§34-05 thru -09 Right, §34-06, §34-07

I built up the Right Aileron framework yesterday, but didn't get a chance to document it until tonight.  As hoped, it went together about twice as fast as the Left.  I'm getting back into the rhythm of building and it's really a good feeling.   I've often appreciated the fact that my memories of building the RV-12 are positive, even accounting for the days of frustration and setbacks.   I love flying, I love building, but I'm not real fond of maintaining.  Oh, well.   That's why I'm building again.

I'm still getting to know how to use the pneumatic squeezer.  There were a few rivets that felt 'off' and the part twisted in my hand when the rivet set.  On inspection, I found that there was a gap between the two pieces that were being joined and there was a bit of a bulge of rivet material in between them.  I looked at it for a few minutes before realizing that it wasn't "close enough" and drilled out a few rivets, bent the ribs back towards their desired shape and squeezed again.    Better.

Today I primed the steel balance tubes and proceeded to figure out how to countersink steel.  The countersink tool that I have is an offset handle that you can rotate by hand.   I gave that a try and realized very quickly that I was "Going nowhere mighty fast".  (Scotty, Star Trek TOS).   It took about 30 min of prowling around my converted garage (aka "the shop") before I stumbled upon a solution.  The deburring tool had come with a 12" extension that I never used.  I cut off the end that accepted the counter sink tool and stuck that in the chuck of my hand drill and solved the problem. 

There are several comments in VAF regarding ensuring that the counterweight tubes are properly oriented.  I can't find any difference between them and they appear perfectly symmetrical.  Having said that, I was paranoid that I would mess something up so I decided to completely cleco the LE and TE skins to both ailerons before doing anything permanent. In the process I developed a migraine worth of confusion because the TE skins simply did not align.   I double checked my part numbers (e.g., the suffixes -001 and -002) but everything was correct, except that they didn't fit.  I eventually concluded that I had swapped the identity of the R and L parts in my mind and was actually assembling the wrong parts.   I swapped and everything fit together in typical Van's fashion.

Screwing in the bolts that hold the counterweights on was a challenge.   I truly wish that Mr Phillips had not made such an impression on the manufacturing industry.   Should I ever be asked to select fasteners, I will NEVER select a Phillips head screw.  They require significant axial loading in order to prevent the screw from stripping.  Hex, Robertson (square), Torx -- you name it -- any other screw design (well, not slotted) is better.

OK.  Enough bitching.  Next session will be a lot of preparation of the leading & trailing edges, then clecoeing everything together, then riveting.   That'll be a nice bit of progress!

Completed R frame, 

temporary LE skins, 

attached counterweights

 and trimmed tails.

The building has finally begun! (§34-05 thru -09, Left)

OK, so now we are officially started on actual construction.  It took about 3 hrs de-clecoing the Left aileron skeleton, deburring all of the edges and holes, reassembling and finally using rivets to hold things together.  

Behold -- the Left aileron skeleton

It took me three tries of remembering to ensure that all of the ribs were properly aligned before I started riveting.   The new squeezer is definitely different from using hand squeezers.   While it is easier to actually set the rivets pneumatically, it's a very heavy tool and puts a lot of stress on my thumb (which is not it as good shape as it was 15 years ago!)  I actually found that using it L handed was pretty workable,  I had to drill out my first rivet when I missed being on center with one and it was nice to realize that I remembered how to remove one.  Specifically, I used a #53 bit to make a pilot hole then a #40 to remove the bulk of the rivet and finally a pair of pliers to easily remove the remnants.    The pulled rivets went in without a problem and the old rivet puller showed no signs of age.

I won't have time to work on it today.  Tomorrow I am expecting it'll take me about half the time to assemble the R side.  Stay tuned.

Oh, BTW, today I'm supposed to get the delivery of the backordered and missing parts.  Fingers crossed!

The building has (almost) begun!

We were out of town for the week, playing grandpa & grandma with my daughter's family outside of New Orleans.   We got back late Friday night and Saturday I worked on one of Van's practice projects.  Specifically, there's a simple aluminum box with their logo cut out in front and illuminated from inside by a strip of LEDs.   I already built one and it was a good project to remind myself about how to cut, dimple, deburr, cleco and rivet things together.   The project comes with enough rivets to use either the default LP3-4 pop rivets or you can use a rivet gun.  I elected the latter as I have no significant experience driving rivets.  Alas, the rivet gun I borrowed today didn't work for some reason, so I shelved the rest of the practice project for now.  I will finish it using driven rivets whenever I get a functioning rivet gun.

Having put that on the shelf, I finally started working on the kit itself.  The instructions just say "here's the Left, you just mirror it in your head when you do the Right."  The user group has published a Wiki with errata & gotchas.  One of the first ones is that some of the parts are mis-labeled with respect to orientation.   Van's nomenclature leaves much to be desired.  As far as I've been able to deduce, parts that end with -001 are the first ones designed in CAD.  If a mirrored part is required, it gets a -002 suffix.  Note that these have nothing to do with the left or right of the airplane.

Armed with all of the trepidation that these factors engendered, I elected to do no cutting or bending or anything else that is not reversible.   Instead, I clecoed both of the aileron skeletons side by side.  Even so, there were several steps that are (IMHO) poorly illustrated in the KAI.   I'd love to see orientation vectors (up, fwd, outboard) next to many parts.   I did, in fact, cleco several things upside down or swapped inboard vs outboard.  I was very happy that I hadn't cut or drilled anything!

Right and Left aileron frameworks

When I return to the shop on Wednesday, I'll disassemble one framework, remove the plastic, deburr, etc, and start riveting.   I'll go back to my usual pattern of labeling each post with the pages of the KAI.   Talk next time!

Completely Unpacked Wings

Well, inventorying the small parts only took about an hour or so.   Van's has changed their method of packing small parts and are now using a collection of "tackle boxes" as they are called on VAF.  They are translucent plastic boxes with customizable inserts that are postioned to make ~25-30 little part bins.  Van's then printed a 'parts map' that physically overlays the bins for easy identification.  Think 'box of chocolates' from Valentine's Day with the candies labeled on the inside of the lid.    VAF had a few grumpy comments about parts that spilled over, but mine were just fine.

(I did forget to double check the length of the Cherry Max rivets that I received.  Some very early kits apparently had the wrong length of those parts.)

Tackle Boxes of Small Parts

Despite my reticence about throwing away good material, I just cut up the crate into <5' chunks and folded and tied all of the heavy duty cardboard into individual bundles and drug it all to the curb.   I hope it all got picked up today!  (My wife has not texted me anything to the contrary, so I'm hopeful.) The garage is now officially a workshop and ready for business!

Workshop (neé garage),

 generously donated by my loving wife.

Mostly Unpacked

 I finished unpacking the big crate yesterday.  

Big Empty Crate

I drastically overestimated the shelf space for small items and underestimated the space needed for the skins & spars.  Duh.   I'm not completely happy with where I needed to put everything from the point of view of convenience in working on them, but I am happy that everything is either properly supported or tucked away such that they won't get bent.    There were only 3 pieces that weren't included and I'll have plenty of time to send Vans the discrepancy list before the 30 day window closes.

I opened one of the small crates and just looked at the wing tank, but didn't remove & unpack it yet.  I think I'll take the tanks out of their boxes and discard most of the packing material to get some more room in the shop.   

Small Crate w Wing Tank

I have to figure out how to get rid of the crate & pallet, though.  Even if I could just drag them to the curb for trash pickup, it offends my soul to discard perfectly good plywood.  

Tomorrow I will tackle the 3 tackle boxes of small parts and do their inventory.  I expect that I'll be able to send the discrepancy email to Vans before we leave for vacation next week.   When we get back, I will start my first bit of actual work and assemble another practice kit.  That'll help get my muscle memory back for working with sheet metal and give me something to use to learn to drive rivets.  One of the big selling points of the RV12 was that there were no driven rivets.  Not quite the case in the RV-15, so I borrowed a gun and will get some tutoring and build up the practice kit before tackling the main project.

Wing Kit Arrived!

Yesterday was a big day with the long awaited (9 months since original deposit) of my RV-15 Wing Kit (except for the spars, but they should arrive in about a month or so.)  Van's shipped via a company named ABF.  ABF called me the other day and set up a delivery for Friday May 8th.  Then the status page for the order said May 11th.  I called and they confirmed the 11th.  I pointed out they hadn't notified me about the change, and that the 11th wouldn't work for me.  They said 'OK' and said they'd drop it off on the 8th.  no apologies or anything.  Weird. 

OK, so the delivery window was from 8am to 8pm.  Because I never procrastinate, the garage was completely cleaned and organized and ready for the deliver.  Not.  So at 8am I check the status page (loading) and got to work in the garage.   By noon, I had converted a garage w/ nearly 3 years of cruft & debris into an acceptable and clean workshop.  

Clean & Ready Workshop

Around 1pm, the status page finally said 'out for delivery' and I started to trust them that they would deliver and not make me wait until next week.   Around 4:30, the truck showed up.  The driver cursed that they didn't give him the right equipment to unload it properly so I enlisted my neighbor, Kevin, and his friend and the 4 of us eventually manhandled the crates into the workshop.

Wing kit boxes in the workshop

main box, before opening

Main box

I tackled the main box first. I had to drive out to the hangar to get a Dremel tool to cut the metal straps and grabbed my drill press, band saw, grinder and a bunch of loose/small tools.  I had put off getting tools until the garage had been cleaned and converted in order to not add to the clutter and further drive myself crazy.  I spent about 2 hrs excavating a phenomenal amount of crushed brown wrapping paper out of the box to get to the result you see above.  I'll need to figure out how to package the paper so it can be picked up for recycling, and then I'll tackle the inventory.  BTW, I have 30 days to report any discrepancies for free remediation & shipping.  

10th Condition Inspection is complete

 I fetched the RV-12 back home today.  Ed flew me up in the Cirrus.  Nice flight, except for a 20-30 kt headwind.  It was surprisingly smooth. (Cue the violins playing minor key...).   We arrived at Burlington WI just before noon,  I got an excellent briefing on the things they had found.  There were about a dozen issues that many mechanics would have ignored or not even bothered to document, but Advanced Powerplant Solutions really did a great job capturing those little things and debriefing me about them.   Notice that I haven't talked about anything major.  That's because there weren't any! 😁

N76012 inside APS's hangar

Here she is, buried deep inside APS's hangar.  It took them 5 minutes to get her out and put the other planes back in. Their hangar is spotless.  I really felt comfortable with them working on her.

Top View of Engine w/o Shroud

When Van's designed the original RV-12, they appeared to have been very concerned about cooling.  Back in Feb 2015 I spent a fair amount of effort pulling lots of accessories off of the engine and installing a fiberglass shroud that directed ram air over the fins of the cylinders.  It was ugly and interfered with several maintenance actions and I never liked it.  About a year ago, Vans published a letter that amounted to "the shroud doesn't do anything.  You can remove it if you want."  I want.   It was removed by APS and the above picture shows the engine w/o the shroud.  Check out Feb 2015, sections 46-05, --06 and -07 for comparison. 

If all goes well, I should get my first crate from Vans with the RV-15 wing kit!