Joshua's RV-9A Project

Over the past two nights, spray-painted both sides of the steel links that connect the rudder pedals to the cables.

Sprayed primer on the forward top skin, and left to dry overnight.  Located the steel strip from which the rudder pedal links are to be cut; marked and cut those, drilled the holes, and rounded the ends on the bench grinder.  Sanded them down, and sprayed a coat of primer to keep them from re-rusting.  Tomorrow I’ll spray a topcoat on them, and then they will be installed prior to riveting the top skin, to take advantage of easier access.

Took some high-resolution photos of the area forward of the subpanel, which may come in handy later on when I need to recall how something was done under there, or visualize it from a different angle prior to stuffing myself under the panel to work on it.  Then, started prep on the forward top skin, which’ll soon be riveted in place over that area.  Deburred, dimpled, and scuffed the skin.  Hopefully we’ll have a warm calm evening this week to shoot the white primer on it–I’ve used white on everything in that upper area, with the hope that it will make working up there more pleasant/visible later.

I need to pick up some more syringes from the farm store to use for placing the firewall sealant before riveting.

Took another look at the fit of the empennage fairing; I’d like to get that done before the weather turns too cold, so that I can pull the tail feathers, move them to the hangar, and have room for cars in the garage during winter.

Quite awhile today spent installing the current shunt on the alternator line — fabricated a doubler plate, drilled the mounting holes and rivet holes, installed nutplates, dimpled/countersunk, riveted in place, and located screws sufficiently long to attach it.  The location I chose (right next to the alt fuse) allowed the existing wire to be used without retermination, but I do need to buy another strip of copper bussbar to connect the shunt to the fuse.  Re-tied the wire bundles where I added the wires from the shunt to the EFIS.

With the shunt in, I turned attention to fabricating coverplates for the rest of the gaping holes in my panel — EFIS 2 and the IFR gps/nav/comm (which will probably be a GTN650 if that day ever comes).  Cut some panels out of .032 stock, and riveted angle to the left & right sides, primed, and painted black.  I’ve affixed them with cleco clamps for now, but my plan is to try some small binder clips from the office store, as they’re far lighter and lower-profile.  I don’t want to drill holes to attach them, since I want them to be easily removable, and don’t want to interfere with the places holes might need to be drilled to mount instrument trays later on.

With the blank plates in place on everything now, the panel is essentially complete.

The best laid plans, they say…  the summer was basically a bust as far as the plans I had to work on the plane, but not all for naught, as I did get some other projects started/done, and have been doing more flying, including some in-state XC day trips.  I had hoped to take a week off work in June, and a week in August, and lay down the hours; the June week I took, and spent it doing work at home, and the August week never happened due to a cadre of projects that needed to be largely done before the school year started.  Now we’re back to the old routine: evenings & weekends when other things aren’t happening.  The last home project for the summer was to “organize” (aka “restack more neatly”) the garage/shop, in hopes of getting at least one vehicle inside for the winter.  Fall will bring more projects, but tonight, I headed out to the shop for the first time in over a month.

Not really having a specific place I left off, I started by looking over things and making a mental list of things that needed doing.  I decided to have a go at installing the blast tubes for the Pmags.  Dug out the 3/4″ SCAT, cut appropriate lengths, and affixed them to the flanges on the baffles with hose clamps.  The right side has the oil pressure tap elbow right there, so I secured that tube in position with a ziptie around the elbow.  The left side has nothing in the right spot for that, so I made a little holder clip that bolts to the mag hold-down stud, and has a half-circle for the tube to nest in, and a slot for a ziptie to wrap around the tube.  This worked out well, and I would have made one for the right side too, but I don’t think there is enough room to get one in there.  I also made a blast tube for the alternator, but I haven’t yet figured out how to secure it to the alternator itself, nor exactly where it should point.

I’ve decided to mount the current shunt, which I initially left out thinking the VP-X would provide the amps feed to the EFIS.  It does, but the EFIS doesn’t display it on the main screen, nor provide a way to alarm on it; it’s display-only on the VP-X page.  With no indication that this may be forthcoming, I’m opting to install the shunt, which will give me a different type of current reading anyhow; having both available may make it easier to troubleshoot certain types of electrical problems.  (The VP-X will indicate how many amps are being drawn by the electrical systems, and the shunt will indicate hoe many amps are being supplied by the alternator.)  Located and marked the mounting location, and did the inital running of the wire pair that connects the shunt to the EFIS.