweak' to the shop before I riveted the trailing edge. I routed out a pocket for my back rivet plate so it would sit flush with the table surface.

And a closeup view...worked very nice, should've done it sooner but I had to buy a router to do it.

A shot of the finished rudder standing at attention...straight and proud!

Here is a view of my trailing edge...give ya an idea of how straight it looks.

The leading edge after rolling it into shape and cleco-ed.

And this is a view of it after I glued it with RTV and used blind rivets to finish it up.

This was a slight oversight on my part. Inside this enclosure hidden from view is my rudder counterweight (essentially a chunk of lead held in place by two screws and nylok nuts). I forgot to tighten these screws before sealing it up, I swear the plans didnt mention it, I guess that was left up to me to remember. So, instead of drilling out rivets I used my unibit and opened up these small holes so I could get a socket in there. It shouldnt affect the structural integrity of the part and now I have access holes if needed in the future. This view shows one hole enlarged and one yet to be.