The building of a Vans RV-14: April 2016

4/30/16

4/27/16

More wires

I put in a coax cable and two AWG24 wires into the right wing, all the way to the tip. For an eventual VOR/Loc antenna and 5v for cameras or other things.

4/25/16

Today I got wire for the heated pitot, Nav-antenna and backup wire for things like power to a GoPro or similar. I also got a replacement AN4-32A bolt, for the one I bent when trying to install the right wing aileron actuation.

Tonight I installed the above actuation and fixed the sound in the shop (Windows 10 driver issue)

Cleaning up and purchases

Cleaned up the tools and work area last night. Today I got some cables so I should be able to close the wings soon.

4/23/16

Proseal 3, the remaining inner ribs on the left tank

With help, things went rather smoothly today. Some holes refused to align and needed lots of convincing but all went well in the end.

Many thanx to Jan-Erik!

4/20/16

I need to have parallel projects

I remember reading an article about building efficiency, I think it was in Kitplanes. One of the tips was to have several smaller projects going on in parallel with the intent that if something could not be done for whatever reason, there would always be something else to do int the shop.

I have gotten away fine without this practice up until now, the time needed for each proseal session does not exist in a weekday, this has already cost me at least 20 hours of potential work... I will try to get the planned cable purchases done shortly so that I can have "riveting the bottom skins" as a parallel project to the tank building.

4/17/16

First rib in place

Some misunderstanding resulted in me being alone today. The plan was to rivet 5 ribs into one tank or even five on the other as well if things ran smoothly.

Now I made a new plan and riveted the fuel fittings to the end ribs, closed the tooling holes in the end ribs, bettered the sealing of the stiffeners and then had time for one rib.

I really hope to not do another rib by myself, the good is that I think the result was fine but it was a pain to hold the bucking bar and position the gun while at the same time put pressure and holding the parts in place.

The bad is that doing it by yourselves gets your hands covered with proseal almost immediatly, I probably used over 30 gloves on this session.

4/10/16

More cleanup and re-fluting

I re-fluted the ribs to make em fit better.

Proseal clean up

Acetone worked to remove most of the proseal that got stuck on the outside of the tanks.

4/8/16

Proseal 1 It is as bad as they say ;)

First session done. The plan was to do the stiffeners and some fuel fittings but even though I think I used less than an optimal amount, I had difficulty in making one tube last for all stiffeners.

Somehow I missed the back-riveting plate when doing two rivets so they had to be drilled out, apart from that I think the session went well.

Not to bad but I need to put some more proseal on some shop heads and at a few places along the stiffeners.

I am trying to follow the process shown in this tread:
http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=118078&highlight=fuel+sessions

I got some great practical hints from this RV9A blog:
http://www.smittysrv.com/more_stuff.asp?ID=296

4/5/16

Prepping

Now I have done just about as much preparation for riveting the stiffeners with proseal as I can think off. I have read that the session I am planning to do takes 4-5 hours, the question is if this includes the prepping I have done or only the actual mixing, placing and riveting...

Since once I have mixed the proseal, I cannot take a long break or stop and continuing at another time without losing that batch of proseal, I think I will wait with the first session until I am sure to have at least 4 hours to spend.

4/3/16

Busy weekend, more tank preparations

Switched tires on both cars, mounted new lights in a bathroom, went for a short flight with the family(In a Cozy3/Cozy classic) and doing some time in the shop. Really close to start mixing up some proseal.