Scott Taylor Visit HOBBS 1146.5 hrs

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!

Red Anodize HOBBS 1082.5 hrs

Friday afternoon, on my way home from work, I swung by the anodizing shop to pick up my parts. I was downright giddy to see how they all turned out. Upon first inspection, my excitement fell away with a thud. Let me explain... 

I was quite disappointed in the job the shop did. There were several areas of dark color....it almost looked like when I do alodine and don't rinse the parts properly. And the color itself looked more like plum or maroon than bright red--although that may not be under their control. They claimed the dark spots were because of the Alclad...I'm not buying it, if that was the case, all of them would be consistent and they weren't. On top of the fact, I removed all of the Alclad on the cosmetic surfaces...to be honest, I don't think they really knew what Alclad was judging by their questions. I just think their QA was shoddy. My business is worth $100 to them...chump change in the grand scheme of things. And yes...I realize I could've thrown a fit...bitched and moaned about it until they fixed it, but thats really not my style for something so petty. I'd just rather be pleasant than a jackass, the world could use more pleasantness I think. :)

After the initial disappointment wore off...and I got them home, they started to grow on me...maybe they weren't 'THAT' bad?? Bottom line is, I really don't have much desire (time, effort) to have them redo them...I can live with them as they are...it will add to the character of my plane, it was never intended to perfect and its not like it looks horrible. Take a look for yourself, see what you think...is my disappointment overblown?

As you can see, from a distance and quick glance...they look pretty good...not so bad huh?

But when you look closer, you see the dark areas I mentioned...these parts were the worst of the bunch. On the bright side...and yes, there is always a bright side, its 'artistic'...kinda gives it a 'rustic' look eh? :) Ok, maybe I'm reaching...

You can see it here on the edges...click to enlarge

The good news is the rudder pedal parts came out almost perfect...was happy with these.

And after some careful riveting...I had four fully riveted rudder pedals ready for install...cool eh? I will probably be afraid to put my feet on them later for fear of messing them up, but whatever...onward.

I bought some black UHMW tape from Grainger for a few odds and ends on the plane. Does that look like a roll of 5 yds?? Its a little pricy, but you can get it in black if you desire...most places, including Van's sells it only in a translucent color...that turns yellow in the sun.

So, my first application was to add it to the angle attach brackets for the canopy side latch. Just stick it in place and then trim to fit with an exacto knife.

I cut out these holes for the washers...but later removed the washers as I didn't like the size of the rather large gap and how it felt when I rotated the lever--grinding metal to metal. Sliding on just the UHMW tape was much better so I think I will leave the washers (spacers) out.

And the sub-assembly ready for riveting...well, pretty much (I need to work out details on how the spring attaches to the bolt which wasn't clear in the instructions)...I will say the action of the mechanism is very good as it snaps in place convincingly. I really felt like I got my money's worth with this after market product...much, much nicer than the spartan stock version IMHO.

And now, the moment I've been waiting for...riveting these bad boys in place...again, carefully as to not mar the surface with the rivet gun. I used rivet tape and it worked fine...not a big deal. Again I sealed these for water leakage before riveting them in place...although I didnt use ProSeal this time as I wasn't in the mood to mix up a batch, I used the same paint-able silicone I used on the static ports (and later for the antenna's), should do the same task...much easier.

If you look closely at this pic, you can see that I had to drill out all of the pop rivets holding the side spar caps on. I needed to do this to access the rivets directly above them on the side canopy rails. I just got out of sequence here because I was waiting on getting my canopy rails anodized. They were easy enough to drill out...just a waste of time and money...certainly far from the worst thing that has happened on the build so far.

I will note that there were at least two or three rivets on each side that were...how should I say...lets go with...'a bugger' to get to. I could think of some much more colorful words to use, and I actually did use a few of them in the shop...but hey, this is a family site so I'll leave it to your imagination. ;) In the end, I ended up getting pretty clever to buck them and all is well now. I used the end of a 7/16" dia stainless steel rod on one and a 1/4" steel plate for the others that I had laying around the shop. Keep in mind, if you're clever...and you are...there are a lot of things laying around the shop that can be used as a bucking bar in a pinch.

And lastly, I saved some of the 'blue death' to wrap them for protection while I work on the canopy. This was satisfying to get done as it starts to take its final shape...now onward to that canopy frame!

Red Anodize Prep HOBBS 1082.5 hrs

Fellow RV7A builder Bruce Swayze, someone I have actually never met face to face, and is mutual friends with the Zilik's and Mills's, gave me this idea. I am doing a red anodize finish on not only my rudder pedals, but also my canopy side rails, upper canopy support brackets, along with a few other misc parts. Bruce was great, answering all of my questions as I fired them off to him by email several months ago. I've said it before, but again I'll say, it sure is nice to have great people willing to share their time and expertise for other builders. You will find a lot of the "pay it forward" mentality with most builders. This is a great hobby with some fantastic people involved.

The thinking behind this strategy is, I will have a red paint scheme...I've always liked the look of anodizing...it has good wear characteristics...and if I don't like the way it turns out (doubtful) I can always paint over it and I would just be out the cost of the anodizing...not the worst thing. I will post more on this later when I get the parts back from the anodizer...just an update that I took my parts in Monday afternoon. So, hopefully later this week I will get them back...I'm pretty stoked about this, cant wait to see how they come out!

I had my mind made up that red anodizing was the way I wanted to go for the reasons already stated. My only dilemma was...what do I do with the surface to prep it? Usually you will see parts "timesaved", which gives it a nice uniform grained look. Its kinda like using a big belt sander on the surface...purely for cosmetic reasons. Since my parts were already formed (i.e. not flat sheet metal), timesaving probably isn't viable for me. Bruce just left his untouched and he said it looked good, but that any defect in the surface will definitely show. So...I thought, why not "DA" (using a Dual Action orbital sander) the surface...that will give them a uniform appearance and kinda looks cool to me with the swirls...should catch the light for a exotic appearance. So, that's what I did...and it sure looks cool to me...we'll see how it translates to the red anodize finish?

I got the parts prepped and then put a new sanding disc in the sander so it would look uniform for all pieces. After sanding for awhile, the paper loses its bite and has a very subtle, different look which I wanted to avoid...it starts to look more matte. So, keep a fresh piece of sandpaper in your sander...swap out often to keep it consistent.

Remember, you can click on the photos to enlarge them...wadda ya think? Will that dog hunt?? ;) (haha....some 'good ol' boy' humor from my past)

Again, I am a nervous wreck...as I dropped off this box of parts to the Anodizer, I felt like I was dropping off my kids at the baby sitter. Please, please take care of my babies and return them safe and sound and in one piece!! haha! And dont lose any of them! Later this week we'll see the results...cant wait!