I had to take a week off building to do some work. Prior to that, I spent a fair bit of time on the mid fuselage skins making doublers for a pair of UHF antennae, and doublers and mounting points for the A/C condenser. That’s right, this RV-10 is going to carry around an air conditioning system.
I made doublers for a pair of CI-122 UHF antennae, positioning them in the second outboard bay left/right under each side of the rear seat ribs, a commonly used place in the RV-10 world.
Then came the time consuming part. The A/C condenser is mounted in a scoop. The standard attachment method specified by Airflow Systems is to use Rivnuts – because the installation instructions are written for an already completed aircraft. Since I’m slow-building the fuselage, I can take the slow route and use platenuts and doublers. This is quite a bit of extra work, and does turn the bottom skin into a piece of swiss cheese – but the end result is much stronger and cleaner than the rivnuts. All of the doublers and shims weighed in at 408 grams – so I’ve added 0.9 pounds to the airframe.
With this work done, I finished match drilling the skins, disassembled everything, de-burred and dimpled the skins, de-burred, dimpled and/or countersank the mid fuse ribs and spars. The skins and doublers are ready for priming. I don’t really want to prime the large F-1076 skin with my mini-gun, so I’ve ordered a regular spray gun – need one to do the interior painting within a month or two anyway. I’m going to put the skins aside until that arrives, and start on the firewall / forward fuse.