Ian,

That stinks ... i'm feel real sorry for you right now.

Best wishes for a quick recovery, my prayers will be with you.

Congrats on the start Jeff.

That is the biggest airplane tool I've see yet!

I'm thinking that the areas I'm most worried about are inaccessable or hard to reach. Such as insides of structures, faying surfaces, around the rivets. The easy to reach areas are going to be primed, painted, waxed. If I had used ACF-50 on my empenage parts, I would already need to re-apply. ... I'...

ACF-50??

I found this:
http://www.corrosion-control.com/acf50.html

It says

In most applications, ACF-50's unique properties will last for 24 months before it is consumed and needs to be re-applied.

I'm not sure this is going to work for me.

Here's my recipe for individual parts before any assembly: Peel: remove all blue film Wash: soap (Dawn), use kithchen scotch-brite/sponge thingy. Rinse: water. Dry: drip dry, wipe down with paper towel, compressed air, whatever. Clean: acetone, paper towels. Etch: acid wash stuff, maroon scotch-brit...

That sounds just like my experience. I bought a cheap HarborFright compressor to start with. It sounds exaclty like the one you described. It was horribly noisy. I put it in another room with hard lines into the shop. Even with two doors between me and the compressor, it was still bad. The compresso...

It never pays to be ashamed of a mistake. Just gotta get it out there and learn.

Ya got that right.

It's a lot easier to post a good story, so I had to send you some sympathy and thanks for your sad story.


Harold

oooooh that must have hurt :cry: I would have said a few big-boy words to myself Thanks for posting the pictures and the story. It's really great when we can learn from eachother's experiences. I'm sure glad it worked out for you. I would have been freakn' out and thinking the worst if I had seen on...

Oh, that looks real nice . I think you'll be able to get used to it!

I always find it a mystery how flying can be such a deep emotional experience, and yet I can't find words that begin to describe it. I think you done real good.

Yup, like Paul said.

I alodined the inards, and primed the outside bits.

I made a mess with the skins and alodine. Tried to brush it on ... like the alodine instructions say you can do ... but it made ugly stains on the skins. Anything I could dip in the alodine worked fine.

++Harold

Gotta fix it, though! True. Just thinking that maybe one of the no-drill fixes might be worth a try first to avoid bad stuff in the tank. You know, the seeping Lock-Tite or something else that has already been suggested. ... If that doesn't work, then go to the drill-the-rivet solution. It might wo...

If you drill out the rivet, doesn't that put some loose metal bits and shavings into the tank???

LooseNut

That too bad Dave, sorry to hear that. :( Last year my heat pipes froze where they dropped through the floor, ran through the un-heated garage, and popped back up. That took a while to fix. :oops: I think this winter stuff is just a bad idea. ... um, except for the skiing part :P ... well I guess it...

Keep the -8 plans; 'cause it would be much simpler if you just go ahead and build BOTH the -7 and the -8!

Oh yeah, that sounds good! One car bay will be plenty of space for building the tail. Make sure ya have lots of light in your work space. I'm working in my garage too. The first thing I did was put in a bunch of lights ... as someone once said "to rival the sun" ... well maybe not that much, but lot...

Very Nice!

Do you have your work space set up? Where are you building?

Welcome Krunch! Yup, the tail kit is the place to start. Set up a work space, gather some tools, and you can be building in no time! 8) You only need to decide a couple of things to get started with the tail. Choose your model ... you mentioned the RV-7 so, I assume you like the side-by-side seating...

I think O2 would be a good idea. On the one hand, I think the portable systems with the belts, buckles, and hoses all over the place are a bit sloppy -- looks like they were intended for certified planes where ya just aren't allowed to do anything. On the other hand, I think a big installed system i...

that gives me headache just thinkin about it