Joshua's RV-9A Project

Thanks to the thread archive over at RivetBangers, I was able to figure out the appropriate location for the pitch servo bracket, as no dimension is given on the drawing provided by TruTrak.  (The forward edge of the bracket is placed 2.8″ behind the centerline of the bellcrank pivot hole, if you’re looking for the info…this centers the bracket nicely on 4 existing rivet locations.).  With that info in hand, I drilled out the four necessary rivets on the bellcrank rib, then drilled the bracket to the rib.  I did the four top rivets, added three on the bottom, and then four equally-spaced rivets joining the bottom flange to the skin.  To keep proper edge distance on the fore/aft edges of the flange, the rivets are not exactly aligned with those of the bellcrank rib, but this is on the center of the bottom of the plane, you’d have to crawl underneath and look up to see it–if anyone is putting in the effort to look that close to see if the rivets are misaligned, then I guess they deserve to find the mismatch!

With the bracket drilled, I removed it and deburred all the holes, then dimpled the bottom skin with the pop-rivet dimple dies.  I followed this up by looking at the install of the baggage wall; it looks like the baggage floor is supposed to go in first, so I pulled the bits that need priming out, to be dealt with later, and pulled the baggage floors out for deburring.

Of course, before the bag floors can go in, I need to run wire to the tailcone, or decide to run conduit under the baggage area.  I’d also like to get a tech counselor out to have a look at the structure before I start closing things up; coordinating that with my crazy schedule through mid-May ought to prove interesting.

Spent some time with the shop vac, sucking up all the FOD that has accumulated in the fuselage from drilling and deburring.  Finally, I got around to installing and torquing the 4 bolts that hold the seat ribs to the center section bulkhead, on the ribs that I had to reverse earlier.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 25th, 2010 at 10:15 pm and is filed under Upper Fuse & Skins. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.