Joshua's RV-9A Project

More cowling work.  Fabricated camloc mounting strips for the bottom edge, and drilled them in place.  Marked and cut the opening for the oil door.  Fit and trimmed the bottom cowl several times, matching the bottom edge, rear edge, and drilling the holes in the air inlets which join the upper and lower cowls.  Drilled the cowl to the vertical hinges that attach it to the firewall.  Once things fit decently, I marked and cut the overlap between top & bottom cowls, letting it fit close for now; later, it will be sanded back for a paint gap.  Cut and pre-drilled the hinge segments which join the cowls, and started to fit them to the lower cowl before calling it a night.

You know you haven’t done much work on the plane when the “remember me” on the build log has expired and you have to go find your password.  Busy times at work, church, and freelancing.  Should be done in another 4 weeks, then summer can begin.

Worked on fitting the cowling halves together for a bit tonight.  Cleaned up the flanges around the center hole, and got them fitting decent.  Drilled a #30 hole in either side to maintain alignment; will be filled later.  Need to do some reading up on cutting the gear leg notch, and the filler plates that go in said notch.

Made up a long sanding block with a 2′ length of 1×3, and a piece of sanding paper cut in half lengthwise.  A little drywall bead adhesive spray, and presto.  Worked on the fit of the top cowl with a bunch of on-off cycles.  I found that I needed to trim back the camloc strips at the lower sides, because they were hitting the thicker honeycomb-core portion of the canopy.  With everything fitting correctly, and the canopy shimmed at the front with chunks of an old Mouser catalog, I carefully drilled the holes to #30 along the camloc strip, starting in the center and working down.  It seems to have gone alright, the positioning looks fine, even after the catalog was removed.  I intentionally left as little gap at the rear as possible, and it’s a bit uneven in spots, so ‘ll have to carefully sand it to the recommended 1/16″ paint gap.  It’s surprising, actually, how solid the cowling is when it’s clecoed on all around.

A bit of FWF work: installed adel clamps for the oil and manifold pressure lines, and looked at possible clamping locations for the fuel line to the spider.

Finished the preliminary work on the camloc strips for the upper cowling: trimming to length, completed drilling to the firewall, transferred the layout lines for the camlocs, and drilled for the camlocs with the first template (3x #30 holes).  Clecoed the strips back on, and set the upper canopy in place.  Marked a rough trim line that just clears the clecos, and cut with the oscillating saw.  More fitting will be required, of course.

Stopped by the airport while out and about today and picked up a possible lead on a hangar space.

Spent a bit of time messing with the cable throws on the throttle and mixture, then moved on to the beginning of the cowling tasks. For some reason, I’d been dreading making up these camloc strips, but it wasn’t that bad. I took off the top skin and used the forward edge of it as a template to get the necessary curve. I’ll have three pieces: one pretty straight section in the top center, then one additional section on each side to run to the bottom of the top cowl. The pieces have a hockey-stick shape when laid flat, but they fit nicely to the curve of the firewall, and the angle is correct for the slanted portion at the top. Turned out well, so I drilled the side segments in place. Ran out of time to drill the top center piece, but it’s ready. Worked on measuring off the layout for the camlocs, to see where the divisions of the strips could be without interfering, and marked the strips for cutting.  At the spacing I ended up with (3 14/32″), I’ll have 16 fasteners on the top cowl.