Matt’s RV7 Build Log

Okay–so after reading about putting this part together and an aborted attempt last night, I finally got around to bending the trim tab tabs for real.

First, I made another oak break with the interlocking notch at the top. I highly recommend oak or another hard wood because you are going put a lot of pressure on this break and you’ll want to minimize the flex.

The bends on each side worked very well this time. My only complaint is that I ended up with kinks on each trailing edge. This was caused by the trailing edge of the positive break was a tad thinner than the radius of the trim tab. So when all that pressure was applied the edge of the wood break put a kink in the trailing edge of the trim tab.

Tasks Completed:

• Bent inboard and outboard tabs of the trimtab
• Pop riveted elevator skin tabs
• Finished riveting left elevator skin to skeleton 

I started on the trim tab tonight, but quickly got into a little trouble. The wood break I made for bending the elevator skin tabs does not have interlocking top half. So when I tightened the C-clamps the inside half slipped out causing a slight kink in the trib tab skin. It’s minor and helps “customize” my -7 but after that I hung up my tools for the night.

Tasks Competed:

• Began riveting skin to skeleton
• Mark elevator tab for drilling
• Started working on trim tab