Fuselage (More Cabin)

	18 Mar 2006	I was looking at a lot of other sites trying to figure out where to stick all the electrical components and came to the conclusion, that a tray between the panel ribs was the best option. I'm planning on access panels in the boot cowl and wanted all this electrical stuff accessible. Basically, I'll have the floor, and both rib sides open for access so I hope I have enough room for the EFIS AHRS, wiring, and a variety of other junk that needs to go in this bay. I don't want to mount components in the outboard bays as the only way to access is from the bottom.
		Here's the tray being fitted. After I locate all the components that go here, I'll cut some big holes to lighten it up.
		Here it is again, just a side view with lousy lighting.
	19 Mar 2006	OK, just another boring primer shot to most of you. For those of us in the Northwest, especially during the winter, being able to do a batch of priming means one thing; a nice day with some sun and warmer temps!
	25 Mar 2006	All this forward upper fuselage stuff started going together, at least as far as possible prior to canopy and painting. The angles are the supports for my electronics tray.
		Here's the sub-panel. Note the left panel rib has been lopped off. It's going to eventually move about 2" outboard to give me some room for the EFIS.
		This is the electronics tray in place. I think it's big enough to hold all the stuff I need to stuff in this area. The sub-panel is cleco'd in for now until I paint the interior and install systems for good.
	26 Mar 2006	Since I'm slowly working some of the electronics, I got around to making the battery mount.
	1 May 2006	I know, updates have been a little slow but the work thing is taking a lot of time at the moment. I'm also waiting on my panel to get cut so I can do a couple things in the cabin before progressing with the canopy. The panel has been in "cutting" for a month so it's really dragging on. One thing I wanted to do was add a couple access panels for the forward electronics bay (in mil terms, the forward e-bay) but before making the cut-outs, I needed a couple molds for the fiberglass panels. I want to mount the GPS/ XM antennas under here and it seems like a good place. Here's the lay-ups for the molds. No problems with epoxy sticking to vinal with a little mold release.
	2 May 2006	It's hard to see, but there's a slight curve to the mold. The mold surface really came out very smooth.
		Time to make the cuts. I started with 3/4" diameter unibit holes in the corners, then progressed to the Dremal cut-off wheels.
		A little fileing and these are about done. I need to smooth the edges then start the backing plates for rivets. Through the holes can be seen my forward e-bay #1 electronics rack with lots of room to work. Van's ought to make this part of the kit for both tippers and sliders as I just can't see decent access from the bottom. This is going to make maintenance sooooo much easier.
	9 Aug 2006	For the past several months, I've been plugging away at the canopy, which has bacisally been completed up to paint. Bubble is trimmed, drilled and countersunk, so the whole thing comes apart for paint.  It's also that time on the fuselage. Pretty big bummer to start taking everything apart to deburr, dimple, smooth edges, then prime and paint. I'm plugging through a 45 item punch list for everything needed prior to paint such as catching up on drilling nutplates, dimpling, trimming, etc. Yup, it caught up with me. I picked the interior paint and it's a SW Jet Flex water soluble Sandy Beige. Just from opening the can, it looks like it's going to work. I thought about getting a custom color but the price was a little steep and I figured that matching at a later date was not going to be easy. So I went stock. On other events, work has been killing me, but one of the cool things about working for the Dark Evil Empire is getting to beta test some of the pre-release products. I've been doing pre-beta on the new FSX for some time now and it's pretty cool. I can't say much beyond what's public, but it's going to be a lot of fun!
		Here's one of those things I need to figure out. I'm not installing the quick release for the canopy due to the radio stack. I don't want to use bolts for the canopy pins because getting the nuts on are going to be a real challenge. I'd like to use the eyebolts, but I need t figure out how to lock them in position. I've thought about installing a rod between the two which will keep both from backing out, but I'm not sure. Going to have to think about this.
	12 Aug 2006	I spent the last day or so putting in about 8 hours on the small little things I needed to do prior to painting. All the interior panels are deburred and dimpled, most of the junk in the cockpit is now out, and I have a whole pile of stuff ready for priming and finish paint. This is pretty cool; just about at the point where this starts going together for the last time. One the other hand, it's a bummer to see the interior that stripped out.
		This is one of those that Vans could really do much better. Every small part has some challenge to it, and this is no different. Figuring out how to bend the louvers took a little thought but using two small blocks of wood, a couple slide clamps and a bucking bar, this came out OK.
	19 Aug 2006	This week has been pretty hard at work but I took a couple hours for some airplane therapy. This, by far, is the largest batch of paint prep. It's been about eighty degrees here in Seattle this week so it's awsome weather for painting. It took two hours to do the alumaprep thing on all these parts. Sure is good to get this done.
	20 Aug 2006	Yep, just another boring priming picture, but it's the last big batch! Man , I love it. I can say that the PPG DP48LF primer has really been a good paint. Tough as nails and usually pretty easy to put down once you figure out how to much to reduce, and I do like the white as it gives the interior a nice clean look. Today was eighty degrees and me out there in a Tyvek suit was sweating like a pig at a luau. It's kind of hard keeping the sweat balls from dripping from arms, respirator, head...
		For the interior color, I went with SW Jet Flex Sandy Beige. Dave Setser, a good friend and fellow RV-7 builder, told me that this is same that Boeing uses for their new interiors. After some studies, they found that this has the least strain on eyes. Anyway, I wanted to try out a little of this stuff in my new gun. I bought a mid-range DeVilbiss for the top coat application with a 1.5mm nozel. This gun comes with a 1.3 but SW recommends a 1.4 or 1.5. After reducing about 10% with distilled water, this really went down nice with very little learning curve for this. I have a couple parts to sand and re-paint, but overall, I like this stuff. Walt Tondau used this as well and swears by the Jet Flex WB. Supposedly, it's very tough and looks good.
	2 Sep 2006	Between a fairly killer period at work, vacation on Maui, and working on vacation on Maui, I just haven't had too much time on the RV lately. I'm really hoping to get the rest of the painting completed soon so I can get on with the starting the final assembly and wiring. I did order the master wiring kit from Stein Air as well as a cool thermal printer that prints on shrink tube. That ought to help out the wiring labeling.
	4 Sep 2006	This is the interior colors I'm shooting for. Hopefully it should turn out well.
		Had a chance to do some riveting, the first in a very long time. Several of the interior panels and covers needed nutplates and the pump cover needed to be put together.
	9 Sep 2006	I had to figure out how to make this work. I needed to do some riveting of the canopy frame skin to frame, then paint the interior where the stiffeners were going to cover and prevent a good paint job. So here's the assembly after some riveting and I'm placing the little ties for the stiffeners (they end up on the other side of the stiffeners, this is just for fit).
		Finished the the riveting I needed to do prior to paint, then I painted the area that is going to become hard to reach when the stiffeners are riveted on. At this point, I'm ready to rivet the stiffeners to the canopy frame. Once done, I'll paint the entire frame assembly.
		And lots of painting. I think I've finally learned how to put the Jet Flex WB down somewhat decent. The instructions say reduce by about 10%, but 15% seems to allow a smoother finish. Also, with the epoxy primer, I stay about 6" away from the surface as I'm painting, but with this, it seems to want 4-5" or else the paint tends to be a little rougher once dried. I have a couple other parts that will need a quick sanding and recoat to smooth out the finish.
	22 Sep 2006	Finally got back to the RV after a pretty heavy period at work. I've been negligent in taking a bunch of pics of the paint process but they're pretty boring anyway. The big difference is that this time it's the fuselage that's getting done. Woooo hoooo. Making progress. It took several hours to mask off the floors and anything I didn't want painted, but overall it seems to have going well. I used some off-brand blue tape from Ace, but it just isn't the same as the real 3M stuff.
		After the painting, this gives a little better view of the masking. Generally, I just hauled the fuselage outside, painted the floors first. Then I rolled it on the right side and painted the right side, then repeated for the left. All so I didn't have to paint on a vertical surface and gave the paint some time to flow out.
		So here's what this looks like. There's a couple spots that may be a little thin, but overall I think it worked. The downside is that I had a whole bunch-o-parts ready for paint, and I ran out. I just can't run down to the local SW auto paint supplier for this Jet Flex. Bummer. Now I have to wait another week for another quart so I can finish the canopy frame and a lot of other small parts. The wait is not too bad as the steel powder-coated parts are still in paint as well. I'm having all the gray parts re-coated to match the interior. NOTE: for all the fuselage interior parts, it's going to take a quart and a half minimum.
	29 Sep 2006	Picked up a bunch of parts from the local powder coaters as I had the rudder pedals, canopy latch/ flap torque tubes, sticks, and some smaller parts re-coated to match the interior. I'll post additional pics but it looks like they turned out really nice. It also looks like we have one more decent day of weather before things head south here in the NW so I hope to get the canopy frame and remaining interior parts painted tomorrow.
	30 Sep 2006	Another mongo paint session. Paint arrived this week so I can continue the interior work. Not quite sure how many parts I painted but there was a bunch. I found that the rollover frame still needed some sanding so I'll have to sand and re-paint. I also got a drop of sweat on one of the baggage area covers so that gets repainted as well. Anyway, I thought I was about done!
		Last weekend I painted the forward side of the sub-panel using a rattle can bright white. The area under is the upper forward skin if going to stay white.
		This pic didn't turn out very well but it does show the brake pedals assembled for real. Cool! The rudder pedals were re-powder coated and seemed to have turned out well. I'm not painting the brake pedals as these are going to get a bunch of wear. I think it'll look good anyway. Instead of using two bolts for the brake to rudder pedal attach, I used one AN3-56 bolt. There's no binding and the pedal travel is really smooth. So right now, the pedals and cylinders are installed for good.
		And this is what the it's basically going to look like. I just fitted all these panels in to see the final look. I need to take these out again and put in storage for the rest of the project for the most part. Really don't need this until the very end.