Mid Fuse Ribs

No building yesterday due to a sick dog and some last-minute things that came up, but tonight we're happy to see Dag doing a lot better and got some more great progress on the fuselage. I hate to say this so early on in the fuse build, but this is definitely some of the most fun building we've had so far... most of the steps are pretty short bursts between prep work, priming, and riveting so it really feels like a lot is getting accomplished in a short period of time! Hardest thing about all of this is reading/following the plans properly... more on this later.

With the inboard seat rib subassemblies match-drilled and complete, we moved on to do basically the same kind of work for the outboard seat rib assemblies. One word of caution: the side of each piece that you are supposed to dimple is different between the outboard and inboard ribs, and without staring at the plans for quite some time this is an easy detail to miss. I *almost* dimpled the outboard ribs backwards but caught my mistake just in time. Anyway, with the inboard and outboard assemblies drilled, deburred and scuffed, it was time for a quick primer session:

F-1016 inboard/outboard seat rib subassemblies

Next, it was time to rivet these assemblies together, which overall went pretty well. I did end up having to drill out two rivets along the bottom of each of the outboard rib assemblies though, because the plans weren't very clear (in my opinion) about which side to place the manufactured head of the rivet. One diagram shows the rivet callouts, which is typically all you need, then only in a later diagram there's an arrow saying "shop head on other side"... thanks for that! Woulda been nice to know earlier. No major foul, everything drilled out perfectly and after redoing them you'd never know what happened. I'd say in general, the plans are most definitely starting to assume you not only "know what you're doing" but also know how to read their plans-- which, depending on what section you're working on often requires the elusive skill of divination. I'm still working on that one myself.

Anyway, after a bit of riveting we had all four assemblies... assembled.

The inboard (bottom) and outboard (top) seat rib subassemblies.

Other side of the subassemblies. Sorry for the bad photo.

With these ribs riveted together, it was time to put together the flap motor brackets, which only involves basically three more pieces and a vent tee. Although they were a bit tricky to align and drill, it was quick work to drill and deburr everything and get the two inboard halves mated, shown here:

The flap motor attach brackets and vent tee installed between the inboard seat rib assemblies

After that, it was time to attach the whole works together, to the Aft Center Section Bulkhead! This was an exciting step because it's the first time the parts are coming together to build the first "three dimensional" part that will essentially make up the floorpans for the rear seat passengers. After a few match-drills, deburrs, bolts, and rivets, we had this:

Completed seat rib/aft center section subassemblies

R side view of the fuselage so far

With that, it was time to call it a night... next up, the rear seat ribs! From the looks of it in the plans, there are 12 ribs that go under the back seat, so I see lots of fluting and deburring in our future (see, I'm getting better at that whole divination thing)!

Mid Fuse Bulkheads - Fuel Tanks - Mid Fuse Ribs

Tons of progress yesterday, and today too! Picked up right where we left off last night and finished riveting the F-1004B Mid Fuse Bulkhead:

The completed F-1004B Bulkhead

F-1004B right side closeup - 30 rivet holes and 8 bolts on this piece, with a vertical line left open for now to accept ribs later on.

F-1004B left side, mirror of right

Two down, two to go! Next up was the F-1005 Bulkhead. This part was pretty straightforward to assemble, the only tricky thing being to take note of all the rivets to be left open for now to accept other parts later on.

F-1005 assembled, with a number of rivets left open per plans

View of left side of F-1005

Lastly, time to assemble the F-1034 Bulkhead. With only 24 rivets, it was done pretty quickly:

F-1034 Bulkhead complete!

Once the four bulkheads were assembled, it was time for "family" photo of the four of them stacked up:

All four bulkheads done!

This was exciting... we completed the first chapter of the fuselage without really breaking much of a sweat! TONS more to do, of course, but this was a great start...

With that, it was time to shift focus temporarily back to the wings, and re-test both tanks for leaks. Both tanks tested perfectly!

L tank holding steady 1 psi

While each tank was on the pressure test bench, I masked off the attachment flange and gave it a quick shot of primer to attach the VA-146 bearing and nutplate shims (from back in Section 18-5 Step 5). This completes the fuel tank section now too... woo! So, why not grab a few screws and bolts and attach them to the wings?

Fuel tanks attached - the wings look huge with everything bolted on!

Wings complete, minus wiring (80% done), bottom skins (40% done), and actuation (50% done)

Exciting! With that, we were able to get just a little jump start on the next chapter of the fuselage, Section 26 - Mid Fuse Ribs & Bottom Skins. This looks like a pretty big chapter, so I doubt it will be done in 3 days like the last one. Either way, here's the first few parts laid out:

The F-1016F-L/R inboard seat rib subassemblies coming together

These subassemblies go along the "tunnel" between the front and backseats, and have parts in them for front seatbelts and rear floor ventilation. Just a little final drilling and deburring, and it was time to call it a night. Awesome weekend of building, hope we can keep this up!!

Mid Fuse Bulkheads

Continued with the F-1004B Center Section bulkhead this morning. Finished match-drilling, countersinking, and deburring. Man, these EZ-Burrs are great for parts like this. Anyway, one more shot of this part before coming apart for scuffing and priming:

The F-1004B mid-fuse bulkhead. The hat stiffeners shown here still need to be trimmed at the bottom to allow for bucking bar clearance... will do that in the final deburring stages.

On to the third bulkhead, the F-1005 Rear Spar Bulkhead. This is a pretty stout piece, but not nearly as much as the first two, which are partially constructed at the Van's factory due to larger-size rivets and precision tolerances. This is the first structural piece of the fuselage Van's trusts us to build completely :-)

F-1005 Rear Spar Bulkhead

More of the same here, just match-drilling and countersinking as the plans require. One note, the plans have you countersink a few of the #8 screw (#19 drill) holes along the inner sides of the L/R bulkheads, but the metal is so thin that the countersink can't center very well and ends up chattering quite a bit. I know this isn't a huge issue but I wish I knew of a better way to countersink these holes. Oh well.

With the third bulkhead prepped and pulled back apart, it was time to start on the fourth and final piece of this chapter: the F-1034 Fuselage Bulkhead assembly. I swear I thought I snapped a photo of this similar to the others, but I didn't find it on the camera. Oh well, it's the least exciting of the four assemblies, with a whopping total of 5 parts and only 24 holes to drill and deburr. <Yawn>

Once all these parts were complete, it was time to have a mass-deburring, filing, and inspection party. Sarah manned (or womanned) the belt sander while I manned the drill press with scotch-brite ball. In what seemed like no time at all, we had a pretty big handful of parts ready for primer:

All the mid fuse bulkhead parts ready for primer

The seat rail supports, also ready for priming

Once everything was primed, I had a free hour or two and decided to get a bit more organized with my hardware storage bins. We've been using these storage trays available from Harbor Freight, which I think are absolutely awesome. Each compartment comes out as its own bin, so you can grab just the bins you need for a particular task and then put them back where they came from when you're done. The trouble is, we only really fully organized our hardware with rivets and a few other select fasteners, but never really got around to sorting all the AN3 hardware, screws, washers, etc. Now that the fuselage kit is here with an intimidatingly huge box of hardware, it's time to "do it right" and spend the necessary few hours it will take to get everything sorted properly. So, we spent the rest of the afternoon sorting parts and labeling bins, unpacking the fuselage hardware bags in the process. This is the less exciting side of homebulding, but hey, it's gotta be done!

Anyway, after a quick break for dinner it was time to get back to assembly. The primer had dried and we were ready to begin assembling the bulkheads.

The F-1004A Bulkhead starting to come together

36 rivets and 8 bolts (only 2 for now) per side.. these things are pretty well attached for sure!

The completed F-1004A Bulkhead assembly

By this time it was getting late, but before calling it a night I decided to cleco the next assembly, the F-1004B together:

F-1004B assembly ready for rivets... goodnight!

Mid Fuse Bulkheads

We typically don't do much work in the factory on Fridays, but a low beer intake at the usual Friday after-work bar session combined with a high motivation level yielded a couple hours working on the plane tonight. We dug through the hardware bags and found the drill bushing we needed to match-drill the landing gear to the center section bulkheads. After drilling, the landing gear mount looked like this:

Landing gear mounts: These won't be fully installed for a while yet, but the match-drilling needed to happen now so that the rest of the assembly could be put together, and then these should easily just bolt into place later on.

With the mounts drilled, the prep work for the first of four bulkheads was done, and it was time to pull it all back apart and get started on the second.

The F-1004B Center Section Bulkhead with aft seat supports, hat stiffener, and L/R bulkheads attached.

Going pretty smoothly so far! Each bulkhead has a pretty high number of rivets that hold everything together, so it's definitely a workout on the drill going through every hole.

That's pretty much it for tonight... looking good! With any luck we'll be able to keep up the pace this weekend... stay tuned!

Fuselage Begin

So the wings aren't 100% done, but they are "done enough" to begin work on the fuselage. Really, all that's left is re-testing the fuel tanks and finishing up a few smaller tasks like actuation and wiring. I figure we can get to these parts periodically through the fuse build just to switch things up a bit. The only big thing left to do is the bottom skins, but we're holding off on those for a bit longer, possibly until just before we move to the airport. We'll see!

We spent a few minutes in the shop cleaning up and organizing a bit more to get ready for the next deep-dive... starting on the fuselage! Time to open the new plansbook to page 1!

Fuselage Step 1: Section 25 Page 1 - Mid Fuse Bulkheads

This section consists of building four separate bulkheads: Two very beefy center section bulkheads to "sandwich" the wing spars on the front and aft sides (the main sections for these were actually shipped with the wing kit), and then two more progressively smaller bulkheads working towards the back. Thinking of it seating-wise, the two center bulkheads will go directly beneath the front seat passengers; the third goes underneath the front part of the backseat; and then the fourth goes at the rear of the backseat, which is also the front of the baggage compartment. It's all just a giant jigsaw puzzle really... with a few rivets holding all the bits together. And it flies. Hopefully.

First step was to create a pair of aluminum angle stiffeners out of 1/16" stock and mark a center line.

Attaching the F-1004P Mid Seat Rail Supports

Next step was to attach the F-1004C L/R bulkheads, which I did but didn't snap a photo of. After a bunch of pretty straightforward match-drilling, the plans then called to grab the landing gear support brackets and mate them up to the assembly. Before going any further, the plans need an "F-Drill Bushing" provided in the fuselage kit and buried somewhere in the hardware bags. We'll have to dig through them to find it, and that wasn't in the cards for tonight. Time to call it for now, but it was a good first day of building a new kit!

Flaps complete!

Crossing items off the "partially complete" list is going swimmingly... tonight we finished the flaps! It went just about as well as the ailerons did on Monday, just a bit longer of course and a few more rivets to contend with. It feels good to be done with trailing edges, they are always such a tedious pain in the you-know-what. Now that all four control surfaces are complete, it was time to bolt it all up to the wing, stand back and take a picture!

L flap, inboard side

L aileron, outboard side

R aileron on left, L aileron on right

I've got some aluminum C-channel that I'll be clamping on to each of the 4 edges for a day or two each, to help them become completely straight while the proseal cures fully. It's still in that perfect state where it's cured, but still cleans off easy enough with acetone, and can be influenced by things like this clamping device. Hopefully when all is said and done, we'll have four perfectly straight and well-aligned control surfaces!

Flaps - Ailerons Complete!

Happy Memorial Day! Today was a work holiday for me, but unfortunately Sarah had to go to work at the airport. So, in an unprecedented and incredibly bold move, I decided to break out the proseal myself and do a round of it solo. All things considered, it actually went pretty well, and somehow I didn't make a giant mess. Sarah would be proud.

I started the solo proseal adventure by gooping up both flap trailing edges and clecoing the assemblies together. I had just enough remaining to attempt to patch up the part of the L fuel tank that appears to be the only place that had a leak. We'll have to let all this cure and retest.

Next, it was time to rivet the aileron trailing edges together, that had been setting up since Saturday. That also went pretty uneventfully, and in short order both ailerons were complete! Yay, something we can check off the "partially complete" list as now "done"!

Not much else to report today, and tomorrow we'll be going to a fly-in BBQ at KIIB. Hoping to get the flaps and fuel tanks completely done sometime this week, then it's on to the fuselage!

Aileron Actuation

Since we're simultaneously working on a few sections, why not start on yet another? Can't think of one good reason! :-)

While we're waiting for proseal to cure, we skipped ahead to section 23 to start on the aileron actuation section. This part of the plans involves constructing a series of pushrods, bellcranks, bearings and torque tubes that will translate pilot input to movement of the ailerons.

No pictures today either (I think we're getting lazy with the camera... need to change that) but basically we got through page 23-4 step 2, which means the four pushrods have been fabricated, as well as the outboard bellcrank installed. Still need to build the forward and aft torque tube assemblies, and clock everything together. We'll work this in as time permits, no huge rush on completing this section either.

That's about it for today, it was a relatively short day in the shop! Tomorrow if we're feeling crazy we might try and knock out the flap trailing edges and bottom skins, and see about patching the one small leak in the L tank.

Flaps - Ailerons - Fuel Tanks

Things are getting pretty hectic in the factory over this long weekend. I feel like we're simultaneously working on 3 or 4 sections at the same time, and all of them are only "half" done. We're halfway through the wing bottom skins but on hold to go any further until we're ready to seal up the wing, we're halfway through with the flaps, we're mostly through the ailerons (except trailing edge), we're mostly done with the tanks but still need to pressure test them... time to move some of these to "complete" status!

Not today, unfortunately. However, we did make leaps and bounds of progress towards this goal. Started this morning with riveting the L and R flap leading edge and top skins to the skeletons. We again installed the flaps onto the wings to check for straightness. They are much more rigid now but can still be influenced one way or the other, albeit only slightly. Still looking straight, which is great news! Then we took them back off the wings and started installing the bottom skins. The flaps are now to the same point as both ailerons: Complete except for trailing edge, and perhaps a few blind rivets that need to wait until the trailing edge is assembled.

With talk of the trailing edges comes talk of Proseal. With talk of Proseal, of course, comes talk of our fuel tanks, namely the goof-up we did with the R tank attach zees being all backwards. So, with the sealant all fully cured it was time to bust out the drill and attempt to carefully remove the seven zees and extract all the rivet tails from the tank. Surprisingly, drilling them out was quite easy (finally, something seemed to go right)! I was also able to fish out about 2/3 of the rivet tails with little issue. The rest of them are still floating around in there for now, but I think the best bet is to try to rinse them out once the tank is sealed up again. We'll keep count, and make sure we get them all.

With the R tank zees removed, cleaned up, and oriented properly, we mixed up a batch of proseal to do the aileron trailing edges and re-attach the zees in the correct order. Happy to say that both efforts seemed to go quite well, and now all that's left to do proseal-wise is the flap trailing edges.

Last thing for the day, it was the "moment of truth" for the L fuel tank. I had bought some fittings, tubing, and valves a week or so ago to make a pressure testing system to connect to my compressed air supply and pressurize the tanks to around ~1psi. This is a higher pressure than what the proposed balloon method allows, which I've read only pressurizes to around 0.5psi. That comes up a little shy of nominal tank pressures during flight when filled with fuel, so I decided to go with this method.

The results were good overall, I'd say. The tank initially held the 1psi pressure, but over the next 10 minutes I noticed it was definitely dropping slightly. A soapwater spray of the tank's exterior quickly revealed the apparent only leak-- at the outboard-top corner where the end baffle meets the aft baffle. Van's points this area out as a common leak source (all four corners, actually), but this particular corner is a sort of "best case" scenario for leaks, as it is the top-most part of the entire tank and theoretically needs to be the least leakproof, so to speak. From the looks of it, we should just be able to goop a bit more proseal on that corner and it should resolve the issue. We'll see if it's that simple... fingers crossed!

Now we wait for some proseal to cure... maybe tomorrow we'll get started on Section 23 - Aileron Actuation! That would be cool, because it's the last chapter of the wing kit! (Except tips, which we're putting off for now...)

Stay tuned!

Fuselage Inventory Continued / Flaps

Finished inventorying the fuselage kit tonight! I believe we did discover one part missing, the F-1059A Baggage Door Forward Frame. I'm sure it's no big deal, the missing part isn't very big at all from the looks of it in the drawings. So far in the build, with 3 kits and thousands of parts (tens of thousands if you're counting rivets) I can handle one little piece being missing. Actually it's still unbelievable to me that they are really this accurate. I'll contact Van's today about it... we're still well within the 30-day window to sort out these kinds of issues. They did get all of my "deletes" perfectly though, so that's a plus!

Speaking of deletes, it seems there is always some interest in questions like "what to delete from the fuse/finish kits and why"... I will try and answer what we decided to do for our fuselage kit here:

1. Windshield and side windows-- replacing with Cee Bailey's windows based on a number of reviews of them versus the stock Van's:
-Delete 1x: C-1005 WINDSHIELD RV-10
-Delete 1x: C-1004-L REAR LEFT WINDOW
-Delete 1x: C-1004-R RIGHT REAR WINDOW
Note: The windows for the doors (and the doors themselves) come in the finish kit. Will be deleting the windows from that kit when the time comes.

2. Heater box-- replace with stainless steel boxes from Plane Innovations. The Van's ones are aluminum that go on a stainless steel firewall, as such they are a weak spot for fire to penetrate.
-Delete 1x: TG-1010 L&R RV-10 HEAT BOXES (2)

3. Fuel valve-- replacing with aftermarket duplex valve (either Andair or Newton SPRL)
-Delete 1x: BAG 487-1 FUEL VALVE RV-10 ONLY

4. Rudder pedals-- replacing with Control Approach rudder pedal system
-Delete 2x: F-1052 RUDDER PEDAL SET
-Delete 4x*: F-1052B BRAKE SIDE PLATE
-Delete 2x: F-1052C BRAKE PDL.DBLER.PLATE
-Delete 1x: WD-1006-L-PC RUDDER PEDAL
-Delete 1x: WD-1006-R-PC RUDDER PEDAL
-Delete 1x: F-6115 CENTER BEARING BUSHING
-Delete 1x: F-8105 BRAKE HOSE 20" 8/10
-Delete 1x: PT-062x1/4x15' HI PRES BRAKE HOSE
-Delete 1x: BAG 1377-1 BRASS FITTINGS/INSERT
-Add 6x: AN822-4D ELBOW 90DEG TUBE-PIPE
*I accidentally only deleted 2, there are actually 4 of these parts.

5. Oil cooler mount-- typically ships with Finish Kit, several builders have commented that it is easier to assemble and install on to the firewall during the fuselage kit. Adding to fuselage order, will be deleting from finish kit order.
-Add 1x: VA-186 OIL COOLER MNT RV-10

Please Note: Our decisions to delete/replace parts were made very carefully, taking into account our mission, goals, aesthetics, ease of build, and most importantly safety. If you are building an RV-10 and reading this list to get ideas on what to delete from your own kit, please use this only as a reference along with doing your own personal research into what options you do and don't want. Van's will send you a waiver when deleting certain parts (such as rudder pedals) warning you about the risks of using nonstandard parts that you must sign and return before they will ship you your kit. Make sure this is something you are comfortable with before making any alterations!

During the inventorying process, I noticed a part or two relating to the stock fuel valve that were still present as a part of other BAG's (handles, spacers, etc), and also I'm not sure if I deleted *all* of the rudder pedal parts. In the end this was the best I could do after discussing with Paul at Control Approach and doing some of my own research through the plans. This list is at least "close" to complete, and I'm happy with the results so far. Of course, the real test will come when we actually start putting this thing together! Until then, we have a semi-organized 4' x 4' x 8' shelving unit chock full of parts:

"Just a few" parts to throw together!

With all that out of the way, it was time to focus back on the flaps. We riveted both the L and R flap skeletons together, which actually went quite well and was a welcome return to building after sorting through all the fuse parts.

R flap skeleton complete, ready to install leading edge skin

View of R flap skeleton at the middle, looking inboard

We clecoed the leading edges and top skins into place, and temporarily installed the flaps back on to the wings to check for straightness (we're paranoid about having twisted flaps). Looking good so far, but it seems quite clear that at this stage the assembly is "vulnerable" to twist. It seems to naturally want to sit straight, but with just a little force it can be twisted in either direction. This was an important observation, and we'll be reinstalling these onto the wings throughout the riveting process until it is rigid enough for us to be confident that we have built them straight.

Looking forward to a weekend of building!!!