Cabin Cover Part 2

I started my work with the Cabin top back in July, so about 6 months ago.  Wasn't consistent work and you can read about the initial fitting here.  Since then I've been going back and forth doing little things here and there with it.  I originally thought securing the cabin top was something you finalize and accomplish later. Some people put it off longer than others but decided to follow the plans and throw it on now. Seems once you have the basic fuselage done you can start on the canopy, just don't do the windows and doors until permanently attached and your doors are hung. I had a lot of confusion but the good folks at VAF straightened me out and suggested the order of things-

• Install the big conduits that run under the rear seats and baggage compartment floor. 
• If using remote ADHARS modules make the shelf for them now. 
• When done with the canopy, paint the plane interior.
• Paint the inside top of the canopy. 
• Mount the rudder pedals, run the brake and fuel lines, and do all the wire runs you can leaving the ends long for final wire. Panel, avionics and all that other stuff waits until the end.
• Now, permanently attached the canopy top and move on to glass and doors.

Conduit has been run, my ADHARS will mount in the front behind the panel and I painted the plane interior parts that will be visible post interior install.  That's not completely true, I did follow up later and painted some additional area's inside once the cabin top was mounted... but that's post attachment work.

Preparing and painting the cabin top is a lot harder and time consuming than I had originally anticipated.  A lot of my awkwardness is just the learning curve of working with fiberglass, having very little previous experience outside of the empennage parts. I previous learned a good bit doing that but learned so much more while working on the cabin top.  I wouldn't call myself adept at this point but I'm at least an experienced novice.  Your comfort level will increase the more hands on time you spend doing it.  

You have a lot of choices on this part as well.  If you're really concerned with time and don't care how it looks you can just clean it up a bit, maybe put some paint on it and get to installing it.  Your plane would have a top but it wouldn't be very nice inside.  What I went with was the Aerosport overhead console and I plan on using their headliner kit.  So I didn't have to be overly concerned with the back area of the cabin top but I did want a nice finish on the front visible area and that was were the time sink came in. Most my time was spent on a cycle of sanding, filling, priming and painting aiming for a particular finished look.

First part that I tackled was attaching the Overhead Console.  This is a very light and sturdy piece that comes with very little directions.  It's up to you to sort of work the installation through and figure out how you want it all installed.  You'll need to source and install things like nut plates and lights, decide if you want to paint it or keep it carbon fiber, ect.  For me I'm keeping it carbon fiber so I had to place it while at the same time trying not to mess up the flange pieces. 

Glassed in the Gap

Used some primer to see what I was sanding (Don't really need to do this)

Now before I get into the pictures of later steps I want to say up front that my level of efficiency with working on fiberglass is horrible. I'm sure I wasted plenty of epoxy, filler, paint, sandpaper ect in this little adventure but I'll chalk that up to the cost of learning.  There were several times I felt I was done, until I shot some primer over it and realized how just bad it looked.  What helped me the most outside of just doing it was watching a ton of videos (The late Mike Arnold's videos can be found here). I also spent countless hours reading other build logs and even talked to a car guy about body work.  Posting on the  forum always help and I did that with some questions on primer here.  Some tips and guidelines I picked up along the way are-

• Do all shaping with low grit 60-120 sandpaper
• If you need to add filler use epoxy resin and Microballons, thick enough to be applied in a single layer if possible.
• Again sand with 60-120 until you are happy and don't see any low or high spots.
• Skim coat with resin and sand off with some 320 or higher just to get it smoothed out.

Now the above is reiterative and I went through that process at least twice before I decided to do some heavy sanding removing some previous work and essentially starting back over.  That in itself took me three hours using a mess of 60 grit sandpaper, scotch brite and some acetone (Had to remove old primer).  Then I built up from there to get to where I could paint the product.  Some of what I did was completely unnecessary, for example hand contouring micro filler in certain areas.  That's really a challenge to get it looking symmetrical unless you're good with sculpturing which I'm not.  

I also had no real idea on how to use high build primer contributing to the 4 cans I wasted.  I went with aerosol for the ease and picked SEM products because I've had good luck with their paints.  I learned the painting process goes a bit like this.

• Are you happy with the contour and quality of the part you're about to paint?  If not go back to the steps above because no amount of paint is going to magically fill in any flaws.
• Spray a coat of dark colored primer, in my case I used cheap Rustoluem stuff that I have been using on the metal parts.  Then while still wet spray on a few coats of your high build.  The idea is when you start block sanding you'll see the dark color and know how close you are to the raw fiberglass.
• Once cured block sand with 400 just to find any high or low spots.  Now some parts on the cabin top inside you can't really block.  But do your best to make sure there's no high or low spots and everything is still contoured how you like it.  If you hand sand use very little pressure to not make dips.  Now on mine there were some low spots that I didn't feel justified resanding and starting over so I just mixed a little filler and used that.
• Top coat and once that's cured do a few coats of clear... I sanded with 1000 in between those.

Now the above sounds easy but it's far from that.  You really have to take your time and have some patience, I think my earlier issues were from a lack of knowledge and patience both.  I really kept thinking later steps like high build primer were going to fix my low spots and imperfections and it didn't.  But as with all parts of this project you have to work through it and rework if you need to and get it done correctly.

As I said it took me about three times to get it to a place I was happy with it. Here is a picture of my first attempt, it was obvious after I sprayed with Primer that I had not done this correctly.

First go at it... gross

The second time around I sanded off some of the primer and tried to 'patch' some of the spots.  Again went ahead with spraying on the primer and again wasn't happy with the results.

Better but still junk

The third go around I decided to take advice from the forum and this is where I spent the 3 hours removing all the previous layers. With the cabin top cleaned up I was ready to start again and over the course of a week or so put time into sanding, filling, sanding and filling to get the shaping completed while limiting highs and low spots.  After skim coating I found more areas I wasn't happy with and fixed those and reskim coated. To prime I used some Rustoluem dark primer put a coat of that on and immediately sprayed the high build primer over that.  This gives a bit of a guide on subsequent sanding where if I break through to the dark gray I know to stop.  If I have to sand below that then I'll have to reseal before restarting the priming in that area.  I did this a number of times which again slowed down the process.

Third time much better

After I removed the masked off area's I wasn't happy with my lines between the top and the carbon fiber piece.  I went ahead and sanded out the area with some 60, then 120 to recreate the lines.  Taped it back off and sprayed again.  Now there were actually some other area's I didn't like so I just worked those, cleaning them off and going through all the same steps I mentioned above.  I also resanded the carbon fiber with some 320 to get any paint overspray off.

Then started the cycle of redoing small spots all over the place. I actually may have been a bit too picky and even though I could see the vast improvement, there were still a few imperfections that I wanted to correct. In reality they weren't overly noticeable but nonetheless it was bothering me.  I spent a good amount of extra time doing patch fixes all over the place.  Then it occurred to me that I'm not building a show plane, there will be imperfections and I need not obsess over it. I decided that if I couldn't see the issue from a few feet away then I would move on.  Given all the work put into it I think it turned out well.

Final

Something I didn't really cover was the door seal which I worked on concurrently with all the other stuff.  I decided to go with a McMaster Carr product that attaches to the door opening vs per plans which puts a seal on the door.  For me a cleaner look on the edge and I had seen a number of builds which used these. Had to do some research to really figure out what was needed and how to do it.  In short depending on the seal you order you have to cut and sand the opening to accomodate this connecting on the inside.  Best resource I found to explain it can be found here, here is a picture of my end result, really won't know how well it works until I get the doors hung.

Door Seal

Finally past the cosmetic details of the inside of the cabin top it was time to move on with the plans. Fairly straight forward it consisted of some dimpling the skins, countersinking and match drilling some parts.  This was all per the plans and while a bit awkward at times to work with it was a fresh breath from my sanding/filing/priming/painting saga.  I was surprised that CS4-4 pull rivets were used to secure the cabin piece to the skins.  I'm guessing that Vans didn't want bucked or squeezed rivets damaging the fiber glass.  With that in mind I used the manual pull rivet tool vs the pneumatic.

There are some things you need to think about if you plan on putting any wiring in the overhead console.  I am putting lights and what not up there and will probably need a pair or two of 20-22 gauge wire.  Decided to route that down the front and through the cabin top brace.  To prepare I used rubber and plastic grommets along with some expandable sleeve material to act as a conduit.  It's hard to see in the picture below but the black sleeve material comes out the overhead and down the brace.

With the cabin top riveted to the side skins it was time to get some flox put on per the plans and tighten up all the hardware.  I'm not 100% sure if you're supposed to torque these to spec.  I'm guessing you're not since the attaching is being assisted with the flox. The process went really well although a bit messy.  When I tightened everything down I was happy to see the flox squeeze through meaning there shouldn't be any air gaps anywhere.  After that I cleaned up the fillet on the inside to leave it symmetrical all the way down.  Here's an early picture of wet flox.

Once this cured the shaping was essentially there so I just used 320 to smooth it out some more and to clean up any stray flox material.  Then as I did on the rest of the top I put some micro on to even it out some more, sanded and then skim coated followed by application of a few coats of high build primer.  My goal here was to paint any of the visible areas post interior install so sprayed more than the cabin top work I had done.  This included under the glare shield but used a graphite top coat vs warm gray.  This was all followed by some light sanding clear. My fiberglass skills have gone up at least one level or so during this process and the end result was solid.

This section also lays out the initial fitting of both the windshield and the rear windows. These don't get permanently attached until the doors are installed so I decided to go ahead and trim the rear windows but not mess with the windshield until the doors are on.  My logic is if I mess up on the rear windows they're easily replaced, while the windshield is a bit more challenging.

Installing the rear windows just took some time and patience.  You cut to the lines drawn on by Vans and then slowly remove more material until it sits nicely in the cabin top recesses.  It went fairly smooth but probably placed them on and off the plane a good 10 times each.  Take your time so you don't remove too much material.  I believe these lines get glassed in later on so it doesn't have to be perfect, but at the same time shouldn't be overly gouged up.

Untrimmed and just set on

Right side fitting

With all the fun stuff completed and the top now permanently attach section 43 is essentially wrapped up.  Because Section 44 is the wing attachment I'm done with the Fuselage for now until final assembly.  I say done but there are several side projects that I'm going to work on while waiting on the finishing kit to arrive. Should also note that I'm going to hold off on the forward tail skin until I'm finishing up the avionics. I don't want to have to crawl through the tailcone until it's necessary and leaving it open makes some prewiring and air conditioning items easier to work through.

Painted exposed area including under the glare shield

Put the windows and windshield up for safe keeping

Landing/Taxi Lights & Wing Tip

Landing/Taxi Lights

Before I get into the completion of section 24 lets talk a bit about Landing/Taxi lights and what FAR (Federal Aviation Regulations) is required.  Well a taxi light is never required and per these regulations - "91.205 (c)(4) If the aircraft is operated for hire, one electric landing light." Given I don't plan to operate for hire then I guess I don't need either and I can move on.... Well if you've ever flown at night and had your $10 incandescent cowl mounted landing light burn out before landing then you know landing lights greatly improve the visibility of the runway. Likewise if you've ever been taxing at night and had someone pull off the runway with their landing lights directed at you know that it's blinding bright and down right inconsiderate, so taxi lights are a must for me as well.

The choices are endless and over the last year or so I've looked into and at decided on a number of options, only to change my mind when I see something else.  Here are some of my previous options and reasons why I didn't pick them.

• Vans Per Plan - To be honest it took about 5 mins to throw this option out.  It's a cheap add on but not LED and apparently doesn't offer much light.  LEDs are a must because as I mentioned before it's not fun to have bulbs burn out during a night flight. I also couldn't figure out if there was a taxi option either... bottom line there are some much better choices.
• Duckworks Aviation - They make a light that mounts into the leading edge of your wing, and then you can use the factory landing lights as taxi lights.  I initially was going to go with this but then I decided I really didn't want to cut into my wings any more than I had to.  Might not seem like a big deal to seasoned builders but freaks me out!
• Aveo Ziptips -  These are a really impressive option consisting of complete wingtip replacement.  They have all the bells and whistles: Nav/Landing/Taxi/Recognition and lasers! Okay they don't have lasers but they have everything else.  I decided on these prior to my QB Wings shipping so I had the ability to remove the stock wing tips to save some money.  The problem was I couldn't find the price of these much less where and how I could order them.  I had some emails going back and forth between the CEO of Aveo and she was never really clear on how to get a set.  Went through the usual channels and no one could get me an answer.  I'm huge on customer service and when I can't even throw money at a company for a product I hate to think about having to work through issues later on if there is an issue with the product.  In the end that was the reason I skipped on these.
• Aerosport Cowl & Baja Squadron Pros - There have been a number of people who did their own modifications and installed insanely bright (4,900 Lumens per light) Baja Squadron Pro off-road lights into their wingtips.  Takes a bit of customization but it can be done with good success.  I wanted to combine these with Aerosports cowl light using a wide angle lens to function as a taxi light.  The end result would of been similar to the movie Poltergeist when the closet opens up....  I still very much like this idea but since I plan on using Rod Bowers RAM air system which already requires a modification to the lower cowl I wasn't 100% sure if these two would play nice to each other. 

Ultimately I decided on AeroLED's Aerosun VX.  It's comparable in price to the other choices and combines taxi and landing lights into your wing tips.  Each of these lights put out 5,000 Lumens so it's one of the brightest options available. The fit and finish look on these are also nice and polished. The downside is you have to modify your wingtips to accommodate a new fitting kit.  If you've already cut your lens then you will need to get new lenses as well.  Since I hadn't done that I only needed to modify the stock wing tips.

I had some time to kill during lunch one day so decided to dive into this modification and see what I had to do.  The instructions are solid giving you some dimensions to measure out, tape off and finally mark the cut lines.  After you done with this you just cut the sections out as your measured, you also rough cut the area on the replacement piece... not sure why you have to do this now but it does help later as your fitting them together.  That all took an hour and had to get back to work but was a lot less painless than I had anticipated.

Stock Tips with replacement piece

Roughed out

Thinking I was going to go out after work and shoehorn these things in I went out and found out that you need to do some substantial sanding to get these to fit in place.  Could be variation in the tips themselves, but I found instead of the 3.5" from the rise in the flange was more like 3.25" as you get back to the corner.  I wasn't worried so much about keeping it straight since I knew I was going to use micro filler for cosmetics and these would be reinforced with a few layers of resin and cloth to help keep it in place.

Looked correct to me.

To connect these I used a resin/milled fiber mix as glue around the entire flange and then cleco'd them back in place.  I ran a bead of this around the inside flange as well and then laid a layer of fabric down.  Using a straight resin mix and cloth I laid up two layers of cloth around the entire inside of the part.  After that I put some peel and ply down... this probably isn't needed if you're really good with fiberglass but I'm not so the peel ply helps me ensure everything is pushed down and also wicks up some of the excess resin I inevitably put down.  After that it's the cure for 24 hours game!

Nothing about working with fiberglass is a fast process.  In addition to that I'm extremely inefficient at the process so makes for a lot of waiting time.  You can get some epoxy hardeners that cure faster but for me I spend a lot of time messing with the stuff so I prefer it remain slow to set up.  In general the process is the same as I used on the empennage pieces but just way more of it.  On the Wing Tips I had used Micro filler to fill in the gaps, did what I thought was a great job of sanding and then rolled on some resin and let that cure.  Used some 1000 grit to smooth it out and then shot with some primer. To be frank about it I was not happy with my results. I could see a lot of imperfections and decided this would be a good time to try high build primer.

High build primer goes on really thick but still shows quite a bit.  After reading the forums and watching some videos I now know what people mean by a repetitive process of sanding and filing.  I went out to an autoparts store and bought some Bondo spreaders and a few block sanders.. 80 & 320 grit.  I then started the process of sanding off most of the primer and working with Micro mix and resin started to coat and fix the wing tip pieces.

Stripped back down

I didn't take many more pictures of my work steps but over all wasn't that happy with the way the finished product turned out, especially when I cut and fit the lens.  The lens weren't as flush as I wanted them to be and I may have been a little too rough on the sanding around the flanges, or the lens are just a bit off.  My solution was to tape out the lenses to protect them and pretend I was icing a cake and get nutty on with it!  Here's are some picture showing the before and then after I shaped it out. 

Final Shaping is on the right

Final Lenses install

Lessons learned through out this process is to be diligent in sanding, cleaning and waiting a good 18 hour or so before repeating the process.  Shape everything with around 60 grit and then use high 150 or so grit to finalize the shape if you're concerned with over sanding.  Once you think you're at a good place you can spray it with some water and check your work looking at the reflections.  If it doesn't look consistent or you see rough spots then add more micro or sand some more.  

Wing Tips

Section 24

Installing the lighting modification above aside I followed the plans with regards to fitting the actual wingtips.  Some builders have used hinges vs the nut plates as a method of attachment. Gives it a sleek look but I'm sticking with the nut plates method.

I found trimming of this piece rather confusing and had to look at a lot of other build logs to get it figured out.  At one point I over trimmed and used some of my new fiberglass skills to recreate another flange.  I also reinforced parts of the inside that I felt were a bit too thin.  Even some of the area's on the backside of the flanges that chipped away during the drilling and countersinking for the nut plates.

On item you should install now if you're going to do it is are wing tip antennas.  These eliminate the need for the 'whisker' type antennas that typically are on top of the horizontal stabilizer.  You can also install one in each tip if you're planning on dual NAV radios.  I have dual Nav radios in my current plane and the only time I use this is for the monthly VOR checks and I may have used them during my instrument training.  As a practical method though I navigate via GPS and don't see a reason for dual radios with the amount of glass I'm putting in this plane. These seem fairly simple and I know some guys have made their own, but that wasn't something I wanted to take on so I bought one of Bob Archers designs.

Bob Archer Wing Tip Antenna

The installation on these is fairly straight forward.  They suggest you move it as far forward as possible while still remaining as flat as possible.  Given the build up with the new Light tip I moved it back just a little bit.  After all was said and done I glassed it into the tip permanently.

With the lenses and antenna worked out the rest of the process consisted of attaching the nut plates and a bracket to keep the trailing edge to shape. I found putting all the nut plates on first and then fitting it to the wing was the best method to determine the bracket placement.  After that it's measuring, drilling, countersinking and riveting it in place.  In the end I went ahead and attached the wings but the heads strip fairly easily, so buy plenty of extra AN507-6R6 (MS24693S26) screws.

Finishing up the wing tip I tried to put a few layups over the bracket rivets and fixed any dings and dents that occurred through out the above process.  I decided my layups over the bracket looked like junk and I pretty much sanded those back off and ended up just skim coating and painting over it.  The rest was a few days of working the final sanding, skim coats and primer to get it looking as best as possible.  Ultimately when the plane gets professionally painted this will be redone anyhow.

The fit of the wingtip seems symmetrical to both sides.  I've read about people having a heavy wing and ending up cutting the back of the tip and adjusting it to accommodate a new angle.  I hope to not have this issue but won't know until flight.  Everything looks to line up so that's a plus!

Pretty Wings

Finishing Kit Ordered

I'm now to the point in my build that I can go ahead and order the 'Finishing Kit'. This is a bit of a misnomer as you're not actually 'finished' once you're through this kit.  You are however mostly finished with the structural components of the build only leaving the engine, prop, firewall forward, avionics, interior and final assembly to be completed..... So as you can see there's still plenty to 'finish' post 'finishing kit'.

The kit has an 8 week lead time, which isn't bad so I'm less worried about timing this order.  It's not like the QB kits where I ordered them 5-6 months in advance. This kit typically contains things like the engine mounts, doors, tires, brakes and other odds and ins.  There are several suggested upgrades by other builders on things to remove and replace for more robust versions. An example is some people aren't particularly happy with the stock brake calipers and replace with larger Matco ones.  There are also cosmetic considerations,  for example if using a different door handle you won't need the stock one.

My suggestion if you're building is to really take the time and go through what others have done and make a list for your own build.  Another suggestion is to not remove items unless you're 100% sure the replacement is currently available .  I got bit on the fuselage kit and removed some parts while thinking the aftermarket option would be completed when I needed it.  Well it wasn't and it was holding up my progress so I essentially paid double to reorder those parts needed from Vans (You get a bit discount on the items in the kit vs retail).   Here are the changes I made to my finishing kit:

Removed-

Main tire 6 PLY RV-10 (U 15x 6.0-6 (x2))

Inner Tube Main RV-10 (U 15x6.0-6IT)

6 Ply Tire Main Gear (U 5:00x5-6)

Tube for 5:005-6 (U:500X5-6IT)

Grove Whl&Brk 6x6.00 (U-00011)

Nose Wheel w/bearings (U NW501.25)

Axle (U-1009)

Lwr intersect fairing (U-1019-L & U-1019-R) 

Upr intersect fairing (U-1020-L and U-1020-R)

Gas strut for RV-10 (C-1016 Door Strut (x2) 

Gas strut bracket (WD-1023-PC (x2)

Exterior Canopy handle (C-656 (x2)

Safety latch doubler angle (C-1021 (x1)

Safety latch hardware (BAG-542 (x1) 

Safety latch hardware (BAG-543 (x1)

Added-

600N Heavy Door Strut (C-1016HD (x2)

Hinge Pin (SSP-090X6') - Will replace top cowl pins for easier removal.

Hinge Pin (SSP-120X6')

As it stands now these are the parts I will be ordering as replacements.  I left the vendors off to prevent having a bunch of orphaned links in the future but you can search these out if you want and find the parts.

 
Replacements-

15/600-6PR Retreads (x2)

Aero Classic Easy Flate Tubes (x2)

5.00-5 6PR Elite Retreads

Aero Classic 5.00-5 Butyl Tube

Wheel/Brake assembly (WHLWI600XLT-2 (x2))

Rear spacer for wheel/brake WHLARV10SL (x2)

Washer for wheel/brake MSCTRA1.5 (x2)

Nose wheel (WHLNW511.25)

Nose wheel axle (WHLAXLE24)

Nose wheel axle spacer (WHLA24PKIT)

RV10 Intersection Fairings - RVB-INT10

Two Wheel Fairing Bracket Spacers for RV-10 (WFSPCR)

RV-10 Low Profile Door Handle Kit - RV10051

RV-10 Door Handle Kit, pair (RV10030

New door 180 Kit (NEW180)

RV-10 SS Angled Door Pins and delrin pin guides (RV10DPG)

Interior Paint

Previously I was using a 'machine gray' top coat on empennage and baggage areas pieces.  However it became apparent once I received interior color samples that this wasn't going to match my leather and headliner choices.  Knowing I was going to need to paint the visible parts of the baggage area as well as the plastic interior panels I started searching for a paint type.

I wanted to stay away from a 2-part spray on epoxy type paint.  I'm sure these work great but for small repairs it's a bit cumbersome so I searched for an aerosol spray type.  I settled on an SEM Color Coat product.  The Warm Gray is a fairly close match to the Dove Gray leather and headliner material from AeroSport.  On top of that it's the exact same product I used on my 172 interior project and 2 years later it's held up great.  An additional step I'm doing on this project that I didn't do on the 172 is to spray everything with SEM's low luster clear coat product.  This will help give it an additional finished look and feel without being too shiny.

Throughout the build there are several times you'll have to paint the interior.  Some paint the entire interior to include the access panels.  I decided to only paint the baggage area and anything that will be visible on completion, so not covered with any side paneling or carpet material.  Only painting these parts saves time, money and complication.  At a later date I'll need to paint the interior panels themselves and any forward cabin area that's not getting covered but that will be a later adventure with the process remaining the same.

The process for painting is really straight forward.  I used 320 grit paper and roughed up my previously painted parts as well as the unpainted parts.  Cleaned off with some Acetone and then taped out the areas.  As with any paint job a majority of the work goes into the prep work and taping off area's to avoid over-sprayed.  I went ahead and removed the baggage door to paint separately with the tailcone access panel pieces.

Reusing Vans packing material

First coat

Painting process started by using a thick coat of primer on the bare metal parts that were being painted.  Wasn't overly concerned with over-spray onto the previous painted pieces since they were getting repainted anyhow.  Two thick coats did the trick and I let that dry for about 4 hours.  Then I put three coats of top coat on and looked for any areas of concern.  That would be cosmetic items like runs in the paint or missed areas.  You can easily wipe off the paint with some acetone if it doesn't look right and respray that area.  Once I was happy with it I let it dry over night.  The next day I just looked for any areas of concern and not finding any put two coats of the low luster clear coat on it.

Once the clear coat dries a bit it's safe to take all the paper and taping off and marvel at the beauty of it all.

Baggage area painted

Yaw Damper

Yaw Damper Bracket

To be honest I always considered a yaw damper function reserved for larger turbo prop and jet aircraft.  For those not familiar , the yaw damper's function is to assist in maintaining coordinated flight through small yaw (rudder) inputs.  This prevents a dutch roll type movement which could be very uncomfortable for passengers.  Now on smaller aircraft especially without swept wings it's not something you would typically see installed.

Initially I had decided I would forego the extra expensive and complexity and not install it.  I thought it was cool but as I said to someone it's not $1500 cool.  Two factors however had me change my mind and self justify the costs.  First I've had two of my kids who fly often throw up on landing... this wasn't because I'm terrible at flying but because in common Oklahoma gusty conditions the last 10 mins of flight can be a bit all over the place.  Next I was able to fly in a friends Bonanza A36 which is equipped with one.  I was very impressed with the smoothness of the flight and how coordinated the plane flew even in steep turns.

In late 2014 Garmin released a bracket specifically for the RV-10. If you're up to it you can save some money in exchange for time and source and fabricate your own pieces. I've seen several projects where people had done this for Dynon systems and seemed to have success. I decided to take the easier route and just go with the kit. It took maybe 30 mins to work through both the pitch and the yaw bracket kits and get them ready to install.  What took the longest was drilling out 4 ackward rivets in the aft end flanges of the bell crank assembly. Part of the Yaw bracket rivets into this and I was able to buck two of the rivets and decided to use 2 pull rivets on the bottom holes.  All this was a lot easier because the top skin isn't on.  It's done for now, I'll have to wait until I get the 2 servos which will just bolt onto these pieces and can be adjusted during final rigging.

Upper Forward Fuselage Installation & What next?

Upper Forward Fuselage Installation

Section 41

The plans give you two options for Section 41.  There's the picture above meant for a builder using vernier style control cables and then a Section 41Q for someone using the standard throttle quadrant.  I'm doing neither and I'll be using the Aerosport Quad Arm Rest which relocates the quadrant in a much more convenient location.  So it really didn't matter which section I was going with as the attachment was the same in both sections.

I started this section not following the plans at all but instead starting putting access panels back on.  The flap and seat covers and the tunnel areas I'm done with for now so for some rigidity while I'm climbing all over I wanted to go ahead and attach these.  I even put in all the screws, you save a few minutes if you don't but would rather have everything in place as it should be.

Access panels.

Didn't take a lot of pictures because the attachment part isn't anything that hasn't been shown.  Just follow the directions and rivet everything up.  I had to use larger rivets when attaching to the firewall because I increased the depth of the firewall by about 1/4 inch or so and needed to compensate.  A rivet gauge is handy for this type of thing but at this point in the build you should be able to eye ball it.

Once it's all rivets up you start to work on the hinge attachments which will later be used to attach the engine cowls.  It starts with fabricating some shims that will be spaces between the flanges and the hinges.  I used some left over trim pieces I had from the empennage kit and got them cut to spec.  Then you do the same with the hinges cutting to the size you need.

Then it's time to cleco to the fuselage and this is where I ran into some problems... My earlier adventure of caulking 3M 2000 fire sealant was preventing me from getting a proper seating of these pieces.  I remember thinking about this as I was doing but for whatever reason thought the hinge went between the flanges and the skin... not the case.

Not going to work.

I tried several things to clear the area and the best and easiest was to use a razor blade and cut about 1/8th area out where the hinges had to go and then remove the material and clean it up a bit.  After that everything worked out and I started the process of getting everything in and match drilling.

After the picture above I did some reading and found out there were builders who had some issues with the small bottom hinges eyelets breaking. Well that's not a good thing and the resulting solutions deal with getting camlocs or using a piece of aluminium and nut plates on the bottom. I had to backtrack a bit and drill out the hinges I had previously installed.  I found on my project plan notes that this was one of the items to modify, but I was in the zone on this section and hadn't considered it.

The solution is to fabricate a piece of aluminium with 4 #8 nutplates attached. To do this you can use some .63 or so scrap and size it basically to the same size as the hinge piece.  Then match drill using the existing shim as a guide, clean and countersink the aft holes.  Then space out 4 #8 nutplates across, countersink and rivit those holes and clean up any edges.

What I did though was use the a lower console piece typically used to support the various switches of a control panel.  This came completed with my QB kit. Going with the Aerosport EFIS panel option though a majority of this piece won't be used.  I will use it later to make a mounting bracket for the Carbon Fiber panel but outside of that you can cannibalize it into whatever you need.

Switch Bar (Not in installed location)

Cut lines drawn out to incorporate 2 existing nutplates

Edges Cleaned

Match drill to the shim

Once everything was cleco'd up you removed it all, debured, countersunk or dimpled the pieces.  Then it's just a matter of reattaching and riveting to the skin and firewall flanges. I was able to use my pneumatic squeezer (favorite tool) to set all the rivets. Will have to later reapply 3M 2000+ fire barrier, but this time going to wait until I attach the engine mount, because I'll be removing material as well when I do that.

Nutplate bracket

Final

What Next?

There are times (many) during this project that confusion sets in and you're not sure what exactly your supposed to do next.  The default is to always reference and follow the plans in order. However the next step is to install the rear seats but since I'm going to use some aftermarket seats so I can scratch that section for now.  The one after that is the cabin top which I actually started this summer and it's ready to get placed back on whenever... However before I secure the cabin top down I want to make sure I have certain additional/non-plan items completed first.

These non-plan items are all the niceties and extras as a builder you can decide to include.  In my case it's things like Air Conditioning, 3-axis autopilot, full blown leather interior and a fancy suite of avionics. Because I have conduit run and most these items are small enough they can be installed with the cabin top and doors.  However some are just easier to install with everything opened up right now, ie the Air Conditioning, things in the tail cone, ect.  On top of that each of these options need to be researched and understood and they'll increase your projects timeline and cost.

So close to wrapping up with the fuselage and only having the wingtips to complete before working on the finishing kit I'm going to have to spend some time working though the next phase of building. This involves continual research, updating my project plan and staging out what I need to buy and when. Some things are good to wait till you actually need to before ordering, makes no sense to buy a bunch of avionics and having them sitting on a shelf for a year or two.  And who knows, by the time I order my engine maybe six cylinder P-Mag/E-mags will be out!