Fuselage Kit arrival - inventory

The fuselage kit came today! I have to admit, probably like many other builders, this is the kit I've been most excited about getting since the beginning. It's going to be hard to finish the last couple weeks we have on the wings with this kit sitting here, but hey that's the way it goes. We were both able to get a little time off from work in the middle of the day to meet the delivery truck and get our friends Brannen and Mark over here to help push the crate up the driveway and into the garage. It was a pretty cold and rainy day, unusual for mid-May but that didn't get our spirits down one bit!

Somebody is excited!

The fuselage crate, fresh off the truck and totally undamaged, thankfully!

We couldn't resist taking two minutes to pop the top off the crate and get a first glimpse of the canopy! Sarah quickly poked her finger in there to be the first one to touch it :-)

One interesting note: the bill of lading sent with the kit lists the contents of the crate as "plastic parts", which seemed odd because there's hardly any plastic in here at all, unless you're counting the blue shrink wrap on all the aluminum. Anyway the truck driver seemed puzzled and mildly intrigued as to what was really in the crate and asked me what it was for. I told him, and his answer was simply an unmistakable look that told me I must be nuts. This is the third kit crate delivered to my home for this project, and it's the third time I've seen that look from a driver :-)

That was pretty much it until later in the day when we were both off from work and could commence unpacking and inventorying. First step was to break down the rest of the crate and split the contents up into the "subkits" that each kit ships with. A subkit is basically just a shrinkwrapped bunch of parts that are *not* necessarily related, but for some reason (I assume has to do with inventory at the factory) they get grouped together on the parts list that ships with the kit. It also makes it easier to tackle intentorying everything rather than going through a single list of hundreds of items.

Crate broken down, first full glance at all the kit parts!

First selfie inside the cabin! I think we fooled a lot of our friends on Facebook after posting this into thinking we were a lot farther along :-)

This is what we were actually "sitting" inside of

The steps! Had to give'em a whirl. Nothing to climb into yet, but that will hopefully change in a few months!

Even a first glance at the contents clearly told us we were going to need a better method of storing the many hundreds of parts this kit comes with. After looking around the garage for ideas, I grabbed a few 2x2's and 2x4's that we had on hand and got to work on a thought I had to "upcycle" (I hate that word) the fuselage crate. After about an hour with the chop saw and a drill, I had this very ugly and crudely built shelving unit, complete with staples still sticking out the back of the wood:

World's crudest shelving unit

It's ugly but it's sturdy [enough] and it works! We took a quick break to grab some dinner and then got back to work starting to inventory all the parts, stocking them into our new shelving unit as we went, and trying to keep some order to all the parts. We got through about 6 pages of the inventory list (7 subkits, I think?) but then we started getting tired and cross-eyed. Time to call it a night! We'll finish inventorying tomorrow hopefully, then get back onto finishing the flaps and the rest of the wing kit!

Current state of affairs with respect to inventorying. Lots more to go!

In addition to all the excitement above, we were able to sneak in just a bit of work on the flaps. We primed all the parts and started riveting the nose ribs and hinge brackets together:

The flap parts ready to start attaching to the spars

Still lots more riveting to do on the flaps, but it's coming along! Hopefully we'll be able to get them finished over this upcoming long weekend... we'll see!

Flaps

Flaps are coming along nicely! After work today we got right to work on D&D (deburring and dimpling). Turns out deburring all the ribs, spacers, and skins was about a 3 hour task, even with the EZ-Burrs. It seemed to go by fairly quickly though, and then I dimpled the four top and bottom skins using my trusty ol' MikeyJ-2000. Brought a heap of ribs (42 in total) into the living room with the hand squeezer and got to work dimpling while we watched a short marathon of Criminal Minds on Netflix. Before I knew it, I had a full "done" pile and an empty "to-do" pile... amazing how quick it goes when you're relaxed watching TV! So, in a burst of motivation I went back into the garage to fetch the spars and decided to dimple them on the couch too. Since they are around 8 feet long, it made for some interesting and awkward positioning on the couch. I think Sarah almost got cracked in the head at least twice with a swinging spar. She was a good sport about it though :-)

Anyway, no pics from tonight, but we now have a pile of parts to build both flaps that are basically ready for primer. We'll see if maybe I can sneak that task in over lunch tomorrow and be ready for assembly tomorrow night!

Flaps

Lots of good progress on the flaps today! Assembled both L and R flap assemblies, and finished all match/final drilling tasks. In order to keep the assemblies straight, I decided to go ahead and bolt them to the wings, and use the row of clecoes along the top of the spar to rest against the top wing skin. This row will be what makes the flaps "appear" straight, because the rivet line in this location will be right along the straight edge of the wing top skin... so what better way to ensure straightness than to put everything against the line to which it will be judged? This also helped during Page 22-5 step 3, where we had to match-drill between each pair of hinge brackets. The plans call out to use some washers as spacers to get the distance right, whereas in our case the brackets were actually bolted to the wings themselves and in the exact orientation they will be after final assembly.

Anyway, not a whole ton of pics today other than the flap assemblies after they came back off the wings after the drilling session:

L flap - outboard side

L flap - inboard side

R flap - outboard side

R flap - inboard side

After these photos were taken, we tore down the flaps back to their individual pieces for the always-anticipated task of deburring, dimpling, scuffing and priming. We were going to continue, but since it was so nice out we instead opted to have some friends over for an impromptu grill-out. Summer is coming! (and so is the fuselage kit...)

Flaps

Not a ton of progress today, this morning we had a Young Eagles event at the Marion Airport which I was scheduled to fly at (my first time doing so), but the weather had other plans for us with a low ceiling that lingered longer than was forecast. Postponed to 5/30 now. Then we were off to two back-to-back graduation parties, so by the time we were home we weren't exactly at 100% energy levels to get to building.

Still, it was actually a perfect opportunity to sit down in a chair and whittle away at the 22 flap ribs that needed to have their aft-most upper tabs removed. I did all 11 of the L ribs using aviation snips, but the R ribs needed a good set of left-handed snips, apparently my cheapo Harbor Freight set wasn't up for the task. I ended up getting creative with the dremel tool to cut them off, and then finished all 22 of them with the dremel and a sanding drum to clean up all the edges.

The aft end of a L and R flap rib with the tabs removed. This allows access to the lower tab for dimpling.

Sometimes you have to wonder, why didn't they just make the part this way at the factory and save me an hour or two of uber-boring and tedious work? It's all part of the experience, I suppose, and we'll all come out stronger in the end because of it :-)

Once the ribs were done, they could be clecoed on to the spars and be ready to accept the skins. I started on this but decided tomorrow would be a better time to finish the job. Nothing planned tomorrow except building, so should be a pretty productive day!

Flaps

Spent only maybe an hour tonight in the shop, Started with the "optional" next step which was to make lightening holes in the F-1008 spacers. I marked the three locations on just one of the four pieces and drilled a #40 pilot hole in each spot. Then I match-drilled those pilot holes to the other three spacers, and enlarged them all using a unibit on the drill press. The resulting parts look like this:

The FL-1008 spacers with lightening holes

Next we assembled the L/R center hinge subassemblies, which each contain 6 parts all sandwiched together (including the two spacers from above). Had to dig up some "Long" clecoes to be able to reach all the way through the assembly. This was the first time we used this style of clamp during the entire build so far, which was kind of cool.

Once the center hinge assemblies were together, I was able to cleco all the nose rib assemblies (1 rod end assembly, 3 hinge bracket assemblies, and 2 bare nose ribs) to the flap spar, and set the whole thing aside. I actually found that they sat nicely into their eventual homes, against the wing rear spar, so that's where they will rest tonight. Tomorrow, if there's time we'll start on the 22 ribs that need to be cut and filed!

Flaps

Yesterday we took a short trip with some friends and two other planes to fly formation to KPDC for some delicious steak at Jones Black Angus across the street from the airport. It's a beautiful, scenic part of WI at the Mississippi and Wisconsin River delta, so we both highly recommend it as an excellent meal stop if you're ever in that area! We upped the ante a little bit this time too, and walked a half mile or so further north up the road to Quality Beverage to stock up on Spotted Cow. For those who've been to Airventure at Oshkosh, you may know of Spotted Cow as a delicious local beer that is not available outside the state of WI. We couldn't pass up the opportunity to get ahold of some!

Spotted Cow bootleggers Mike, Sarah, Alec, and Erica. Our friends Jonathan and Gretchen opted to stand on the other side of the camera :-)

Formation flight into the sunset, heading back to Iowa with the goods onboard. Unlikely pairing of two Piper Warriors and a Citabria!

All I will say about trips like these: This is the reason why we love to fly! We cannot WAIT to do many more trips like this in the -10 when it's done...

Anyway, tonight in the airplane factory it was time to get back to work. We cleaned up the garage a bit and got to work laying out all the parts for the flaps. Although the design is slightly different, they still appear to be quite similar to the ailerons, perhaps even a bit more straightforward. For tonight, once we got all the parts laid out, we completed the first few steps which involved marking and drilling a few #40 holes into the flap hinge brackets as well as final-drilling the inboard and outboard nose ribs with their doubler plates. It was simple and fun work that took us through page 22-3 step 2.

The L flap hinge brackets and nose ribs starting to come together

The R flap hinge brackets and nose ribs starting to come together

Our flap workstation, complete with Spotted Cow on the table ;-)

Getting to this part made for a natural stopping point and easy evening of building. This weekend, other than a few minor plans we will be hard at work on the flaps! Fuselage kit is scheduled to arrive on Wednesday next week, let's see how close we get!

Ailerons

Finished the ailerons tonight! Well, except for prosealing and riveting the trailing edges, which I think we'll probably do as a batch job with the flaps and the R fuel tank. Oh yeah, the R fuel tank. Guess what I just discovered we did while I was standing here admiring our work on the tanks?

One of these things is not like the other one

While assembling the baffle for the R tank, I laid out all the attach zees in the correct order and orientation to start from the *outboard* side and not the *inboard* side. So the result? They are all backwards (the L tank pictured on the left above is correct). Grrrrrrr. That was an embarrassingly dumb mistake, and I get to take full credit for it. While we were originally putting these together, Sarah had relinquished her responsibility for the orientation of these parts because she didn't want to mess them up, and trusted in me to get it right. That will teach her...

I guess it's not the biggest deal in the world, things could be way worse. Looking through the forums I found more than one case of a builder doing the exact same thing. It's just going to be a time consuming, frustrating, and tedious ordeal to drill out all of the Zee rivets (12 solid rivets along the exterior flanges and 30 blind rivets for the interior), fish out all 30 of the blind rivet ends, regroup, and re-rivet them into place in the correct order. The hardest part is going to be to ensure we recover all 30 rivet ends. I think this is doable as long as we first wait for the proseal to cure, and take our time getting each piece to come out through the fuel fill opening.

Anyway, that was basically the only real excitement tonight, if you can call it that. Otherwise the ailerons are basically done, and we're ready to begin work on the flaps! We've got a number of plans, mostly related to flying over the next couple of days, so we may not get much more work in until the weekend. Oh yeah, and the fuselage kit should arrive at some point this week!

Ailerons

The past few days have been filled with an array of other plans including hanging out with some friends we hadn't seen in a while, and then going to the Quad Cities airshow on Saturday, where we both somehow got burnt to a crisp under an overcast sky. Saw the Blue Angels for the first time ever, which was really exciting... what a show! That, along with walking the flight line and talking to everyone from the V-22 flight crew to a guy who restored his own DC-3, put us both in the mood for building!

Happy Mother's Day! Made a lot of great progress on the ailerons today. Final-assembled the counterweight and nose rib assembly, and placed them into the leading edge skin for more drilling, this time to make holes in the counterweight for the leading edge itself.

The right outboard nose rib, with counterweight attached

A close-up of the right inboard nose rib, with counterweight attached

The assembly is placed into the leading edge skin so the counterweight can be drilled to make holes for the leading edge blind rivets

After the leading edge assemblies were complete, we deburred, dimpled, and primed the four aileron skins, and then back-riveted the 32 stiffeners to them.

The four aileron skins with 8 stiffeners and 2 end brackets each

Back-riveting a flat and relatively small piece such as an aileron skin is quite easy and stress-free, compared to a lot of the messy work we're used to getting into with the tanks! It was a very welcome change. Anyway once the skins were completed, it was time to assemble the whole thing for drilling the spar and trailing edge. This is very similar to the construction of the elevators and rudder (essentially the exact same process), so I laid out some scrap pieces of wood (for drilling into), ensured everything was straight, square and level, and put the skins and trailing edges together. After a bit of drilling, we ended up with this:

Starting to look like an aileron!

After final-drilling the trailing edge, the assembly came back apart for more deburring, dimpling, and priming. The plans call to dimple the spar, which seemed odd to me (it's 0.040" thick) but we went with it anyway. It's quite a workout on the hands using the squeezer on material that thick, but we got through it all. Next, the leading edge had to be dimpled. Most of the holes could be gotten with the squeezer, but the few that couldn't be reached are a bit tricky to reach. Thankfully, the MikeyJ-2000 dimpler didn't disappoint!

Not a very good shot, I couldn't hold the part straight and hold the camera

Anyway, with the skins dimpled (and primed), it was time to begin final assembly. We cut out and screwed together 6 cradles per the plans to hold the leading edges of the ailerons (and flaps later) during assembly and got to work. First part was to assemble the leading edge. We placed the leading edges into the cradles and clecoed the ribs and counterweight assembly together like this:

Right inboard side of aileron leading edge

Right outboard side of aileron leading edge

It's a pretty tight space in there, especially if you have big hands like me, but it is doable. Without question, the tungsten bucking bar is critical here. Honestly I'm not sure how you'd do it without one. From here through the rest of the day, I just focused on the right aileron. I riveted the nose ribs and counterweight assembly to the skins, and realized I was running low on LP4-3 rivets. I think possibly because I used them when installing the wing leading edges in places where Van's gave you a choice between blind or solid rivets, I'm going to be about 15-20 rivets short I think. I'll have to place an order for some more first thing Monday.

Anyway, after riveting the aileron leading edge together, the spar and top skin could be installed. We clecoed it into place and started riveting it together, from the middle out towards each side. There was plenty of room to work with because the bottom skin still hadn't been installed, so that was going to be the hard part.

The completed R aileron top skin, from the inside

Close-up view of the inside of the R aileron with top skin installed

In order to orient the bucking bar properly, a "bump" had to be created out of some rolled-up duct tape so that it would sit level with the spar flanges.

Now comes the hard part: installing the bottom skins. There isn't a whole lot of room between the skins, and somehow you've gotta get your hand down in there to hold the bucking bar in place to set all the rivets along the spar. I slid the bottom skin into place, and got to work.

There is just enough room to get your hand in there and enough fingertips on the bucking bar to hold it straight while riveting. This photo was taken directly in-line with the bottom skin (you bascially can't see it) and you can see one AN426AD3-3.5 rivet put into the hole, ready to be set.

Got about halfway through the line of rivets... it's slow going but actually isn't all that bad. We shouldn't have any trouble finishing this up tomorrow and hopefully getting most of the way through the left aileron too... then, on to the flaps!!

The race against the ABF truck carrying our fuselage crate continues... who will win??!? :-)

Ailerons

We had originally planned to fly to KPDC today with some friends to grab a steak dinner (because why not?) but the weather wasn't playing nice with us. I think we could have made it there in a pinch but it's not quite as glamorous or fun when you're up there dodging thunderstorms and dealing with bumpy air and gusty winds. So... into the airplane factory we went for a short day today doing some pretty repetitive work... we finished drilling and deburring the counterweight assemblies for both the R and L sides, which involved clecoing the leading edge skin to the spar and nose ribs. Kind of a cool-looking little piece:

Other than that though, I jumped in to help Sarah with the 32 small stiffeners she had cut out from the provided aluminum angle strips. She finished filing/deburring the edges while I final-drilled, deburred, and dimpled the 224 holes (7 per stiffener). Next step I believe is to do the same thing to the four aileron skins and the spars; and then do another round of priming. Then, basically all that's left is to assemble it all! Should only be a couple more days left on the ailerons, at most, I think. Problem is, our schedule is filling up these next couple days so I'm not sure if we'll get much building in until maybe Sunday. We'll see...

Ailerons

Continued working on the ailerons tonight. Drilled, deburred, dimpled, scuffed and primed the nose ribs, hinge brackets and end ribs, as well as riveting each subassembly together. Meanwhile, Sarah got to work on cutting out the 32 stiffeners from their aluminum angle strips. I have to say, things are going so much faster now that we don't have to deal with proseal anymore! It's definitely a welcome change.

One thing to note with the RV-10 aileron plans: our kit shipped with "Revision: 1" ailerons, which is annotated in the bottom right corner of the aileron pages. These plans (and the parts that come with them) appear to be significantly different than the "Revision: 0" plans contained on the CD-ROM we bought containing PDF's of the plans. For sure, the main ribs and hinge bracket design is completely different, and it appears to use the same part numbers too, making things even more confusing. Furthermore, these Revision 1 plans are clearly written by a different author, and so slightly different methods and descriptions are presented for similar tasks you may have gotten used to being described in another way. Lastly, it seems that so far, all the holes are already punched out to the proper size-- no final-drilling has actually been necessary! Everything is already #40, #30, #12, or whatever size they are supposed to be. Weird.

Anyway, we got to the point where all the little nose and end ribs had their brackets riveted together, and called it a night. I'll be sure to take pics next time, there really wasn't much different tonight than in yesterday's pics except everything is primed.

Excited to be past the tanks... feels like the end of the wing kit is approaching!