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Dave's RV-7A Builder's Log
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Date: 7-23-2016
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Number of Hours: 6.00
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Manual Reference:
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Brief Description: Riveted forward fuselage
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Today was the day to rivet the forward skin on—of course it had to be the hottest day of the year so far. Ross volunteered to come out to the hangar and help, so I got there early to get some prep work done and get going before it heated up too much. My plan was to start in the center and rivet outwards in order to allow me to remain outside the fuselage as long as possible. A couple of rivets along the center sub panel were going to be pretty difficult, so I planned to get those first. After double checking a couple of things we got started…and quickly took a break. It turns out those difficult rivets were actually impossible rivets, at least with the GPS rack in place. So, I removed the racks and climbed inside to buck the rivets that I could. There were about 8-10 rivets running forward along the center rib that were also very difficult to access with the avionics rack in place, so I made the decision to skip those for today and focus on the rest of the fuselage. The key rivets were the ones that would fall under the windshield, and we got all of those.
The rest of the process went really pretty well. Access was difficult in a couple of places, and there were all kinds of wires and cables that got in the way, but for the most part 85% of the rivets were pretty simple. One of the most challenging aspects was the fact that I constantly had to change bucking bars, and laying on cushions while wedged under the panel made that pretty difficult—there were a number of times I had to wriggle back out, find the right bar, and wriggle back under. Not very efficient, but in the end we got it done. The only rivets left are the ones on the forward center rib, and I’ll have to remove the avionics rack to get those. That will be another day…100 degrees in the hangar, time to quit. Great progress today!!
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Start of the job
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AN3 rivets done
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All but center rib finished
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