Joshua's RV-9A Project

Apologies for the previous two days’ posts…I’ve been working on the plane alongside transition training this week, and my mind is trying to absorb all that, and not recalling the precise details of all the build stuff.  Today, we flew for 3.3 more hours (in two blocks), and hammered out 15 landings across 4 different airports.

Before flying this morning, I had time to countersink, deburr, and rivet the hinge into the nose leg fairing.  After we finished for the day, I tried hard to get the rest of the pants & fairings done — didn’t succeed, but it’s close.  Still waiting on intersection fairings, so I’ll either fly without, or find a different source.  I did — after a trip out to buy hoseclamps — get a bunch done, though:

• Fit, installed, and aligned the nose leg fairing.
• Reinstalled the nose pant cap…this essentially finishes the nose gear work.
• Countersunk, deburred, and riveted the hinges to the main leg fairings.
• Trimmed and retrimmed the man leg fairings for fit and brake like clearance.
• Added an extra brake line securing point to the bottom of the leg, to keep the hose from rubbing the fairing as it exits to make its turn aft to the caliper.
• Laid up two plies of glass inside the tabs at the top of the leg fairing.  This’ll be trimmed again later, and filed/heated to fit around the leg.  Set aside to cure overnight.
• Pulled the R main wheelpant and countersunk the attach screw holes, installed the split line nutplates…this one is ready for installation.
• Looked at installing nutplates on the brackets, and found that two regular one-leg nutplates (as I’d been planning) won’t fit on the outer bracket side-by-side.  I’ll need to order a handful of the mini one-leggers, if I can figure out the part number…also, more #6 tinnerman washers, as I’ve run out.

Back home to do chores, rest & recover…more training at 7:30 am tomorrow.

Milestone: crossed 1900 hours of work on the project tonight.