Monday, September 06, 2010 -
Howdeeeeee! I'm building an RV-9A from
Van's Aircraft.
Take your shoes off and sit a spell. Give me a holler
if ya' got questions or ya' just wanna chew the fat about RV's.
1/8/2006 - Getting the left elevator spars and ribs ready for assembly After taking everything apart, I countersinked the top row of rivet holes on the elevator spar. This allows use of a flat head rivet on the outer skin and attachment for the elevator hinge inside the ... read more
1/11/2006 - Primed the Left Elevator Inerds Today I had some off time to work non-stop on the RV. You know you're having fun when you forget to eat or pee. I put on my double filter rubber mask that I got Lowes and primed the inerds on a hunk o ... read more
1/12/2006 - Getting setup to put in the rest of the spar rivets I had quite a few rivets left to be put in, riveting the elevator skin into the main spar. I wedged two 4 inch foam mattresses between the spar and the bottom skin to hold the spar away from the skin. ... read more
1/18/2006 - Drilled the Left Elevator trailing edge This time I think I know what I'm doing. I raised the trailing edge with a couple of boards until the chord line of the elevator was parallel to the table. I marked the aluminum wedge center line and ... read more
2/5/2006 - Started work on scuffing the Trim Tab skin for the foam wedges It was little tough trying to figure out exactly where to draw the lines for the scuffing of the trim tab interior for the foam wedge attachment, but I think I got right. I used my framing square agai ... read more
2/8/2006 - Started work on attaching the Trim Tab Horn The instructions say to rivet the Trim Tab Horn to the Trim Tab skin. This seemed a little weird to me, knowing that I would have to bend the skin end tabs at some point. The Trim Tab Horn would defin ... read more
2/9/2006 - Started work on bending the end tabs on the control horn side What a major pain in the butt! The instructions say to go ahead and rivet the trim tab horns on and then bend the tabs on the skin. I beg to differ. I can see that riveting on the control horns would ... read more
2/15/2006 - I've got wings! 400 pounds of pure joy! The trucking company got their delivery schedule a little bit messed up. The wings were supposed to arrive between 11 am and 1 pm, but didn't. I called them and found out that ... read more
2/16/2006 - Prosealed in the foam wedges Once again, I forgot take pictures. I mixed up some proseal and put a layer of it on the wedges and placed them inside the trim tab skin. Then I made the wooden clamps according to the plans and put e ... read more
2/19/2006 - Riveted the Left Elevator trailing edge I put my steel angle on the edge of the work bench and back riveted the rivets and then finished them off with the mushroom head. This time I didn't turn the elevator over to finish off the rivets. I ... read more
The "cover your butt" section
This website was built to document my work on my RV-9A in
compliance with the FAA requirements needed to certify my aircraft. My experiences and comments are by
no means to be considered as instructions on how to build an RV-9A or any other aircraft.
