First step is clecoing the leading edge to the main spar of the right wing. Since all the rivet holes have been match drilled earlier by me, that’s an easy job. A problem are the locations where both the skin, main spar and the rib flange come together. These rib flanges are very flexible and are hard to align.

Speaking about rib flanges, I noticed that they also are there UNDER the skin of the tanks. Painful, because I didn’t notice that attaching the tank on the left wing. So that means I have to “unscrew” the tank again to rivet these ribs. Only 8 rivet on each side.

I’m consistent though, because just as on the left wing, I was also eager to attach the tank on the right wing. Knowing I had the rib flanges riveted, I can safely screw the tank, NOT. This time I forgot the rivets of the leading edge rib. You need access through the rib holes to be able to rivet those.

Oh well, next time I can unscrew both tanks again and set these rivets. Probably takes longer to unscrew the tanks than to rivet.
Just as with the left wing, the leading edges really look great and I can’t wait to attach the top skin, because then it will really look like a wing of an airplane.

I still didn’t order the fuselage kit of Van’s. I want to and probably need to do it, to prevent down-time. However I did anticipate a lower (even plummeting) US Dollar, so I could pick up both the fuselage and finish kit cheap. To my surprise the US Dollar actually rose against the Euro. So I’m postponing, but I can’t wait much longer, considering there is a 8 week delay and probably another 2 weeks shipping. Hence if I order now it will still take until the end of February before the kit arrives.
I still have some work on the wing tips and those of the Empennage, however with Dutch winter temperatures, working with resin is probably not very handy.

On Wednesday I clecoed the top skin to the Right wing. Next weekend my dad will help me rivet the right top skin. Many times it is handy when I’ve got some help, with the wing skins it is indispensable.

Time: 4 Hours, Rivets: 195/1 (2018-12-09)

Time: 4 Hours, Rivets: 52/0 (2018-12-12)

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Since the material is thick enough it is easy to countersink.
The ribs on the contrary can easily be dimpled. In this case with the every so beautiful squeezer. If you would try to countersink the ribs that would go horribly wrong because of the thin material.

The rear spar of the wing is a special case, the thickness of the Aluminum is somewhere between the ribs and the main spar. You can dimple it, but it will not be as “deep” as the rib dimple. So I do both dimple AND countersink the rear spar. Although the countersinking doesn’t take away that much material.

Afterwards I spot-primed all the countersunk holes. Again probably not necessary, but better save than sorry. Also on the Sunday I primed the leading edge skin and some trailing edge parts I forgot earlier.

Time: 5 Hours, Rivets: 0/0 (2018-10-03)

Time: 3 Hours, Rivets: 0/0 (2018-10-06)

Time: 3 Hours, Rivets: 47/0 (2018-10-07)

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This time however I did rivet the Rear Spar almost in parallel with the Main Spar. Also I used the squeezer, that worked great with the short rivets (smaller than AN470AD3-7) the larger however failed several time.

I’m really pleased with the rivets on the Main Spar this time they were all great so I didn’t need to drill and reset any of them.

The Rear Spar was not so successful, At the inboard side, the thick doublers where harder to rivet with the squeezer. I had to drill and reset seven rivets and in the end I used the rivet gun and the bucking bar.

Here you can see the result of the rivets that I screwed up with the squeezer. Normally the result of the squeezer is better than the rivet gun, but with these thick doubler plates it didn’t work out.

Now both wings are done with the Ribs, next stop is fitting the skins.

Also this week I ordered the Roll Servo bracket, so I can install that in the right Wing, when the skins are still off and installation is easy. Actually installing the servo will be done later (I hope).

Time: 3 Hours, Rivets: 51/2 (2018-05-30)

Time: 3 Hours, Rivets: 69/5 (2018-06-03)

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This time both the place and topic differs significantly. Due to the great weather and the fact that we need to use the saw a lot, we decided to work outside (in front of the workshop). This way all the saw dust is blown away, which reduces cleanup. This time no Aluminum but Wood!

Nope the RV-7 does not contain any wooden parts, however according to the manual and drawing DWG-12A we need to build a Wing Stand to be able to work on the wings. A Fuel Tank Cradle to build the Fuel Tanks and a Wing Cradle to store the wings.
Let’s start with the easy part, the Fuel Tank Cradle.

The Fuel Tank is not (as you might expect) some plastic tank inside the wings. However you have to build it from Aluminum and the hardest part is to rivet all the holes and use Tank Sealant so it’s actually not leaking.
There are hundreds of rivet holes in the skin that holds the Fuel, so there is a serious challenge ahead.

I deviated just a teeny bit, by using some obsolete crating material to make side stands to give the Fuel Tank Cradle more stability.

Since my workshop has no flat ceiling and the plans show a Wing Stand as two poles between ceiling and floor, I pondered with the idea to integrate the Wing Stand with the Wing Cradle. We checked the plans and made several designs.

Although novel, we came to the conclusion that it would make a nice Wing Cradle, but a lousy Stand. Hence we rejected the idea and build the Wing Cradle.

The goal is to re-use the crating material, that came with the Wing kit. There was so many wood in those crates that with some minor deviations from the plans you can re-use all material

The top and bottom plates of the crates are sawed to boards and stacked together. This makes the left and right side of the Cradle.

As indicated by the plans, we use the leading edge ribs to draw the silhouette with some extra size to enable inserting carpet in between to prevent damaging the Aluminum skin of the wing.

Next task is sawing the form of the side board. I forgot to take a final picture and my camera’s battery died, so no end result (I’ll add it later).

Time: 4 Hours, Rivets: 0/0

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I clecoed all the ribs to the main spar, however during riveting I found that the first three (wing walk) ribs on the inboard side should be added while riveting. The space between the ribs is too small for a rivet gun.

With the rear spar in place it starts to look like a piece of on airplane already.

Many holes on the rear spar should NOT be riveted right now. They are riveted in conjunction with the Flap brace and the Aileron gap fairing. I have no idea what these are, but I’m sure I’m going to figure that out in the coming weeks. For now I put cleco’s in these holes to prevent accidental riveting.

Since it has been a while for me when riveting (I try to use the squeezer whenever possible), I screwed up several rivets in the beginning. After a few rivets I regained my “feeling” for the task.

A nice look along the bottom of the left Wing. Again the conduit hole is lining up nicely.

I had to reset three rivets, because I was unhappy with those. They were probably ok (note to self: make photo’s), but since the rest was much better looking, I decided to drill them out and reset them.

The outboard four rivets are flush, because the Aileron hinge bracket is placed on top of them (according to the drawings).

Almost finished, I didn’t complete all rivets on the rear spar. However I stopped pushing for daily goals and started to just enjoy every day I can work on my plane. Sounds mushy, but I tend to make more screw-ups when I pressure for I specific goal, which cost even more time.

Time: 6 Hours, Rivets: 96/3

Time: 1 Hours, Rivets: 22/2

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This post combines the priming of the wing ribs and riveting the rear spar components together.

Here’s the result of the rear spar doubler plate in the middle. The strange shaped hole is actually correct and it should accommodate the movement of the aileron push rods.

This is the rear spar inboard side with several doubler plates. The holes that are not riveted are used for attaching the ribs.

Primeing the ribs I did without the help of my daughter. I only have one face mask and even if I had two I wouldn’t allow my little girl to enter the spray cabin. It smells too toxic to be careless with.

Time: 6 Hours, Rivets: 113/7

First step is clecoing all ribs to the main spar and rear spar. We were puzzled as some holes in the ribs didn’t line up with the ones in the spar. We tried and start doubting our work, but finally, when we read the rest of the section, it turned out that this is actually correct. Again I confirmed myself to FIRST read the entire section, before starting. Every time I think I do something wrong, it turns out I should have read the rest. I’m wondering when I will follow my own advise.

Step two is match drilling all the holes and drill several new holes in the ribs. In order to mount a conduit in the wings for the lights, we drilled an extra hole in the bottom of the ribs (see bottom left between the big lighting holes.

Last step is disassembling all the parts again, which seemed strange to my little girl, to deburr and prepare for priming.
We finished both wings and next time I can prime all the ribs for both wings. I’m not going to prime the fuel tank wings obviously.

Time: 4 Hours, Rivets: 0/0

The accompanied video has a very small section on the tie down, but somehow I forgot to start the main camera, so I only have limited video of my backup camera.
Main topic this week is the deburring of the wing ribs.

First task (or at least on my list) is to place all the parts (wing ribs) in the correct order. This might seem trivial, but the annotation left and right on the parts have nothing to do with the wing. Both wings contain left and right annotated ribs and even worse some specific left ribs are for the right wing and vice versa.

Done, leading edge ribs in the front. You can recognize the tank ribs (the ones without the lighting holes). Let’s start deburring this pile of aluminum.

First step is to use the “multi-purpose deburr tool” to deburr the lighting and tool holes in the ribs.

Step two is using sand-paper to smooth the edges of the holes.

Step three is using sand-paper to smooth the edges of the flanges.

Step four is straighting the flanges, to make a 90 degree angle.

Step five is removing the labels with the part numbers and writing the numbers on the parts (with a Sharpie). Half-way I promoted this step to step one (shifting the rest down).

Step six is straighting the rib itself. The ribs are “bent” by Van’s due to the production process of bending the flanges. You can straighten them with fluting pliers, making little dents in the flanges.

I use an aluminum profile (normally used to keep trailing edges straight), to “measure” the straightness of the rib. You can see the little dents in the flanges.

Done, all the ribs of the left wing are now deburred (four hours of work). I didn’t straighten the inner and outer tank ribs with the fluting pliers, as I’m not sure if this will not make sealing the tank harder.

Time: 6 Hours, Rivets: 16/0

Time: 4 Hours, Rivets: 0/0

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The center doubler plate requires drilling a hole for the Aileron push rod. And with hole I don’t mean round, it’s a strange blob of a hole.
After finishing the left Rear Spar I immediately continue with the right one.

And there is where a screwed up. The doubler plate doesn’t have any reference holes, so placing it at the same side as the Left wing is possible and WRONG.

This is the face of a confused man, realizing he just FUBARed a doubler plate. Fortunately it’s just the plate and not the Spar.
Turns out in the Trim bundle there is an Aluminum strip that has the exact width and thickness as the scrap doubler plate.

On the left the correct Left Rear Spar doubler plate. On the right the disaster and in the middle the home made doubler plate, which looks ok. The bend is less professional and has scratches, but it fits nicely.

The thick doubler plates at the fuselage side of the wing requires trimming for the RV-7. I don’t understand why Van’s can’t deliver a correctly trimmed doubler plate. Oh well, I use a paper stencil to check the correct angles.

We used the DRDT-2 for dimpling, however the flanges of the spar (and hence the doubler plates) are less than 90 degrees, which makes it hard (if not impossible) to use the DRDT-2. So let’s use the squeezer.

We also dimpled parts of the upper flange, because once the thick doubler plates are attached there is no way to dimple them anymore (not even with the squeezer).
Last thing is marking all the parts, while removing the blue vinyl, before priming.

These are all the parts of the Left and Right Rear Spar, including the Tie Down of the Main Spar (bottom center) and the Wing Access plates.

Ready for priming in the next session.

Time: 4 Hours, Rivets: 0/0

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I’m inspecting all drawings and together with the manual try to figure out what to do.
Just after the Fuel Tank attach platenuts at the bottom of the wing are several Access plates platenuts. These provide access to the Aileron push rods if you need to do some maintenance. Since these Access plates use a #6 screw in the Main Spar, the holes are just a bit smaller than the #8 Tank attach holes.

The Tie down rig (in my hand) needs a wire thread to enable screwing in the eyebolt. Of course these where inch measures again, so I bought a great set of thread taps.

I created threads at both sides, because maybe I can use the top side as a camera mount (if not, it shaves of a few grams).
When I read the manual in advance I found that I had to “Spot Prime” the Main Spar holes I drilled. I wasn’t familiar with that expression, but it kind of speaks for itself.

I’m probably repeating myself, but the best piece of equipment is the pneumatic squeezer. Both dimpling and riveting is a breeze and the quality is great.

Here I rivet the Access plate platenuts. At the inboard side of the Wing there are two platenuts that I had to attach. I’m not certain what they are there fore, but on some drawings it looks like they are use for attaching the Wings to the Bulkhead.

In the evening I finished the Right Tie Down fabrication by drilling the rivet holes for the platenuts. I can’t rivet those, as they all need to be primed first.

Next time I’ll repeat those steps for the Left Wing.

Time: 4 Hours, Rivets: 28/0

Time: 4 Hours, Rivets: 88/0

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