Work Session 2/29/2012 - Final Touches before Silver Coat

Warm weather allowed Terry, Andy and Kent to put the final touches on the left wing. This included applying bias tape around the wing tip bow and 6" tapes on the entire leading edge. We also repaired the two small tears in the right wing, providing another good learning opportunity. As in the past, we followed the excellent guidelines in the Poly Fiber manuals.

While we progress on the Stits SA-7D Skycoupe, a group of RV builders in Texas have been preparing another highly-modified Stits design, the SA-3 Playboy, for a tour of the US this spring and summer. We know the airplane as the RV-1, the first of Dick Van Grunsven's amazingly popular line of aircraft. Earlier this week, the EAA ran a webinar including Van, who described the evolution from the the Playboy to the RV-1 that is worth watching.
You can find a link to the webinar here.

One RV-7 wing tank completed.















Our newly-fabricated exhaust stacks just returned from Larry Vetterman's Idaho shop. Compare them to the original stacks (darker colored). Larry's Vetterman Exhaust is considered one of the finest shops of its kind in the US, and he supplies most exhaust systems for RVs.



















Terry and Andy apply the 6" leading edge tape.



















The most difficult part of the work was the need for darts at the 'break' between the leading edge and the 'notch' at the wing root.















Don't they look nice? The left wing is now ready for its silver coats.



















Terry smooth the pinked edges of one of the two patches applied on the right wing.

Below - the final results of one of these patches - more complicated than it looks to get things smooth and aligned with other tapes.