Van's RV-9A in Aurora

The Big Picture

The Big Picture
Flying! 8/28/2011

Saturday, October 3, 2009

5.0 hrs, 112 rivets
And so the rivet count starts going up. It sure is good to make serious progress again. It's been almost 8 weeks since any major sub assemblies got put together, but I've been putting in about 15 hours a week the whole time.

Finished countersinking longerons.
Cleaned and primed longerons. I was trying to finish this task before the expected rain. I had just finished and went outside to see if I still had time to paint when the first sprinkles started. So the priming was done in the garage.

Looked at what need to be done next on the aft fuselage. Installing the ELT mounting bracket would be much easier now rather than later. Got out the ELT, and looked at the mounting hardware. It was these cheesy stainless steel screws and nuts. No lock washer, no aircraft nuts. It took about 2 minutes to realise that #8 screws and nutplates were the way to go. So installed the nutplates on the ELT mount and then used pop rivets to rivet the ELT mount to aft fuselage.



Riveted pitch servo bracket to bellcrank rib.



Cleco 706 bulkhead to aft fuselage.
Rivet bellcrank rib to 707 bulkhead and bottom skin.



Rivet servo bracket to bottom skin.
Cleco longerons to aft fuselage.



Start riveting longerons to aft fuselage.