Joshua's RV-9A Project

Started out with a few hours spent priming all the flap & pitot mount components.  Had some trouble with that, but nothing major…the tip of the gun continually clogged up with a “skin” of primer, a result of (I believe) the warm temps, direct sunlight warming the primer in the gun hopper, and the fact that I was using the last slug out of a quart of primer.  When I opened a new jar, I realized that the old stuff was noticeably thicker–because the solids settle to the bottom, and even though I stir thoroughly, my stir skill must not be up to par.  Some of the solvent portion of the mixture probably flashed off over time too, since this can has been used for spot-priming, as well as several gun sessions.  Oh well, everything that needed primer got coated.

The first task is assembling the flap brackets/nose rib assemblies.  I clecoed the brackets and spacer blocks together for each bracket, then ran a Q-tip dipped in primer around the inside of the lightening holes to coat them better, as that spot is difficult to get good coverage on by shooting, at least to a painting amateur like myself.  Then added the nose ribs, which form the outside of the assemblies, and riveted them together.

Clecoed and riveted the bracket assemblies to the spars.  The first one took some head-scratching to figure out the best way to get at all the different rivets.  Combination of the longeron yoke and standard yoke, with various set configurations, got most of the rivets; the only ones needing to be shot were the three in the “elbow” of the heavy angle on the inboard end of each flap.  The second spar went much faster, since the figuring was already figured.  After the brackets were in place, the main ribs were added to the spars, and those rivets are easy to get at with the longeron yoke.

Continuing on with the right flap, I clecoed on the top skin, followed by the nose skins.  Weighted to the table, I drilled the nose rib holes to 7/64″ for the blind rivets, then installed all the skin-nose rib rivets.  The right flap is ready for top skin riveting.

Took advantage of a day off work–probably the last for awhile with the semester starting next week.  Hopefully progress won’t come to as dreadful of a stop as it did last school year, but I lose at least two nights a week, often more, from here to the end of May ’10.

Countersunk the spars and TE wedges, then dimpled all the skins & ribs, followed by several hours swimming in etch.  These flaps have a great lot of parts.  Ready for priming, but not enough time before sunset to get it done, and past experience priming in the dark wasn’t a pleasant experience.

More flap deburring tonight…wrapped it up with the flap skins.  Countersinking & dimpling remain.