Canopy Frame

I think (hope) I'm at a good spot to finally rivet on the aft canopy decks.  These are the C channels that set on top of the longeron and form the base for the canopy to set on.  I can't remember if I pointed this out before or not, but I recently discovered that probably over a year ago I made a measurement error when mating the aft decks to the longerons and drilling the holes. Even though I know I measured over and over, apparently I had a measurement in my head that was 1/4" off from what it should have been.  What that means is that the decks are slid forward about 1/4" further than they are meant to be.  At least I was consistent - I did both sides with the same measurement. This has resulted in some trickle down issues, but they are just annoyances with fit vs actual problems.

Riveting the aft decks on is tricky.  Because they are C shaped and wrap around the longeron, there's not a lot of room to get a bucking bar underneath.  I ground down a 3/8" thick piece of steel, which worked for the vast majority of the rivets.  There is just one rivet on each side that I need a smaller bar for.

With the aft decks in place, it's time to get back to the canopy frame.  I've been excited to get to the canopy, but also dreading it at the same time.  Without exception, it seems to be every builder's least favorite part of the build.  The way it is constructed using a welded frame means that it just never fits well.  Van's completely redesigned the canopy frame for the RV14 because of all the issues with the old design.  But, I'm left with the old design, so here we go.  I've been told by builders who have built multiple RVs that I just need to go in with the mindset that the canopy will not be a perfect fit, no matter what I do.  So I guess I just need to be realistic about it all.

For starters, yesterday I primed some parts to be ready for more painting today.  I haven't fit the canopy skin to the frame yet, but I went ahead and primed it since I had the equipment out.  Once primed, I cut a 1/2" strip of UHMW tape and stuck it to the front edge.  This will help with the seal where it meets the subpanel and seals with weather stripping.

Today I took all of the parts I primed yesterday and hit them with paint.  I've been pretty disappointed in the Stewart Ekocrylic paint, but since I've already painted my interior with it, it's hard to shift gears at this point.  It's just not nearly as tough as I expected it to be.  On the next plane (hahaha), I'll honestly probably just use rattle can paint.  It's about as tough as the Ekocrylic, and it'd be super easy to touch up over time and not have to worry about color.

I may regret this decision, but I decided to scuff up, prime and paint most of the white powder coating on the interior hardware, like control sticks and canopy latches.  I like the dark charcoal color of the paint, and since my interior will be dark grey/black the white powder coat really sticks out.  Everything turned out very nice, but the durability of the paint has me nervous.  I think I'm going to cover all of the high wear surfaces on the interior with clear paint protection film.  That's the thin film that is used as rock chip guards on car bumpers.  That will at least keep the paint from scratching and chipping as easily, and it can always be pulled off and replaced over the years if necessary.

Anyway, back to the canopy frame.  I clecoed the skin to the front rib flanges.  Then, I took it off and filed away a bunch of high spots from welds.  I can see how this is going to take a while.  The aft portion of the frame is a small tube.  The plans tell you to draw a line down the center of the tube so you can line up the skin holes with it and match drill, but in practice that doesn't work very well.  The tube doesn't exactly follow a straight path (a result of welding I suppose, even in a jig).  Some of the holes hit the center of the tube, and others wander to one side or the other.  This is a common problem, so I'm not going to fret about it, especially since this area is just joined with pop rivets.

With that, I came to the first big issue that nearly 100% of builders have.  Because of how the frame is built, as the skin curves over the outside portion to attach to the flat sides of the frame, it creates a huge gap between the skin and the aft frame tube.  It's difficult to see in the picture, but it is probably at least a 3/8" gap at the biggest point.  It also creates a gap, albeit smaller at the top portion of the flat sides.  This is a problem because there is a row of rivets that has to go in there.

So somehow I have to fill that gap so I can get rivets in place.  I've seen that some builders just leave the rivets out, but I definitely don't want to do that.  The two best options I've seen are to either use epoxy metal putty to fill the gaps or to shove a slurry of epoxy with microballoons (used for fiberglass work) in the gap.  Either should work fine I think.  In the end, I just need something to fill the space that I can also drill through so the skin sets on solid material when riveting.

Controls

I switched gears today to get some of the parts off the shelf.  I installed the front elevator pushrod that goes from the control sticks to the bellcrank in the tailcone.  There is a larger pushrod that will then go from the bellcrank back to the elevators.

As simple as the picture of the control stick assembly makes it look, it was a good 4 hours of work.  Part of the reason was that I discovered that when I made the seat rib cutouts last year, I didn't see a callout on the drawings that showed the two inboard ribs (not the center ribs, but the ones on either side) also needed to have the main hole enlarged to make room for the horizontal control tube.  I enlarged the two middle ribs, as well as did the cutout of the top flange to allow the control tub to slide in place, but I just didn't see the callout to enlarge the other two ribs.  I took the dremel to them - awkward and time consuming, but worked out just fine.

I put the main horizontal control column in place first and bolted it to the beefy attach brackets that are bolted to the spar.  Easy to say, much harder to do.  Holding multiple washers in place in between moving parts and bearings is not easy!  I tried a trick of using dental floss to string parts and washers in order, which made it a little easier to keep the washers from falling out of place while I fumbled with bolts.  I attached the lower pushrod that connects the aileron pushrods, and also put the copilot stick attach point in place.  I'll leave the pilot side out for a while.  Whereas the copilot side allows the stick to be removed and out of the way, the pilot side stick is one single unit.  I don't want it in the way for now.

The last thing to do was to install the center rib filler pieces that span the cutouts.

Canopy Release (3)

I finished up the canopy release mechanism.  The center UHMW block gets bolted to the channel on the subpanel, so I had to put nutplates on the channel.  This would have been far easier to do prior to riveting the channel in place, but there was no way to know exactly where to locate the block until it was all together.  Since there's no way to get a bucking bar in the channel, I cheated and upsized the nutplate holes to 1/8" and used pop rivets instead.  I used a big drill bit to put some divots in the back of the UHMW block so it would still fit over the pop rivets and be flush on the channel.  One other thing I had to do that's not in the picture was carve out an oblong hole in the channel to give room for the bolt that holds the release arm to the pivot.

The whole mechanism has to come out until after the top skin goes on, otherwise there's no way to buck some of the top skin rivets.  The handle that goes aft through the subpanel is not shown in the video.  I shortened it considerably (the stock handle is long enough to go all the way to the instrument panel) and am just going to secure it using an adel clamp on the subpanel.

Interior, Roll Bar & Flaps Controls

This past week I got the news that my interior was finished and ready to ship!  I obviously don't need the interior until the last days of the build, but since I knew what I wanted to get, I didn't see any reason to wait another year only to watch the prices continue to go up.  The quality of the craftsmanship is phenomenal!  These guys really know what they're doing.  I got their Aviator seats, which are completely custom made by Classic Aero vs their other offering which utilizes the Van's seat back that I built a while ago.  The shape and foam of the seat is different than their other seats, and most input I've gotten over the years is that it's well worth the step up to these seats if long cross country traveling is in the plans.  I also had them put heating pads in the back and bottom.

With the seats I also got a bunch of other stuff, like boots for the sticks.

This is the trim for the glare shield.  I'll probably just paint the rest of the glare shield flat black, or maybe put some black cloth or even velcro fuzz on it.  The trim not only looks nice, it's primarily to protect heads from the sharp edge of the glare shield in case of an accident.  I've read way too many reports of head wounds from RV accidents.

I was going to save some money and do my own carpets, but by the time I would have bought carpet that was fire rated, the cost savings weren't all that significant.  I had them make carpet for the front as well as baggage floor.  The front carpet also has 1" thick foam underneath that sets in between the floor stiffeners and keeps everything level.  Here's hoping I measured for the heel pads correctly.

The side panels are a little hard to visualize.  It's not just a single panel that covers the side walls (since that would take up more valuable elbow room).  Most of the panels velcro directly to the side skins.  The way they overlap and route around all of the structure makes it look like one seamless panel in the end though. The big carpeted bumps are covers for the leg gear towers.

Now that I have painted parts, I can finally do some assembly.  In order to do the big next step of the build, which is the canopy, I need to have the 705 bulkhead (the bulkhead at the seat back) and roll bar in place.  There is a chicken or the egg problem though.  The plans say to rivet on the top skin before riveting on the roll bar pieces, but then in the same breath they say to leave the top skin off for as long as possible to make all of the controls and wiring that goes in the tailcone easier to do.  The only reason for riveting on the top skin first is because it allows you to more easily set the final 3 or 4 rivets at the forward tip of the skin (the line of rivets that attach to the longeron) where all of the structure for the roll bar is.  Consensus among other builders is that it's better to work around the problem and put off riveting the skin.

It's cool to see structures finally going together for the last time.  All of the bulkhead pieces went together fine, although of course since I have nice new paint on everything, I decided to let the rivet gun slip and take off a big chunk of it.  The oops is hidden under the horizontal plate at least, so the next time I do some painting I will just do a little touch up and it should disappear.

Here's the reason Van's says riveting the skin on first is best.  The big piece of angle that supports the bulkhead (this is looking up from underneath) sets right up against the longeron.  It's hard to tell from the picture, but those last three rivets would not be able to be bucked if the angle is riveted on first.  There's just no space to get any kind of a bucking bar on the rivets.  The solution most builders use is to grind away portions of the angle at each rivet location.  We'll see if I am actually able to get solid rivets set there or not.  If not, the reliefs are big enough to put in pulled rivets.

Next up after all of the bulkhead support structure is the roll bar.

I bolted on the roll bar through the access hole in the back and also riveted on the upper channel that goes between the roll bar and the rear baggage bulkhead.  That really solidifies the whole structure.

I screwed the front flap housing channel down to the floor.  I was going to go ahead and put the entire flap housing and horizontal seat back brace in, but I discovered that with the seat back brace in place I would run into the same skin/longeron riveting issue.  The brace sits right up against the longeron and would make bucking the skin rivets impossible.  So I'll leave the horizontal brace out for now - benefit of that mod is that it just screws in place and is easy to install anytime.

The flap actuator weldment went back in next.  

After dropping my bucking bar and denting the baggage floor, I wised up and laid down a bunch of padding.  I figure each dent is just extra character, right? 

Interior Painting

Painting day finally arrived!  I cleaned up all of the parts with isopropyl alcohol and laid as many out on my spray table as would fit.  The paint is a waterborne paint like the primer I've been using is, but it requires a catalyst and water to be mixed in.  The difficult part is knowing how much paint to mix, so by the end of the day I ended up mixing up four batches.

I don't have any pictures of the painting process for all of the interior parts.  It was a lot of back and forth between cleaning, setting up and spraying.  I've heard that the Stewart Ekocrylic is really hard to lay down nicely, and after today, I definitely agree.  Whereas most solvent based paints are known to flow pretty nice and lay down smoothly, for whatever reason the waterborne stuff has a tendency to either go on rough or fisheye.  It'll take a day to see if it flows out as it dries, but it looked pretty rough after a few coats (tack coat, then a couple of light color coats).  I think I was so worried about going too slow and getting runs that I went too fast and never got a thick enough layer to wet out. Lesson learned. I do like the dark color at least.  I know I could technically wet sand and polish out the roughness in the paint to make it nice and smooth, but given that it's mostly for parts that are either in the baggage area or otherwise mostly out of sight, I don't think I'll do that.  We'll see how it looks in the next day or two.  It's a relatively shiny paint, so it actually may be better in the long run if it has a little roughness to it - I think for a baggage area, the slightly rough texture will hide scratches a little better.  So maybe a silver lining.  We'll see.

The painting of the interior panels and roll bar parts only took a few hours since, for the most part, I just had to do one side of everything.  I wasn't going to paint the interior, but since the temperature was cooperating I thought I'd clean one interior panel...then another, then another.  At some point I just decided I may as well dive in and paint the interior and be done with everything so I can start putting it all together!  I scratched up everything with the scotch brite pad, then cleaned it with the alcohol.  I don't actually know exactly which parts will be covered by the seats and side panels, so I had to do a little bit of guessing.  I taped things off and put up plastic.

Most of the baggage area got painted, aside from the lower forward side skin.  That gets covered up by a removable panel.  I have to admit, I didn't spend a ton of time masking everything off to make paint lines perfect.  For areas that will be covered up by the interior and rarely be seen, the effort to make it all perfect just didn't seem worth it.

Rudder Measurement & Paint Prep

This week I got an email from Classic Aero saying that they are finishing up with my interior, which means they need one last measurement to finish up the carpet.  The front carpet has a heel pad sewn on, and because the rudder pedals can be placed in a number of different positions to fit pilot size, they ask for a measurement of where your heel falls relative to the firewall.  The problem is in order to figure that out, the rudder itself needs to be hooked up with the control cables, and some sort of a seat back has to be in place to figure out what position you'll be seated in.  I had already gutted virtually everything in the fuselage in preparation for painting, so once again I hauled the vertical stab and rudder back to the garage, routed the control cables, clamped the seat back brace in position, and put the standard Van's seat back in (which I won't be using, but didn't figure that out until after I had built it).  The seat back can attach to one of three hinges at the base, which moves it fore and aft probably 4" or so.  Just as a stab in the dark, I put it in the middle position.  I attached the rudder cables to the pedals, piled a bunch of towels onto the seat bottom and back in an attempt to estimate seat cushion thickness, and climbed in.  With the rudder assembly bolted in the aft position (the whole assembly can slide forward a couple of inches for tall pilots) that seat position ended up being about right.  It's really hard to say since the seats themselves may be a little different than my pile of pillows, but I think it'll probably be good.  I did get a chance to try out the different seat back positions the Almost 14 modification allows.  With the hinged support on the seat back hooked into the brace, you set up quite vertically, which apparently is the normal stock position.  Dropping that support down so the seat back just rests directly on the horizontal brace makes for a much more reclined position.  It was a lot of work to do that modification, but I think it's going to be well worth it to have the ability to change positions a little on long flights.

Most of the day (after doing chores) was spent getting ready for painting.  I scuffed all of the parts and blew off the dust, although I didn't clean them with alcohol yet.  I'll do that tomorrow as I get ready to paint.  The grey primer scuffs fairly easily, but the white epoxy primer takes a little more elbow grease.  Thankfully, unlike priming, I only have to paint one side of most of the parts.  But boy is it a lot of parts!  They've been piling up for quite a while.  A lot of these parts are removable panels, so I won't even be putting them into the plane for a while, but there are structural pieces like the roll bar that I've been waiting on to assemble.

I also scuffed the interior, although I don't think I'll be painting it tomorrow.

Canopy Release Mechanism (2)

I cut the slots and drilled the holes for the clevis pins in the other release tube.  The next step was to locate it all on the subpanel and cut a clearance hole in the center rib that the longer tube passes through.  The plans don't provide any guidance on where the hole should be and how big to make it.  Without the tubes on the pivot, I just lined things up as best as I could and drilled a starter hole.  Because the mechanism moves in an arc, I had to keep opening up the hole more and more towards the aft end of the rib.  It had to be shockingly close to the end of the rib, but I guess that's expected, so must be okay.  In the end, I wish I had started the hole closer to the end of the rib.  I ended up with a significant portion of hole in front of the tube that is unnecessary.  I'll probably email a picture to Van's and ensure that it's okay vs riveting a little doubler over it to provide additional stiffness.  I don't think the rib likely has forces on it that are problematic, but I'll double check.

It took a lot of back and forth, but I finally got things lined up to where the pins slide in and out of the blocks with a smooth twist of the pivot.  Next up will be drilling bolt holes in the subpanel to mount the UHMW pivot block (also need to put nutplates in place for this, which will be tough with that portion of the subpanel already riveted on - I'll probably drill out some nutplates to a larger rivet size and use pop rivets).  I'll also need to clock and bolt the arm onto the pivot, then attach the pull handle onto that.  That's the part that will need to be modified from the plans.  The plans call for a very long pull handle that goes to the instrument panel.  I'll shorten mine to just go through the subpanel, then hold it in place with an adel clamp.