Fuselage work continues. Three hundred and five hours have gone into the project. The lower fuselage from the firewall back to the end of the baggage/fuel tank floor area has been completed.

No major mistakes have been made to date but availing myself of the knowledgeable builder assist services at Vans has made my progress steady and uneventful.

I also am following Marty's and Jerry's builder blogs (very detailed and informative), intending to use their experiences to supplant my lack of knowledge. Of course, one of the times that I skipped reading their blogs prior to a major assembly point, I realized I should have.

I had already attached the lower front fuselage to the middle section and then I read Marty's blog. He stated that it would be much better to attach the F1207 E&L vertical supports to the front of the middle section before attaching the front section to it.

Oops!

The problem is that there is minimal room to get a rivet puller in the tight area after the front section is attached. There are four rivets for each vertical support. The rivets can be inserted but due to the curvature of the belly skin, there is no room for a straight pull.

I had already made an angle plate to allow pulling rivets when they are too close to a bulkhead to permit a straight pull. I made a much smaller version and used a small, 40-year old Montgomery Ward rivet puller to successfully pull all eight rivets flush and square. Hooray!

The next step is bending the aluminum angle longerons to fit the curvature of the mid-fuselage.

Fuselage work continues...

At this point, I am at 245 hours of build time and just finished attaching the seat assembly ribs to the center section bulkhead.

This section of assembly is more detailed and varied from the wings portion. There are many more parts, fasteners and hardware pieces that have to be identified and used.

I did a thorough inventory of all parts short of counting the quantity of different rivets and then listed the location of each bag of hardware and miscellaneous parts as I secreted them throughout the house. The spare bath tub is an excellent repository for big pieces and buckets of little parts. Under the bed has space for large panels and long pieces.

There are two other RV12 bloggers (Marty's RV 12 and Jerry Greenburg's RV12) who have created blogs that are terrific for their detail and content. They are far ahead of me and I often read over what they have done in the section I am working on. In fact, if I would have read Marty's blog yesterday before I cut the hinge sections for the seat backs, I wouldn't have messed it up and might now have to buy more hinge material.

At 191 hours the flaperons are completed. It took longer then I thought it should but then again, I never did anything like this before. The error I made with the pivot attach brackets was corrected by ordering a new piece of AEX and building new brackets. The comparison photos showing the offset original bracket position to the now corrected bracket makes it worth it. It took about 11 hours total to repair.

The only other problem occurred when riveting the A1207 actuation brackets. The rivet squeezer was too large to allow the manufactured head to sit in the die pocket and the shop head to be formed correctly. The holes were too close to the angle of the bracket. I fabricated a shop head die holder from a piece of 1/2 thick steel and clamped it in a vise. This allowed me to form the shop head with a punch making it flat and square.

The fuselage is next.

The wings is done, the wings is done!

The wings have been completed and mounted on a rack and put into storage.

The next task is the completion of the flaperons.

This is where the I made my first major mistake.

I jumped at the chance of making the four pivot attach brackets out of the AEX aluminum

extrusion because I could use my layout and machining skills.

Well, the parts came out very well and I was justifiably proud.

Keep in mind the saying "pride goeth before a fall".

The plans require a reference hole to be drilled in the upper left-hand corner. This hole will serve to locate the pivot bracket on the flaperon spar. Then the remaining seven holes are to be match drilled to the spar.

I mounted the pivot bracket, drilled the seven holes for each of the four pivot brackets and then noticed that the two rows of holes in each pivot bracket were not symmetrical with the part centerline.

As you can see, the left row of holes is closer to the centerline then the right row. The position of the heim joint that will attach to the wing is not in the center of the hole in the flaperon nose skin.

Where did I make my mistake?

I marked the location of the first reference hole and then set up a jig in my drill press to drill all four pivot brackets exactly the same.

I wasn't careful enough with the jig and introduced a 0.075" lateral position error that then transferred to all four brackets.

I will do better next time.

The design work and the manufacturing of this kit plane continues to amaze me. The fit and quality of parts used is the best it can be.

I did not want to contribute my part if it was not up the the already delivered standards from Vans.

I might have been able to make this work but the two holes don't line up like Van intended.

I ordered new AEX from Vans and will redo the parts correctly.

While waiting, I started to inventory the fuselage kit which arrived three weeks ago. I thought the wings were complex and had many parts.

Well, I ain't seen nothin' yet.

Many different kinds of squeeze rivets and pull rivets and AN nuts and bolts and washers and brackets and levers and buckets of different parts and pieces are coming out of the box.

The people who count the parts, bag them and wrap and package them are masters at their trade. If I were asked to get everything back into the box and close the lid, I would need a steamroller to make everything fit.

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This is milestone posting with 100 hours of work accomplished. At this point, the wings are ready for their inboard and outboard top skins to be riveted.

According to Vans, with a 600 to 900 hour assembly time, I am now either 1/6th or 1/9th of my way to completion.

A few mistakes have been made and three rivets will have to be drilled out and replaced but removal of the pulled rivets is very easy.

I have a recurrence of carpel tunnel irritation so I purchased a pneumatic cleco gun. I would recommend it to anyone simply because it is so much faster to install and remove clecos. I also purchased a Ryobi 4 Volt nut driver and turned an adaptor for the deburring of holes. That also relieves excessive wrist motion. The nut driver turns at 150 rpm and has Li-ion batteries and holds a charge for a long time.

After installing the hinge brackets for the flaperons, one of my fellow EAA members asked how would I know if they are aligned properly. I came up with a laser mounted on a camera tripod and focused the laser beam through the holes in the hinge brackets. I figured that if the laser beam goes through all of the brackets and shows up on the far garage door, then the bracket holes are in line. I gauged both wings and they seemed to be aligned properly.

Currently I am at a build time of 113 hours. It just took me this long to update the blog.

Wing Construction

Now at 73 hours of construction time.

This accumulated time does not include workshop or tool modifications. I made some errors with the ribs which resulted in re-doing some work. I didn't realize that the terminology used to identify the parts was different than I was assuming. There are two sets of ribs, main and nose and within those sets is the label "L" and "R". For example W1208-L is a nose rib which I mistakenly assumed was for the left wing. The identification for each spar is given as W1206R and W1206L for left wing and right wing. I continued with this logic which caused my confusion and a total of four ribs across the two wings had to be corrected. What the "L" and "R" actually means for the ribs is simply the direction of the flange bend related to the forward longitudinal axis of the plane. (Vision of smacking forehead with hand).

I tried to proceed very cautiously to avoid these kinds of errors but my naivete catches up with me every so often. But as time passes and I complete more actions like rivet squeezing, dimpling and match drilling, I am becoming more aware of the process.

I must compliment Vans on the clarity of the assembly instructions. I found that if you study a complicated assembly procedure enough, it becomes more clear and doable.

I have called Vans builders assistance on occasion and always received a polite and comprehensive solution to my question.

One issue that was their fault cropped up when I was attaching the nose ribs to the left spar. The nose rib #12 (from outboard) rear flange did not seat flush (0.100" gap) with the spar when the attach bracket holes were clecoed. This in turn resulted in the nose rib protruding beyond the the line of the other nose ribs. I first thought this was an improperly made rib - too long. But that seems to be unlikely since all of the nose ribs are probably made with the same die. The problem actually was an improperly positioned attach bracket. The bracket had too much depth and was used at a different location on the spar. Someone must have picked out of the wrong bin. Since the attach bracket was already riveted to the spar with large rivets, replacing it was not an option. Calling Vans and speaking to Ken Scott, he suggested to cleco to the spar and re-drill the six holes in between the original holes. He also said that these extra holes will make the plane lighter. Gee, I hope it doesn't go faster than the FAA maximum allowed now.

I have finished the structure for both wings and am currently installing the stall warning switch.

One photo shows a modified engine crane I bought to enable me to move these awkward wing structures around the shop.

Next is the skinning process.

The wing kit has arrived!

October 24, 2008 the ABF truck pulled up with two very heavy and awkward boxes. Now I have to get to work as the reality of what I have done hits me.

I have decided to log every event in a notebook along with digital photos. This might be useful when applying for an airworthiness permit from the FAA when I (dare I say it?) am done.

In the intervening time since the delivery, other life events have occurred, as in every one's life but I have accumulated about 25 hours of build time.

I did have to drill out an errant rivet and availed myself of the excellent how-to videos on the EAA home builders website before attempting same. It was successful and I felt a little pride.

Looking ahead in the plans book reveals a complicated (to a novice) but very well thought out sequence of procedures that will result in a structurally sound and aerodynamically straight wing that will carry me safely into the sky. Pretty poetic, huh?

A lot of small parts had to be assembled and it seems that the bulk of the time will be spent on deburring the metal. All of the holes are pierced except those that are drilled during assembly and all of the panels and parts are sheared. These operations leave sharp edges that must be removed to avoid stress concentration concerns and to insure proper rivet bonding requirements. The deburring tools purchased from Avery Tools are excellent for the task.

The following photos show an angle device I milled to allow riveting close to brackets, some miscellaneous parts and rivet squeezing.