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Dave's RV-7A Builder's Log
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Date:  2-7-2009
Number of Hours:  8.50
Manual Reference:  
Brief Description:  Forward fuselage construction

A long, productive day! The temperature got up to 70, so it was a tee-shirt with the garage doors up...I'll take as many of those February Saturdays as I can get! I started by doing some more countersinking and platenut attachment, as well as riveting the attach brackets to the auxiliary longerons--mostly just prep work before getting the skin riveting going. Once that was finished, I decided to test fit the landing gear attach bracket. I want to go on record saying that I predict that that will be one of the most miserable tasks I have ahead. I simply can't figure out how it will fit in place once the F-772 lower skin is riveted on. We shall see.

With all of the plans study done, the prep work complete, and a sincere hope that I hadn't forgotten anything important, I started riveting the F-770 side skins on. Following the plans, I started with the AN3 rivets along the F-704 bulkhead, and then I moved forward and aft from there, working each side as I went. At one point I had set about five rivets on the left side F-722 aft fuselage bulkhead when I noticed the fit wasn't right...uh...never dimpled it. Thank goodness I hadn't set all the rivets. Oh, and the right side wasn't dimpled either. After drilling a few rivets out, I started over.

By the end of the day I had most of the forward fuselage rivets set, some of the mid-section, and the F-722 skin clecoed in place. Steve Workman is stopping by tomorrow to help rivet and I'm cautiously optimistic that we might actually be ready to "flip the canoe" tomorrow...something to look forward to.
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F-684 gussets with nutplates attached

F-684 gussets with nutplates attached

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Test fitting the landing gear attach bracket

Test fitting the landing gear attach bracket

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Left side riveted

Left side riveted

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