25 Nov 2022 - 2 hours
Tonight, I match drilled the HS rear spar stiffeners that I worked on yesterday to the rear spar, being careful to avoid certain holes that get drilled much later when assembling with the fuselage.I then turned my attention to front spars. These are common parts with the RV-8 but require modification to make them work in the RV-7. They need some of the flanges trimmed away, some of the remaining flanges flattened out, and lots of careful measuring before drilling bend relief holes and then extending the relief holes to the edges to make them into notches.
The instructions and drawings in the plans for this are complete, but also confusing. There is some flange trimming left to do as I didn't know how much to take off and ensure I still had adequate edge distances to the holes on the flange since the holes on the flange aren't drilled yet (they get match drilled with clecoed to the skin).
I'll probably forget to trim the flanges in the future and spend a brief minute wondering why it's not fitting when trying to cleco the HS skeleton and skin together...