Well, it was a busy week for me. First off, I previously mentioned a prospective RV8 builder, Scott Taylor, who joined us at the "Red Tails" movie. Scott is a pilot for Frontier Airlines. He called me up a couple weeks ago and said he had visited the factory, got a demo flight, along with his "first" RV grin. He then promptly took the plunge and ordered his empennage kit! Funny how that works isnt it? Congrats to Scott...welcome to the insanity that is RV building! So, I invited him over to show him my project, the shop and talk tools...of course, 3 hrs later I finally let him leave after talking his ear off. I always seem to do that when it comes to RV's... ;)
Secondly, I took Saturday off from building...first Saturday for quite some time. Of course, it wasn't completely devoid of RV activity however. I went out to FTG and joined Scott Mills for a breakfast flight in his RV9A to Pueblo's Spitfire Grill. It was a nice break from the usual Greeley breakfast run....the rest of the gang went to Centennial. Beautiful day for flying too, it was cold (15 deg F)and the air was as smooth as a babies bottom! Although there was some low lying clouds and haze scattered about...strange for Denver. Believe it or not, it was my first time flying over the clouds as we were at about 1500 AGL coming back from PUB and looking down at the clouds below while basking in bright sun, very bizarre...but gorgeous! I was mad I didn't bring my camera to capture the moment.
Scott let me fly most of the way down to Pueblo, it was nice to get some RV stick time...always good fuel for the fire. After returning, we loitered around the airport for a while...met a new RV7A builder in Chuck's hangar, then we (Gary Zilik, Scott and I) drove over to visit my project and drink a couple beers. It was a great day, a great break from building and great inspiration to forge ahead! Nothing gets me more fired up than a day like that. I suggest you also do this from time to time to recharge.
Finally finished up my rudder pedals as I tidy things up before riveting the forward, upper fuse structure in place in preparation for canopy fitting and glueing. These were overdue on the task list, but with anodizing and painting the powder coated steel tube added some time to the ordeal. I will tell you, and you can tell by the all the pictures, I am very happy with how these came out.
If they had a contest for nicest looking rudder pedals, not sure if I would win because I have seen some nice ones, but I would be in the running that's for sure! :) Too bad you'll hardly ever see them and they will get scuffed up by my feet! Oh well, they look nice now and I'm proud of 'em. The last picture shows my JDAir rudder pedal extensions installed.
Before painting my sub panels with JetFlex satin black, I added a bead of white paintable silicone as part of my "stop the canopy leaks" campaign! Ok, maybe just "minimize" the canopy leaks campaign. ;)
More tying up loose ends in the cockpit...finally getting back to the electric flap install. Here are my after market threaded flap rods that I bought from Avery...and of course, red anodized with the batch of parts I brought in.
Flap motor installed, finalized and don't forget to safety wire it as the Van's AD states....that was kind of a pain. Hooked it up to my portable battery and cycled it up and down a few times to see how she behaved...cooler'n snot!
These support ribs gotta go...they are a bad design, leftover from a time when all panels were 6 pack steam gauges. Nowadays, with flat panel EFIS being the norm, they just get in the way. There are plenty of clever ways to get around this by trimming them or making fancy new ones. As for me, I am just going to cut them off, use the cutoff pieces and strategically relocate them...more on this later.
Finally deciding what to do with my emergency canopy jettison assembly that comes in the kit. I don't plan to have this accessible for an in-flight ejection as I think that is very impractical in reality, but I do want it handy if I ever want to easily remove the canopy on the ground for maintenance.
This is what I came up with...and its been done before, instead of coming through the panel (per the plans) with the T-handle...I just went straight down with it. A 90 degree rotation and off comes the canopy...nice. I need to come up with a way to safety secure this however...don't want it vibrating loose in flight, that would be very bad day!
Support ribs trimmed back as mentioned above...
Don't forget these two -426 rivets...as I almost did...
Jettison assembly and canopy hinge brackets finalized....
Canopy held open for fitting with bailing wire attached to the plywood above...
I made these strut attachment brackets a couple months ago and just realized I screwed them up!! dangit! Read the plans wrong...must've been a late night?? The center holes need to be tapped for the strut ball stud...not through holes as I did. Oh well, add to the scrap pile...how big is yours??! I had enough material left over to redo one...but now I need to purchase some alum bar for the other one.
There is a known problem when installing the tip-up struts. The force of the struts in the closed position exerts enough pressure on the canopy to push is forward slightly and cause alignment problems. I wasnt even aware of this until Sean Blair sent me an email a couple weeks ago...glad he did. So many things to stay on top of, sometimes they slip by.
Clever builders that have gone before me (I seen these on Chad Jensen's site) put "snubbers" in place to combat this. Chad used carriage bolts because the round head is less likely to mar the paint, which I liked. I took it one step further and added vinyl caps that I found at McGuckins hardware store. Of course I had to tweak them slightly to fit and then glued them in place.
The design makes them fully adjustable to fine tune it...but gosh, this would be near impossible to access to adjust once this top skin is riveted in place so get 'em right and hope they dont move. I plan to loctite them.
From the rear side...this is where the vinyl cap will contact the canopy frame.
And a parting shot of the sub-panel finish painted, riveted in place, canopy installed and the rudder pedals partially installed. Wowza, looking good!
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