2004 Flight from KKLS

2004 Flight from KKLS
This photo is from when I was flying the airplane out of Longview, WA. This was taken early in the morning..

RV-6 #25188 in flight

RV-6 #25188 in flight
Doug Eves sent this photo of the Ol' girl in flight. Taken from the ground, this is a great shot. You can see he is "relaxing" in his office in the sky...

Friday, March 8, 2013

Seat ribs and baggage ribs

I have been working on the seat and baggage ribs that past month. Slowly, I am getting these installed. I have one side of the baggage area left to fab up, then I can paint the baggage ribs and permantely rivet them in place. I have also fabbed up the baggage side bulkheads. There is a intersection of a bulkhead and rib in the baggage area. It's a PITA to get this cut just right so you don't have a big ugly eye sore sticking out of your baggage area for all to see.

I also was delayed in the seat rib area when I found out that I did not get the seat ribs F-616 seat ribs with my kit. I got two sets of F-617, one of being labeled F-616 L/R. SO they got deburred and primed long ago, waiting for the day to put into place. That day, I got to the location and these ribs would not fit in place. So I started measuring the ribs and found out that they were F-617 ribs, that are slightly larger and fit in the next bay over towards the center of the fuselage. A call to Vans and they sent me a new set (free of charge) the next day. This is why I do business with Van's. That is why they are the leading kit producer of all time. HAPPY CUSTOMERS buy airplane kits. Unhapppy custormers take their business (money) elsewhere. Maybe some of our major companies in America selling products to us should review this lesson.

Anyways, I got the seat ribs all in place and I will have the baggage area wrapped up in several days. Then I can get into the tail cone.

I did spend a lot of time getting the F-607 bulkhead in place. I could not get the bulkhead to center on my centerline with the measurements from the plans. I had my longerons centered and when I put the bulkhead in place, my centerline on the bulkhead was off 1/8 of an inch. I had to back up and start looking at the bulkhead. I found the tooling holes on the bottom of the bulkead where not what the plans said for distance between them. I measured off of one side during constuction and made my centerline, instead of measuring the centers between the two holes and then making a center line. I re centered my mark and now I am within a stringline width (1/16th") from the centerline. I can live with that. If you can see that on the airplane at 200 mph at 8000ft then you are a better man than me.....