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Dave's RV-7A Builder's Log
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Date: 10-20-2013
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Number of Hours: 4.00
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Manual Reference:
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Brief Description: Fitting side skirts
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More canopy work today. The goal for the session was to make some progress on the side skirts, which I knew was going to involve a lot of measuring, marking, drilling and deburring--all some of my favorite building activities. Joking...
The builder’s manual suggests modifying the line of fasteners if there is a big discrepancy between the height of the frame from front to back--I guess this is to keep the skirt basically level to make everything look better. After measuring mine, I had about 1/8" difference (not much) but I was planning to cut the bottoms off of the canopy brackets to help the canopy/windshield transition, so this seemed as good a time as any to get the RotoZip out and cut. Off with the canopy—usually uneventful, but today was the day that I somehow got my foot caught in the step ladder and down we went. Of course I sacrificed my body for a $1,000 piece of acrylic, who wouldn’t? Let’s just say the canopy and frame are fine and leave it at that. Not my finest moment.
Back to the building. The actual side skirt is a 4" x 32" piece of aluminum that runs from the bottom 5/8" on the side of the canopy to about 1/2" down on the sides of the fuselage. Ideally this fits perfectly against the sides when the canopy is closed. I've read a lot of stories to indicate this is not likely to happen, so I've got a few backup plans in mind. After all of the requisite marking, drilling, etc, I drew a centerline on the canopy frame and began drilling the skirt to the frame. Once that was done the work shifted to the inside bracket which must be match drilled through the outside skirt, blind through the inside skirt, and hopefully directly into the hole in the canopy frame. This wasn’t going as well as I’d hoped, so I stopped after only a couple of holes to assess.
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C-660 side skirt cut and drilled
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Skirt is drilled to the canopy frame
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Lining up the skirt and inside bracket
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