Van's RV-9A in Aurora

The Big Picture

The Big Picture
Flying! 8/28/2011

Monday, March 30, 2009

1.4 hrs, 11 rivets
Bought a sheet of 1 inch MDF. Had an adventure on the east side of town trying to find it. The place wasn't where I thought it was. Wanted to rip it in two there, but their saw was only set to cut on the 4 ft dimension. So we managed to squeeze a 49 inch wide sheet into my Honda Odyssey. It just barely fit.
Got it home, extracted it from the van, and used the circular saw to rip it lengthwise. Now I have two pieces of 2' x 8' x 1" MDF to make the aileron/flap construction table. Each piece now weighs about 80 pounds. The finished product will require two people to move. It'll have its own gravity field!

After dinner, finished all remaining right wing top skin/rear spar rivets, and one missing on the front spar, the most inboard and forward rivet. Forgot to get it when we were doing the most inboard rib.

Received a care package from Avery. A long rivet set, and the short single offset rivet set. As I said, I didn't see why this was necessary. When you get to the flap brackets, you'll understand. It made the task easy instead of rivet butchering impossible. I think this comes in the standard kit, but I didn't go that route. You can wait till later, but you will need this rivet set. I think only the eighth inch set is needed, at least the RV-9 kit hasn't had any 3/32 AN470 rivets, and no larger rivets (so far).

With the new set, finished riveting middle flap attach bracket for left wing.

Remove left wing fairings and start deburring.