Brief Description: Continued on rudder skeleton prep, fluting, match
This morning I finished assembling the rudder skeleton which consisted of fluting the ribs. I then was able to cleco the entire rudder together to get it ready for match drilling all of the holes in the skin.
It is a pretty good sized assembly as you can see which gives the RV-7 plenty of rudder authority in cross wind landings. It is important when landing to keep the nose pointing the right direction. An airplane acts like a big weather vane when landing, especially a tail dragger and if the wind is too strong coming from the side and you can't keep the nose pointing down the runway, it is time to find another airport with better runway/wind direction alignment. A larger, more effective rudder was one of the improvements that Van's made to the -7 over its older brother the RV-6.
Foster Field (7A4) is a small public airfield near Apple River, Illinois, just south of where I grew up and some of my family still resides. The runway there is straight north/south and it has some pretty good cross winds out the west as there isn't much for trees in the area to dampen the wind. This big rudder will let me get in and out of there with up to about 20 knots of crosswind, once my skills are honed and I can handle the airplane to that personal limit.
