Air Prayer

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas from the VanArtsdalen family.

May God bless you and yours in the coming year!

Scott, Cristy,

Angela, Scotty,

and Rosie.

Yesterday I began work on the vertical stabilizer. Every time I start a new assembly on the RV-7 I am amazed at this matched hole technology. Every hole is precisely where it needs to be and everything just fits. This is so much easier than my RV-4 was. I was able to flute the ribs, cleco the skeleton, cleco on the skin, and final drill all holes to size in just a few hours. This is something that would have taken me at least two days on the RV-4. Below is the end result of the first work session on the vertical stabilizer.

The first milestone in constructing my RV-7 was reached this week. I completed the horizontal stabilizer. It’s all riveted together. I still have the fiberglass tips to do. I’ll save those for after the elevator and rudder are complete.

I got to do a good deal of work today on the horizontal stabilizer. I got everything riveted together except for the rear spar. I’ll shoot a coat of primer on that tomorrow and give it a day or two to cure. After that’s riveted on the horizontal stabilizer is done!

The assembly is going together really easy but I still manage to mess up a rivet or two here and there. Here is a photo of a line of rivets. I had to drill out one of them but the rivet had been over-driven so when I drilled through the rivet, it left a portion of the rivet still in the hole. My only option was to drill out the hole to #30 and use an “oops” rivet. An oops rivet has a shop head that is the same size as the other AN425AD3 rivets used on this assembly. But the shank of the rivet is the same size as an AN425AD4 which is one size larger. The upshot is you get to enlarge the hole but once you drive the rivet, it looks the same as all the others.

Looks pretty much like all the other rivets, but if you guessed this one…

You’re right!