I didn’t spend a ton of time on the plane today as I went to visit some members in distress in our ward boundaries. But I did get the fuel selector installed as well as the firewall and under the seat fittings. The rest just requires me cutting, bending, and flaring fuel line. I ordered the fuel pump, filter, and flow meter the other day so that will hopefully be in here in a few weeks which will allow me to finish this section later on.
I don’t have all of the access panels installed as I still need to do work behind them, but they are all done as of today. I need to start getting the fuel system plumbed up and then I need to check with Vans to see if my backordered aluminum tubing is coming anytime soon as that is needed to finish the elevator actuation controls that go in the central channel. Its coming together though!
I got all of the parts ready for priming for the central tunnel. Luckily the final sized holes helped speed this up quite a bit
This actually wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. I just got Brendon to do the drilling while I held things in place with tape, clecos, etc. The hardest part was getting the rivets at the top that were buried in the rear seat support. Those were tough little boogers. I malformed one of them but there is no way I would be able to get that rivet out properly so it is going to have to stay. But the rest came out pretty easily and looked great!
I decided to relisten to General Conference from April 2025 while riveting in the seat floors. Pretty mindless work and gave me a chance to recap conference again before the next conference happens here in October.
Started off the day taking my daughter to the OU Aviation Festival. It is a small festival but it is cool to get to see those in the local aviation community come together and share their love and passion for flight. Cailey enjoyed getting the chance to see the helicopters and other static displays and going through the STEM hangar.
Afterwards we got home and I helped her in the simulator upstairs in practicing her flying. I need to get my FAA currency up to date so I can take her up more often and let her fly with me. But afterwards I got the parts for the baggage door primed and everything riveted together. I then started looking forward to the baggage door hinge frame and there’s a bit of an alignment issue on the top of the part. I don’t see this as being a huge show stopper as I might just reem these out to match the holes the way they align now, but every hole on that frame aligns except for the top two. Very odd and I can’t push it to align it or even use an awl to get it to align. It just will not get close enough to align up. I mean we’re talking a good 1/8″ off here. Either way, I posted the question to the FB RV-10 group to see what they might say and maybe I can get some answers or insight there.
I got the baggage door verified that it is already final sized, cut the hinge for the door, debuted and dimpled everything so I can prime it tomorrow after my EAA chapter meeting. Worked at least some today to get my mind off the things in this world.
I got a little bit of time to work on the baggage door tonight but I found it difficult to work too much after seeing the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Such a sad day….
Most of the time was spent finishing the rear baggage panel which looks fairly nice! I did need to enlarge a few of the holes for the screws because they were slightly off but I didn’t have to do it too much and the screw heads still cover the entire hole with plenty of margin.
I’ll document the rest of my time tonight in another post since it is in regards to another section.
I worked through all of the drilling for the rear baggage panels and the right baggage panel. The rear was the hardest as you were supposed to cleco the panel after each hole but none of the clecos are the right size and I have all of the sizes for small planes! I ended up putting some bolts through to hold it in line which helped for the most part. Either way I got the right baggage panel completely installed. Tomorrow I’ll continue work on the rear baggage panel with getting all of the nut plates drilled and installed.
