Joshua's RV-9A Project

Later in the evening, Allison helped rivet the J-channels into the wing assembly, and re-install a handful of bad rivets that were drilled out from the last session.  All that remains to be riveted on the top skins are the skin-front spar rivets.

While waiting for the water level to drop in the fuel tank test, assembled and drilled the four aileron brackets, as well as fabricated the aileron stops out of the supplied angle.  Set the brackets aside for drilling to the wing after we flip it nose-down in the wing cart.  Pondered over the flap brackets, for which there are several parts to fabricate from angle stock, along with much drilling to the wing.  Also pulled out the rest of the aileron pieces and removed the blue plastic.

Set up the right tank for a leak test…as with the left tank, still fighting with the tape over the fuel cap, but after a couple tries, I think I got it to seal tight.  The pressure held fairly consistently until the temperature started to fall as the sun went down, and there were no bubbles observed on the spray-with-soapy-water check (except for the plug in the drain fitting, which I tightened to stop the leak), so I’m optimistic about this one.  Having no obvious leaks makes me feel almost as if something’s gone wrong, since reports of leaks on initial testing seem to be common…I suppose the true test will be in several years, when they see fuel for the first time.  Left the tank set up on the manometer, and will check again tomorrow to see how it fared.