More fuselage work ...

Final drilled the holes for roll bar. This is harder than it looks and takes a lot of prep work that isnt obvious from my reading of the plans. The bases of the roll bars are on a 4 degree angle. If the supports under the longeron weren't put in at the same 4 degree angle, the bottoms of the roll bar wont lay flat on the longeron.





















Started riveting the turtledeck. The turtledeck is the top rear skin from the rear of the passenger seat to the tail of the aircraft. I was able to do the last third of the turtledeck by myself but will have to have rv4chick help me rivet the rest of it as one person will have to be inside the fuselage to buck the rivets while the other person is outside with the rivet gun.
RV4chick is quite petite and the fuselage is pretty narrow and confining. Wonder why then am I going to end up inside bucking the rivets?

















Drilled and clecoed the piano hinge for the canopy to the right longeron. Its really important to keep the longeron straight from the passenger seat to where the hinge starts behind the instrument panel so the hinge won't be in a bind when the canopy opens and closes.

March 21st, 2008 fuseage accessories

Fabricated the U channels or F404G parts that fill in the vertical part of the wing spar attach points for the fuselage.
The F-404G channels are installed with pop rivets as there is no way to get access to the inside to rivet them. I will leave them clecoed in place until after the aircraft wiring is installed. That way if I need to route some wiring through the F-404 bulkhead, it will be a lot easier to do.

March 20th, 2007 fuselage accessories...

Fabricated the pushrods that go between the pilot stick, the copilot stick and the elevator bellcrank.

March 16th, 2007 Mounted 53KT instrument panel

I temp mounted the instrument panel from N53KT in the new fuselage to see how it would fit. At this point, I am planning on selling most of the equipment in the panel and installing a Dynon FlightDek-D180 with the primary flight display and engine instruments combined into one box instead of installing the six pack panel back into the new RV.

March 15, 2008 Fuselage assessories continued....

The new RV-4 elevator bellcranks from Vans are almost remade. Just have to assemble them.
This gives me an idea of what it must be like to build a newer model of RV that is prepunched and match drilled.
















The completed bellcrank.

Jan 20th, 2007Move to new hanger

After 4 years, we finally got to the top position on the hanger wait list at Goodyear airport (KGYR). It took 3 weekends of moving to get the stuff moved out to the hanger.
Moving the RV6a and RV4 fuselages to the hanger was the easy part. Since they were both on wheels or roller, we just rolled them onto the trailer, secured them and drove carefully to the new hanger and offloaded them. I mounted the set of main gear legs from N53KT to the new fuselage for the move. I have a new set of legs that is not drilled yet.