The art of not giving up

Sam Kurtz’s timetable for building a Van’s Aircraft RV-7A was about the same as most people who are led to homebuilding. He figured it would take five years of work before he’d be flying his dream.

Nineteen years later, he’s still building. And the clock is ticking louder.

 “I figure I’ve got five, six, seven years of flying left,” says Kurtz, now retired at 73.

He’s got at least another year of work ahead of him, he figures.   The  Van’s finishing kit – canopy, cowling, gear, engine mount, fiberglass – as well as a powerplant and avionics all are on the “to do” list.  He’s still got plenty of building left to go, and a seemingly inexhaustible amount of hope that he’ll finish and fly his dream before time runs out.

“I’m going to finish this sucker,” the Sarasota, Fla., man insists.

His introduction to experimental aircraft building started at a good age – 50 – for being able to enjoy a long life of aviation pleasure.

A marriage of 32 years had ended three years earlier and he had all the time he needed.

“I had a friend of mine who said, ‘You know, you and I ought to be building an airplane.’ He started building a Mustang II. It’s still sitting in his garage.”

Just two weeks after 9/11, he went to Griffin, Georgia to take an RV building class from RV guru Ken Scott, building an airfoil he still displays proudly. He was hooked.


“I was good at it,” he says. “I enjoyed the process of figuring something out with my brain and applying it with my hands and getting good results. So right after I got home, I ordered the kit.”

It was also great therapy to help him get over the divorce. Every day for five years, he worked on his plane. “Come home. Work. Build,” he recalls.  He finished the empennage, the wings, and enough of the fuselage to reach the “overturned canoe” stage. 

It was all still sitting in his workshop when he fell in love and married again.  To Treva Rose, the same woman he divorced.

“We learned so much about ourselves by being separated,” Kurtz laments. “When we got back together, we were totally different people.”

It was good news for the couple, of course; maybe not so much for the airplane project.

“You’re busy doing life, raising a family, making a living,” he says. “Flying isn’t the cheapest thing in the world. Cash isn’t overflowing, but it’s always been adequate. I just needed to prioritize so I forgot flying for a while.”

An electrical contractor for many years, he spent 20 years as the HVAC specialist at a local retirement center. But the upside-down fuselage in his workshop kept bugging him until he retired three years ago at 70.

“I kept saying, ‘I’m going to finish it.’ But time kept moving on,” Kurtz recalls.

Now, it’s worth pointing out the obvious here: The best way not to restart an airplane building project is the same as the best way to keep an airplane in the sky: don’t let it stall in the first place.

For Kurtz, restarting was a matter of saying, “I’m going to finish it” every time he looked at it.

He wonders now if his project would have been better off if he’d stopped flying after initially abandoning it.

“I joined a flying club,” he says.  “That took care of my flying needs but it curbed my building urge.”

He thought about joining the parade of builders selling half-finished projects, but acknowledges he’s too stubborn to give up.  So he’s back to building from 10 a.m. to 5 or 6 p.m. every day except Sunday now, and he’s got more motivation when he runs low. He’s got Treva Rose reminding him he needs to go to the workshop.

But a lot of things can change over 19 years. For Kurtz, it was the onset of arthritis.
 
He’s not able to hold the rivet gun and bucking bar as well anymore so he has to be careful with the little riveting he’s got left to do. “It used to be a breeze, but not anymore,” he says.

“There are days, especially when arthritis comes around, I walk to the shop and it takes me an hour just to figure out where I want to go. But I’ve found that if I set my brain to it, I put my hands on it, and I start. Even if it’s slow, I’m moving.”

The mental part is much harder now. When he was first building, he had memorized all the RV-building nomenclature – drill and rivet sizes, for example – but all of that is gone now. He has had to relearn and reread.

“That’s a big shortcoming with a lot of people; they want to jump right in. But you have to read first. I just started at page one of the big plans, and started reading and figuring it out.  I’m pretty patient,” he says.

Eight years and the Florida atmosphere haven’t been entirely kind to the upside-down fuselage. He spotted and had to remove corrosion on skins, even though he primed (NAPA 7220) and Alodined one-inch-wide stretches of rivet lines where he’d removed  the protective plastic coating.  But aluminum pieces that were laid flat were fine, he says.

He’s noticed the culture of homebuilding has changed over the life of his project, too, even as avionics and the kits themselves have evolved in recent years.  All present a challenge to the big picture.

When he started building, steam gauges were the norm.  Now, many homebuilts are show stoppers, something that can make a guy feel inadequate with a basic “I just want to fly” project. 

Kurtz doesn’t begrudge those builders – “I marvel at those guys creating masterpieces,” he says -- he just tries to focus on what he’s learned and what he wants.

“I keep hearing Ken Scott and Van saying “keep it light and keep it simple. That’s my approach to building.” Says Kurtz.

He thinks the younger people he’s mentoring are helping his motivation and can lend a hand with getting his project done. “My thing has been to try to find the mechanically inclined,” he says.

He’s sold his interest in the flying club, which gives him more resources for the project and stoked the urge to turn his project into an airplane.

The dream is back on. His daughter has moved to Middlebury, Vermont. The RV-7A will be the perfect machine to use to visit her regularly, he figures. He’s planned the route already, including fuel stops, and is pretty sure he can beat an airline flight there with his dream machine as soon as it’s done.

Next year.

The slump

Any fan of baseball knows that even the best players can get into a bad slump.

It happens to airplane builders, too. Although I don’t consider myself a great builder, I’m generally pretty good at it what with over 4,000 hours of building experience and (almost) two airplanes to point to.

But late 2025 has put me into a deep losing streak and the solution is the same as the one those great players use:  come back tomorrow, put your work in, and grind it out.

I was so close this summer. After a few years of spending arguably too much time being a baseball usher, a Woodbury Forestry Department tree waterer, the janitor (and web editor) of EAA Chapter 54 in Lake Elmo, and professional grandfather, I turned attention to getting my RV-12iS project done, which had already consumed an estimated 1,100 hours over 8 years.

I had not yet started the 912iS, which I’d uncrated in June 2020, so in June 2025, I methodically worked through each item in the Van’s excellent Production Acceptance Procedures and the plane (now registered as N612EF) was acing everything until I got to the part where I needed to confirm the wing spar override, which prevents starting the engine if the giant pins holding the wings on aren’t in and secured. The slump begins.

The engine wouldn't crank. Much research and advice followed whereupon I saw the note I’d written in the KAI years ago where I’d broken, then recrimped the #12 pin on the HIC-B.  I took the canopy off, pulled the connector and pulled the #12 wire, and out it came. After fixing it, the engine cranked when it should have and didn't when it shouldn't have.

A day or so later I tried the first engine start. It turned but it did not fire. Since I smelled fuel, I assumed it was coming from the cylinders. I'd also put anti-seize on the spark plugs which I later learned you shouldn't on Rotax plugs.  I cleaned each up, ordered the heat transfer compound and put them back in for a quick test. It fired but I could not get above 800 RPM and as soon as I brought fuel pump #2 online, it died. Because of the heavy smell of fuel, I decided to discontinue.

I stood outside the plane scratching my head, when I realized my sneakers were getting wet. It wasn’t raining.  Fuel was pouring from the steps and upon much investigation and removal of upholstery, floors, and inspection panels, I determined it was probably coming from the fuel line/fittings in the forward tunnel, a view of which was blocked by the rudder pedals.

This is the worst possible place for a fuel leak because this is the worst possible design for an airplane. A narrow, mostly inaccessible tunnel with wires, fuel lines, heater and throttle cables, in which a view of the fitting is entirely blocked by rudder pedals and brake lines.

 

Blood was shed trying to get at things. Lots of blood. Murder scene blood.

 

The next day I removed the rudder pedals and Pete Howell and his friend, Bill, came over to Fleming Field (KSGS)  for a look. Using a scope, I got a good video of the bulkhead fitting believed to be the offender and it seemed like it was leaking but not enough to account for so much fuel pooling in the tunnel. Could the line itself be split? Unfortunately, it's impossible to remove this fuel line in an RV-12iS once it's in and we removed everything we could to get it disconnected at both ends with much blood shed and many expletives hurled at Rian Johson at Van's, who thought this was a good design. We never reached a conclusion although I did cup one end of the line and blew in the other and did not get the impression any air was escaping. More research followed.

I cancelled the remaining transition training flights I was undergoing (I was at least signed off by Matt Both after 9 years as an inactive pilot) and ordered a few tools that might make it easier (though not easy at all) to work at getting things reconnected, and also ordered the Del Seals from Aircraft Spruce which builders told me should help eliminate the leaks.

They didn’t. In fact, a new leak showed up at a bypass fitting where I’d disconnected the fuel line. There was a bad flare.  I can’t fly this thing. I won’t fly this thing!

I talked to my friend, Tony Kirk, former Van's support guru and likely to be the DAR should the plane get finished someday, and decided I wanted to replace the fuel line; I didn’t trust the integrity of what was there now.  It had to be done right no matter how much blood would continue to be shed, nor how much work needed to be undone.

To my knowledge, only one other builder had ever accomplished this task: Tony Kirk. Tony actually volunteered to fly from the Toledo area to do it for me. But with his guidance, I made a new fuel line and snaked it into the tunnel and flared the ends, then reconnected the lines.  I removed the fuel tank, capped the lines and pressure tested the entire fuel system.

This is something that should have been done on initial installation and if I’d done it, there’s a good chance the plane would be flying by now,  but there is no step in Van’s instructions to do so.  It should have been obvious to me; why wasn’t it?

Here’s why: Van’s once sent you a set of plans and a book with a narrative of what steps you were supposed to perform. As you made progress from subkit to subkit, that narrative got shorter, to the point where you were forced to study only the plans and see the big picture to determine what needed to be done next.

Now, Van’s puts each step on the plans so builders are merely following a stated step, then another, and another.  Builders don’t have to understand what they’re doing or what the big picture is. Van’s doesn’t even tell you the name of the part that would give you a hint what it’s for; everything is just a part number, So what should have been obvious literally was lost in “tunnel vision.”

At least the removal of the fuel tank gave me the opportunity to follow a service letter from Van’s to install an inspection port. Then I put everything back together, added fuel, and tried the engine again.

Again, it started but it was obviously ill, and I discovered later thay cylinders two and four were not firing. I now suspected the four injectors involved were clogged after sitting for five years, but I needed to prove that before taking apart an engine I still didn’t understand fully.

John Melchert, Rotax-trained investigator, was called in to try to see what secrets are inside the engine’s computer - the  ECU.  But he couldn’t get his “dongle” to connect to the maintenance connector to download the data.

It had taken almost three months to reassemble the plane, and I was back where I started. So I sent a message to Steve Wentworth asking him if he wanted an RV-12iS.

More RV’ers came forward.

SteinAir’s Josh Swenson contacted me and said he wanted to come evaluate the entire electrical system to rule that out. He’d built the harness.  He swapped two wires on the maintenance connector. Apparently, Van’s knows that after upgrading another component (which I’d done), these wires need to be swapped. But they never issued a service letter.

Lacking the cabling to tap into the ECU myself, more help arrived from people sensing I was ready to quit the team. Bob Mowry on the VAF Facebook Wing sent the ridiculously expensive (more than $2,000) “dongle” that builder Rob Carsey owns but circulates among builders (as he also does with a prop balancer). He also contacted Dr. John Russell of Missouri who knows the process of getting at the injectors, a valuable guide as Lockwood Aviation wasn’t returning my messages after an initial consultation. I no longer do business with Lockwood Aviation.

John also enlisted the help of Nate Holderbein, a regular on Doug Reeves’ Van’s Air Force. Nate is a savant at interpreting ECU data.

By now Nate had the ECU data.  He consulted with a friend at Motive Aero. “He's noticing the same thing as me, that there are a number of different error types and it doesn't seem to point at any single issue,” he told me. “He seems to suspect that it's a wiring issue, with an emphasis on grounds and connections at the fuse box. Along with the injector service you are working your way through, it would be worth taking a close look at the ground wires for both lanes at the fuse box and all grounds in general."

There was only one way to solve this. One item at a time, check to see its impact, and then move to the next item. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Mark Shanahan of EAA Chapter 54, who’d taken one of the light-sport courses recently, stopped in to help me identify parts and we carefully removed the entire fuel rail and all the injectors. Dr. Russell volunteered to drive up from Missouri to help. Instead, I took his suggestion and bought an injector pigtail from the auto parts store, wired it up to bench power, filled each injector with brake parts cleaner, then blew 35 psi of air into it as the pigtail was powered to spray out a fine mist. Then I put each injector – each with two, new $11 O-rings - back and carefully reassembled the fuel system.

A few days later I rolled it out for a quick start. The engine started!  The two cylinders were alive!

Did we solve the problem? Or did we just solve one of many problems?

The next day I did an engine run per the Van’s Production Acceptance Procedures and shipped the log file to Nate. While the data was more encouraging, he found that one of the two #4 injectors might still be a problem.

“Notice that the injector identified is showing zero mass for a short period of time then the graph jumps up and looks more like the others,” he wrote. ”That jump with the injector 4 lane B is probably when you cycled the lane and it came back.”

But Dr. Russell noticed something. The B injector on number 4 came alive when I increased the throttle to 5000 RPM. It’s possible whatever was making it cranky, was blown out.  Or maybe it was magic. Whatever was happening, the injector was online and staying up with its seven siblings.

But we still don’t know the answer to our question. Did we solve the problem?

As this was the first full engine start after the Rotax oil purge procedure, the lifters needed to be checked to be sure there was no air in the oil system. I asked Melchert to come back and do that. At the same time, he and Nate had different opinions over whether the fault indicating a faulty injector was from the earlier engine start or the latest one (I’d started the engine with John before checking the lifters).

Only clearing the ECU data, and another engine start would answer the question.

The lifters were fine but in the process of tightening the valve cover screw, John broke it, and he didn’t have a tool with him to remove it.

Then he had to go to Florida on a previously scheduled business trip.

I was later able to get the screw out, thanks to the advice of Dan Theis, Mike Graczyk, Al Kupferschidt, and Marlon Gunderson at EAA Chapter 54 who all suggested the screw wasn’t under any tension. They were right. 

With new screws and O-rings arriving from Advanced Powerplant Solutions (no more Lockwood for me!),  I buttoned everything up, put the bottom cowl on, reattached air and heater hoses and gave it another test, in anticipation of completing the engine work and moving on to weight & balance action.

It started beautifully and smoothly. At one point I ran it up to takeoff power and the plane jumped the wheel chocks. No matter. We taxiied to the end of the lane and back with the brakes making theiir usual RV noises (at some point, I'll get down there with some Disk Quiet).

Nate Holderbein confirmed the log file was clear of any fault indicators. The long slump, it seems, may be over.

Count the number of people mentioned in this column and you’ll have a good idea of the best part about building an RV.

 Come back tomorrow, put your work in, grind it out.

And have a lot of friends you make along the way.

Averting catastrophe

I have one of the early tailcones for my RV-12iS project, the one where the inspection hole for the fuel sump isn't already cut out. I'm not sure Van's plans even include the dimensions for cutting the hole out anymore. I couldn't find it in the online plan (and my plans are at the hangar right now as I write this so I can't look for them). 

 But it gives the location and dimension of the cutout. Might've even provided a template, IIRC . And I can't remember whether the cover was provided or I had to make one. (Update: It was a template) 

 But while the tailcone was off last winter and I waited for the avionics kit to show up, I made the cut, cleaned it up, added the nutplates for the inspection cover and buttoned everything up. 

 The avionics kit arrived in May and I've been working A LOT to get most of the wiring done so that I'd still have some summer heat left in which to do some window/canopy work. And a couple of weeks ago, my wife came to the hangar to help attach the tailcone permanently. I'd removed the inspection cover to give me a hand hold. 

 Yesterday afternoon, I was riveting the double line of rivets along the bottom of the fuselage/tailcone joint when I looked in and saw this: 

 That's a nutplate DIRECTLY underneath the fuel line to the fuel pumps and just about touching it and there's no question that putting a screw in there would either puncture the fuel line immediately or destroy it in the first few hours of flight. 

 It was also impossible to drill it out using conventional technique because punching the remaining 3-3.5 rivets out after breaking the head off would act like a spear into the fuel line. 

 I put a piece of scrap between the fuel line and the nutplate and drilled the #40 holes out to #30 instead while gripping the nutplate to prevent it from spinning. 

 I probably eventually would've discovered this before flight, but perhaps not before screwing the inspection cover in place. For the heck of it, I looked at other inspection cover areas and found a SOMEWHAT similar arrangement at the inspection panel underneath the fuel tank. 

This one, of course, is precut and holes assigned for the nutplate. 

 The firewall fuel line is offset slightly from that nutplate, but still gives me a bit of pause. There's not much you can do there -- the location is very close to the bulkhead snap bushing -- and maybe it's no big deal. But it's close enough to make me think a little firesleeve and tie wrap wouldn't be a horrible idea. Also a very short screw in that location is a capital idea.

That time I almost killed myself

 

From the Never Again file.

It was six years ago today.

This was the most challenging cross country flight I made. I took off from Fitchburg, Mass., my hometown, when the ceilings were about 2000, knowing there was a chance for weather along the way. I ran into low overcast in Gardner, a few miles away, but found a hole to go up and above the clouds where it was sunny.

I could've stayed up there for 4 or 5 hours. I had full fuel and things were running nicely.

But I had this plan that if things got dicey, I'd land in Pittsfield. And then it became a security blanket because, there I was, on top of the clouds. What if there's no end to the clouds and, say, doesn't it look ahead like those clouds are taller? There are no shortage of dumb mistakes in this story. I wanted to call a Flight Service Station to get a quick read of clouds, but I couldn't find the frequency. Was I in Boston center's area, Albany's, Bradley's (Hartford). I could've asked for a little help, but I didn't. Guy thing. So I decided to land in Pittsfield, which, before I took off, was reporting broken clouds. But then I checked as I flew along near Northampton. Overcast at 3,000. Oh oh.

For reasons that only a psychologist could explain, I pressed on to Pittsfield. Having worked and lived there, I knew there was a ski area next door. How high was that hill? I decided I would orbit over the airport and circle down. Through the clouds. I was at 5,000 feet.

As I circled, I noticed my GPS, which had been providing data to my autopilot (which I'd turned off), was still directing my to my intended first stop - Elmira. Again, for unexplained reasons, I thought this would be a good time to fix the GPS.

The plane's altimeter kept going down and the speed kept going up, then the altimeter went up and the speed went down. I was close to uncontrolled flight and even though I knew what was happening, I just couldn't get ahead of the airplane.

I was thinking about what the people would say about my demise when I broke out over the airport.

Then I heard the radio. It was a guy on an instrument approach to the airport. I hadn't really considered the possibility that there'd be someone else out there.

I quickly headed out to Onota Lake and circled, until I could calm down. I landed, took a break and eventually took off again when the clouds moved away. Five miles west of Pittsfield, the clouds disappeared. I knew another front was coming so I landed in Elmira, above. There was a 26 knot crosswind. EAsily handled. I parked amid the corporate jets of PGA golfers as there was a tournament in the area.

I waited for a couple of hours for the front to arrive and see how quickly it was moving, and then gave up, and got a motel for the night. A half hour later, the rain was so heavy I couldn't see across the street.

The next morning -- a work day so I was blogging -- it was still scuzzy, but legal. So, I took off and followed a highway through the wilderness of NW Pennsulvania, until the highway ran out. Then I followed a river.

It was actually beautiful being low over the rolling hills and occasional fields.

Around Youngstown, Ohio, things cleared out.

Count the stupid.

Oh it gets worse. The day before I left South St. Paul, Minn., for Massachusetts, I'd attended an AOPA Air Safety Foundation seminar roadshow. The topic: How not to make VFR into IMC mistakes.

A return to building

 I’ve been delaying ordering the engine for the RV-12iS project for quite awhile. The first year of retirement took a little getting used to; the tax implications weren’t entirely clear so I decided to wait a year.  And then there were two aging mothers to look after, both of whom passed on within weeks of each other last fall.

When I was looking at last year’s building log, I was pretty shocked by how little I actually worked on the project; some wheel pants and swapping out an old nosegear leg design for a new one and fitting the wings to the fuselage to drill a couple of holes and that was about it.

It wasn’t until the engine arrived a couple of months ago that I realized how much I missed building. Last summer, at least, was taken up by a lot of ushering at Target Field. But even though I went to the hangar every day, I wasn’t really doing much of anything.

The engine kit is probably the most expensive part of the RV-12iS (about $36,000) and it is also probably the smallest. One crate. About 400 pounds total.

My son, Sean, and former Minnesota Public Radio co-worker John Wanamaker did the heavy lifting when the engine arrived.

Van’s does some weird things with the RV-12iS instructions. They’re not particularly linear and several sections supplied with the finishing kit you can’t do because the parts (the fuel pump, for example) are included in the powerplant kit.

The cowling is included in the finishing kit, too, but you can’t do anything with it until you have a propeller hub and spinner plate installed and you can’t do that because – guess what? – they come with the powerplant kit.

The canopy also comes with the finishing kit. Mine is still sitting in the crate because Van’s doesn’t want you to work on the canopy until the rear window is installed. And it doesn’t want the rear window installed until the tail cone assembly has been permanently attached to the fuselage. But if you do that, you lose all access to the area behind the bulkhead, which is where the fuel pump assembly goes, which – you may have heard – is included in the powerplant kit.

It is a maze of dead-ends at this point in the build. So there was really no good reason not to order the engine kit, except for the money, of course.

Anyway, it arrived June 16^th and after some inventorying, I was hanging stuff on the firewall, and  bending tubing for a fuel pump assembly that looks like it should be on the space shuttle.  On a Rotax 912iS, the boost pump is always on.

I counted something like 15 potential points of failure on the boost pump assembly.

Installing the engine is about as simple as it gets. I have an engine hoist (it’s available to borrow if you ever need it) so I just lifted it out of the crate and put it on a table to make some minor modifications before lifting it into place.

When I built the RV-7A, about six guys came by to help me install the IO-360M1B. It still look us about four or five hours to get the four bolts to line up properly through the Lord mounts.

But I decided to just hang the engine myself this time. It took about 45 minutes, the bulk of which was torqueing the bolts down to the proper specifications. At one point, I wasn’t getting one bolt to line up, so I just lifted the engine by hand for a moment. Try that with an IO-360!

You really hold your breath when you lift a $36,000 engine

The Van’s product is truly an incredible feat of engineering. We’re not really building anymore; we’re just assembling. I swear that one of these days I’ll stop by the hangar, and the RV-12iS will have built the rest of it itself.

If only. Its time to order the avionics kit. Someone has to keep Stein rolling in dough.

Unfortunately, while working on the cowling installation, my Meniere’s Disease flared up again. I had hoped to fly LSA with this plane, but I’m coming to the realization that my flying days are likely over, at least with flying that involves the legal technicalities of disqualifying condition.

Unless something changes (not likely; Meniere’s is a progressive disease with no cure), my plan now is to find someone who can do the first flight and the required five hours of Phase I, then get it up to Midwest in Hibbing for paint and find someone who wants to own a truly well-built airplane that, I hear, is a lot of fun to fly.

Then what? I’ll either build another 12 or explore some ultralights. I had always wanted to try powered parachutes but, inexplicably, they’re in the same class as the LSA, while ultralights are not.

Building is not flying, but it's the next best thing.

Here's one reason why young people avoid aviation

One of the airport regulars stopped by the hangar the other day (one of the few that still visits) and told me how he thinks he got Coronavirus in Florida a few months ago.

"But there were a bunch of Somalis on the plane who brought it to Minneapolis, so that's good," he said as I ushered him out.

Far too often, it feels as though most everyone at KSGS -- nearly 100% white and old -- is like that; they're often the ones who make a show of their pious religion.

Far too often, it feels as though a majority of people in general aviation are this way although nobody talks about it.

What they do talk about is why can't they get more young people into aviation?

Maybe younger people are on a differnt side of history.

Maybe the answer why is right there on the tip of the tongue.

There are a lot of complex reasons why general aviation isn't attractive to newer generations -- money, perhaps, being the most obvious.

But how we act and present ourselves is one that can be easily fixed. Today.

Replacing the rear spar doubler on an RV-7A

If you violated the 5/8" edge distance guidelines on the rear spar doubler when mating your wings, all is not lost! With a little patience, you can get a second chance with a new doubler.

This article, originally published in March 2007,  will be of no value to 99 percent of you because, I'm guessing, 99 percent of RV airplane builders don't mess up the edge distance on the rear spar "fork" when mating the wings. To the other 1 percent, however, there's very little guidance on what to do. So perhaps this will help. Later in the article, I'll show you the "gotcha" that got me in trouble. Originally I thought my misdrilled bolt hole was the culprit. While that didn't help things, that wasn't the problem. But more on that later.

I have to thank Ken Scott at Van's, who gave me a lot of sympathy, and some encouragement, for my plight. After I discovered this mistake, I admit my confidence level took a significant hit. But Ken gave me every indication that working carefully, it could be fixed.

OK, so your edge distance is less than the 5/8" required by Van's. What should you do? Should you replace it all? As I indicated in an Editor's Page column, there was never any question for me. But you have to make that decision for yourself. I'm not an engineer and I did get some e-mail that suggested I was likely to cause more damage to the rear spar in dismantling the unit than I had compromised safety by leaving the edge distance slightly outside of tolerance. I didn't agree and Van's didn't agree, but you have to make that call for yourself, mindful that Van's says this callout -- the 5/8" edge distance -- is one of the few "sacred measurements" on the entire project.

If you're still reading -- and I guess you are -- you've decided to replace it. What I'm about to describe is "my" method. My method involves doing whatever it takes to get things right. No shortcuts. I did get a couple of e-mails from folks who drilled out the doubler bar without removing skins. It worked for them. But looking at my project, it wasn't going to work for me. As you approach this, it's more than removing components; you have to easily put them back together again.

As you look at your wing, you'll discover that there's no reasonable way to remove the doubler fork without removing -- or at least getting it out of the way -- the flap brace. It makes the lower rivets inaccessible.

And there's no way to remove the flap brace without removing the flap hinge. So the first step is to remove the rivets holding the bottom skin, the flap brace, and the flap hinge. Let's take a look at proper rivet removal technique.

First, you don't want to make the holes larger or do any damage to parts. Flush head rivets are relatively easy to drill out; it's a two step process -- drill a hole in the rivet head, and snap the rivet head off. How? Simple. And here I call up the expertise of Joe Schumacher of the EAA, who has built something like 19 homebuilt airplanes. You may have seen him on the series "From the Ground Up." He often uttered this piece of advice: "take your time."

Elementary rivet removal. Drill the head in the middle then rock and roll with the end of a drill bit until the rivet snaps off.


There is no better advice for construction of an RV airplane: take your time. And removing rivets requires you to slow down, and be patient. Yes, you have a lot to remove, but in reality you have only one to remove: the next one. So, stay focused on the task at hand and slow down. Some people say you should use a #41 drill to drill off the rivet head, and that's probably wise. But it works easier for me with a #40.

I used an old electric drill because I can turn it slowly more easily than an air drill. Although there is a slight dimple in the head of the rivet, the drill bit is still going to want to run just a bit. So turn the chuck by hand and then slowly begin to drill. Have an old #40 bit standing by. Start the drill, then stop to be sure you're centered on the rivet head. If not, you can apply a little pressure to the drill bit to get it centered. Stop periodically and use the drill end of the spare bit, putting it in the hole. If you can wiggle the rivet head, fine. If not, drill a little bit more until you can.

The temptation here is to rock one way once, the other once and then go for broke and try to snap off the rivet head. That, to me, is where trouble begins. I move the drill bit one way and the other a couple of times and keep doing it until I see the edge of the rivet lift slightly off the dimple in the skin. When I see that, I know that rivet head is a goner pretty soon.

I can't stress enough that impatience here will kill you and you will end up making a bigger problem for yourself. Sure, you can always use an "oops" rivet (you can drill out the hole to 1/8" and use a rivet with a 1/8" shank and a 3/32" head so it blends in), but these are cosmetic more than structural and you don't want to use many of them.

One tip: As you remove rivets over a large area, if you can put a little back pressure on the rivet hole, the head will literally fly off.

Once the head is off, you can use a 3/32" punch and taps on a hammer to push the shank out. However, you must support the other side. A bucking bar or any sort of mass applied against the skin, rib or what have you, will prevent the force of the punch from bending the material. You will need two people for this job because you can't hold a punch, a hammer, and a bucking bar.

But there is a better way for ribs and things like this. Check out this little item (Photo below) I got from Aircraft Spruce. It's a modified pair of pliers with a punch on one side, and a small plate on the other. The plate provides the backing against the force of the punch when applied by squeezing the pliers. Since there's a hole in the plate where the rivet shank (and shop head) is, it goes flying, your material is left intact. Pricey -- $65 -- but way better than a punch and hammer. Strongly recommended for this job.

Be sure not to hurt the hinge eyes here. You can put some small popsicle stick (you have some left from when you built the wing tanks, right?) spacers on the backing plate of the pliers. Again, take your time.

Remove the entire line of rivets on the flap brace, remove the hinge and put it away somewhere safe.

In order to move the flap brace out of the way, you'll next have to remove the rivets that hold the flap brace on the rear spar. Another task. Another tool. This rivet removal tool (I think I got it from Avery), is perfect for the task. It comes with threaded drill bits and different heads to fit over universal head rivets.

Above Removing the line of rivets that hold the flap brace (and flap hinge) is the first step in making the repair.
This rivet removal tool, used with a drill, is used on universal head rivets. But be careful to get it centered properly.
Now you might think you can just put it on top of a rivet, hit the drill and move on. But you can't. You have to be sure it's centered on the rivet and you have to, again, take your time and be sure the drill bit is centered. With this tool, you can adjust the depth of the drill hole. Same deal here; get it deep enough to allow the other end of an old #30 drill bit to fit in and twist the head off, but not so deep that you're drilling into the spar. Again, be patient in rocking the head before you give it the final effort to pry the head off.


I decided to do this right, and to give me good bucking bar access later, I'd remove the skins, at least all the rivets to the most outboard access hole. You may not want to do this but, again, to me it's a matter of reconstructing things right. Yes, I could try more contortions through the lightening holes in the ribs, but it was my assessment that I couldn't do a perfect job this way and I'd obviously screwed up once and I just wasn't in the mood to try to cut corners here.

So I removed all the rivets along the spar on the skin...and all the rivets on the top spar, and then the rivets on the ribs. Working from inboard out allows you to place very slight pressure when snapping the rivet heads by peeling back the skin as you go.

Why did I take all those rivets out? When it comes time to rivet the new doubler on , I want as much access as I can get. If tried to get away with removing fewer rivets, there was a greater chance I'd put a crimp in the skin, so I decided a little more work would be worth the reward.

With the skin off -- or peeled back -- you'll be able to get access to the underside of the spar, to brace it as you remove the rivet shanks. The neat pliers won't help you here, so to remove the heads, you'll have to use a punch and hammer (there's also, from what someone posted on one of the builder groups), a "punch-like" bit you can put in a rivet gun. But either way, you'll once again have to brace the other side of the work. With a punch and hammer, you'll need two people. With the punch set for a rivet gun, you'll need one. Take your time.

How many of the rivets to remove? Well, certainly all the way to the end of the fork. But in order to move it out of the way enough, I'd keep going. Now, I removed too many. I went to the second rivet after the center rib. But you'll have to remove enough to get some serious "flex" in the brace to get it out of your way.

Once that's done, you're ready to work on the doublers. This is actually pretty easy since you're going to throw these parts away anyway. Try to remove the rivets as described above. But if that doesn't work, use a grinding stone in a Dremel and grind the heads (or the shop head if you originally put them in that way) down just below the doubler (obviously you don't need to go more than a hair into the doubler). Then take a punch and tap the rivet until you see it depress slightly (enough that the outline of the shank is visible).

Whether you try to remove the rivet now or come back later and do them all at the same time is up to you. I compartmentalize my tasks so I snapped all the heads off (or ground them down), before removing them.

After removing the heads, and punching out the shanks, you just have to take up the old fork and doubler and inspect the spar for any damage. If you take your time and work slowly -- take several days if you have to -- it should be fine. Vacuum up the mess and remove all the old shanks from the bottom of the skeleton (another great reason to remove the skin).

The old doubler heads for he scrap heap

As luck would have it, the day I finished this task, was the same day the new parts arrived. Turning my attention to them, I just used a drill press to enlarge all the holes to #30, and deburred and polished all the edges.

Just for the heck of it, I placed the old doubler on the new one and traced the old hole to see how the edge distance of the new one would work if I didn't do the trimming. Then, I got out Drawing 38 (for an RV-7A), and -- since it's full size -- placed by doubler on the drawing and marked where the trims were to be made as instructed and it is here where I discovered my mistake that got me here in the first place.

Instead of just placing the part on the drawing and marking the locations of the trims. I used the dimensions specified in the drawing to mark the original parts. I got the dimensions right, but my reference was wrong. As you can see in the photograph, instead of marking the inboard trim by drawing a line up the inboard edge and then measuring outboard the required distance, I measured from the top inboard edge. Bad mistake, because if I'd made this part right in the first place, even my misdrilled hole at wing-mating would've been acceptable.

If you look closely at the schematic, you can see why my stub ended up too short.

I intend to replace the fuselage fork also, but just in case I change my mind and want to use the existing fuselage fork hole as a drill guide into the new part (something I presently think is a bad idea), I marked the dimensions for the trim on the new parts and then made absolutely sure I left an additional 1/32" of material after the cut. I made the cuts, deburred, and polished the edges, and then Alumiprepped, Alodined, and primed the parts.

The next day I clecoed the fork and doubler in place. There's nothing new here; you've done this before. Just take your time. Rivet the lower line of rivets first. The directions call for the same sized rivet (AN470-4-6 as I recall) from the outboard end all the way down to (but not including) the doubler plate...even where the ribs are. If you accidentally enlarged a hole a bit in the rear spar (and, let's face it, you probably will one or two), going one size larger here will work fine. Then do the doubler plate (I used a slightly longer rivet on these too than what the directions called for). Be sure not to rivet the three 470 rivets that connect the flap brace to the doublers. After all the bottom row rivets are completed, cleco to the flap brace back on and do the three inboard rivets.

 When you do the top row, Place some duct tape on the edge of the top skin. In fact, you should do this before drilling the old rivets out, too.


What's left now -- mostly -- is the top row. You'll need a partner here because, unlike when you first rivet this part -- there's a top skin here now. And you can't get a rivet set on the rivet head without interfering with the skin. The question isn't whether you'll hurt the skin (although that's a possibility), it's that you'll put some smilies in the rivets.

I admit, I got a few smilies in mine, until I called upstairs and asked my wife to contribute her time to pull on the top skin edge enough to allow me to get the rivet set on straight.

The task is done. That Sharpie writing on the flap brace says "don't forget to put the hinge on."


With that task completed, you're now ready to rivet the rest of the flap-brace-to-rear spar rivets. This task, if you took as many rivets as I did out, is impossible without removing the wing skin. But since I did, I was able to easily -- and quickly -- reinstall the flap brace with mostly perfect rivets.

So ahead. Give that beautiful new doubler a tug. Strong? You bet. And admit it. You feel good about making right one of the worst mistakes in building an RV airplane. I sure did.

Now, it's just a matter of re-riveting on the bottom skin. Work outboard to inboard -- just the opposite of when you installed them. Work forward to aft to forward and you should be able to keep enough of the skin peeled back to allow you to get your arm up through a lightening hole to buck the most aft rivets. The hardest rivets to buck are the same ones that were hard the first time around -- the second and third bays at the bottom along the main spar. I got one bay done OK, and then decided to use pop rivets on ones that I decided I had a good chance of doing damage with if I were to try to buck them.

The last task is the first one in this article -- putting the line of rivets back in that solidifies the bottom skin, the flap brace and the flap hinge. Caution: It's really easy here to forget to put the hinge back on (or have you never riveted a line of stiffeners without the stiffener or a nutplate without the nutplate?).

I also used the occasion to dimple the holes for the wing fairing attach nutplates (and, of course, ordered new nutplates.)

And you're done.

The next step -- for me -- is to evaluate getting at the fuselage fork to replace it. Fortunately, I put screws in on the baggage compartment floor (except along the bulkhead) to get at things underneath there rather than drilling out pop rivets. Just thinking it through, though I can see some real contortions trying to get at that doubler fork. We'll see. I'll update this article later.

Update: I've decided not to replace the fuselage clevis. Here's why. In order to start "completely over" with a new hole, I'd have to replace both the front and back of the fuselage fork. The trouble with that is the most aft part of that fork carries all the way over to the other side and forms the aft end of the left wing fuselage clevis. So that would necessitate removing the rear spar doubler on the other wing too because there would be no way at that time to drill a hole in that clevis and have it perfectly center in a hole that is already drilled in the rear spar doubler on the left wing. To me, it would be stupid to ruin a perfectly fine mating job.

I could also replace just the forward part of the fuselage fork clevis -- that's just a bar with about 6 or 7 rivets (and several bolt holes) in it. That allowed me to drill using the existing hole as a guide.

The third possibility was to do nothing with the fuselage clevis and using the existing hole as a drill guide and figure out a way that the hole in the aft fuselage clevis (already drilled) through the new spar doubler (not yet drilled) mates up perfectly with the hole in the front of the fuselage clevis (already drilled).

Ken Scott's advice: I think the third proposition is the best. My...cousin...didn't have to solve this one, because only the wing portion was a problem. However, if you stick a long rod through the clevis, slip a block with a drilled hole over the rod and clamp it solidly to the fuselage and remove the rod, you will have a drill guide.

The heroes among us

I'm fishing out old articles I've written that are no longer available on the Internet. This one, from March 2007, is as pertinent to me today as it was then. I haven't had stick time in an RV since I ferried N614EF off to its new owner in late 2016. There are heroes who walk -- and fly -- among us. Here's the story of one of them.

(Mar. 31, 2007) -- After I graduated from college, not being able to get a job in radio news (it was a lot tougher back then thanks to Woodward and Bernstein), I went to work for my Dad in the insurance industry. I'm sure it was one of the happiest days of his life because a few weeks ago, my son got a fulltime job where I work, and it was sure one of mine!

I would have enjoyed the insurance business a lot more except for one thing: I really don't like asking people for something -- especially money. It's just not something I have ever been able to do. My career in the sales business was a short one and in the subsequent age of venture capitalists and movers and shakers, no doubt I also missed any chance to become a wealthy man -- well, that and the fact I had no marketable idea. During my radio career, I've also never asked for a raise. That's 32 years and might explain why I've moved so often.

I got to thinking about all of this a little over a week ago in an e-mail exchange with Dan Checkoway. I told him, it had been over a year since I've flown. He wrote and said I need to ask someone for a ride.

He was right, of course, but people are dying uninsured, brilliant products have gone to market, and two feet have stayed on the ground in the last year for the reasons previously cited.

And it's here where the events continue to suggest that there's a bigger force playing with us, moving us about some chessboard somewhere, because sometimes things work out just too darned perfectly.

On Saturday, I was at the quarterly meeting of the Minnesota Wing of Van's Air Force. I had wandered around the gorgeous airpark hangar, wishing I'd been better at the insurance business, and daydreaming about the good life. I enjoyed Pete Howell's demonstration on landing lighting, and I had thoroughly enjoyed watching One-Six Right.

During the film, listening to all the folks recount the moment they fell in love with flying, and listening to it almost always go back to their first consciousness as a youngster, I realized that I can't remember when I first came to realize I wanted to be a pilot. I didn't have an airport near my home that I could bike to, a barnstormer never dropped into the field near the house, I didn't build a go-cart that looked like a plane. Nothing.




The closest I came in my recollection was wanting to be an astronaut more than anything else. But flying a plane isn't being an astronaut, so I began to wonder if I really am a real pilot, complete with the DNA composition that apparently makes you think about nothing else from the time you exit the womb.

I was thinking about that while walking over to the other side of the hangar for a cup of coffee.

"Hi, Bob," RV-6A builder and pilot Alex Peterson said, waking me out of my travels back to the 1950s. Alex is not just an RV pilot, Alex is one of those RV folks who other RV folks hold up as a hero. You know who they are. What marks them all is that they don't. But they are. Heroes, that is, in the sense they inspire us when we're building, not only with the knowledge they willingly -- and enthusiastically -- pass along, but with the flight tales that provide the motivation for us to want to do the same thing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's a definition of hero in my book.

"You keep cranking out those great newsletters," Alex said. "And I owe you an RV ride. Is that something you'd be interested in?"

I don't really know how to describe the sound of someone making your day, but it goes something like this: "I owe you an RV ride."

"I'd love to," I stammered.

"How about today?" he said. "A couple of us are flying to Olivia for lunch. I'm not coming back right away so you'll fly down in an RV, and can fly back with Bernie Weiss in his Bonanza."

Now, as I can recall, the only better words I've ever heard in my lifetime was when my then-girlfriend and I were in a nice little burger joint in Harvard Square back in 1981 and she said, "So are you going to marry me or what?"

A half hour or so later, we opened Bernie's hangar to reveal Alex's RV-6A, Bernie's Bonanza, and Pete Howell's brand new RV-9A... making me second guess my instructions in my will that when I die, my ashes are to be scattered at Home Depot.

It had everything an RV builder could want. In fact it had two of them.

After a proper checkout, we jumped in and fired up the RV-6A, only the second time I've even been in one. Alex called the tower, got a clearance, and an instruction to make a right turn, and firewalled the throttle. I was now an astronaut after all, because we were climbing as fast as the space shuttle, I was sure, even though it didn't feel like it.

It only took seconds, as I looked all around that gorgeous canopy to realize that I really I do have the right DNA.

We proceeded downwind and the tower told Alex his transponder wasn't working. Alex figured, correctly, that he was looking in the wrong spot, for this was an RV. No doubt the controller was looking upwind on his screen, and we were already miles out of the pattern. "OK, it's working now," the tower said. "OK it's working now" is controller talk for "Whoops."

It was a gorgeous and enjoyable ride to Olivia, about 80 miles away. We found an open burger joint, had a great lunch with terrific company, then headed back to our respective steeds and headed back home.

Me? I headed back to the garage, and started working on the plane (well, at least until I realized I needed a 6" or 12" #12 drill bit to properly drill the holes in the 705 bulkhead for the canopy latch mechanism. And I didn't want to ask anyone if they had one so I ordered it from Avery).

I don't know how to describe (a) a better day or (b) how things just happen to fit together perfectly from time to time.

The EAA, appropriately so, has championed aviation through the Young Eagles program. I've often thought someone should sponsor an Old Eagles Program, to give motivating rides to people who are building, or just want to remember what it was like to fly. The RV community, specifically I think, seems to understand this better than many pilots. There are, in fact, lots of heroes out there and I want to be sure they all know -- you all know -- what it means to us.

After we returned to Anoka, Bernie filled up his Bonanza and we were taxiing back to the hangar when we noticed Pete was in the runup area and he had a passenger. As I understand, Pete will give rides 'til the cows come home. We didn't know who it was, but they were about to have a great day.

Just as I had.

On a wing and a dream

This a reprint of an article that appeared in the RV Builder's Hotline on December 16, 2006.

Saturday night is writing night at my house these days. The weekly Hotline has already gone out and somewhere in the back of my mind is a voice that's saying, "what are you going to put in there next week, Bob?" Such is the life of a one-week publishing cycle. But it's writing night and I can get a little of that done and, oh hey, have a head start on what's going to be in the next issue. This is going to be in the next issue. Simple, eh?

Other than during New England Patriot games and an occasional Cleveland Indians tilt, I'm not the type to get nervous about things. There are exceptions. When I started the fuel tanks on my RV-7A, I felt like I was doing open heart surgery. Same deal when I drilled the rear spar bolt hole when mating the wings. It always felt like disaster was just around the corner. It sort of was with the right-wing hole; I didn't drill it straight even though I meant to. But I've made a couple of shims and things will be OK.

Tonight I found myself in one of those positions in which I was alternately excited and nervous. I watched most of the last hour of the countdown to the launch of the shuttle Discovery. It is inspiring, actually, to watch NASA TV right up until the moment of launch, and realize the teamwork and intelligence that conspires to defy gravity. And yet, as I watch that moment when the sparks start going at the base of the shuttle and, I guess, the engine is starting (I really don't know how that whole shuttle engine thing works), I want to turn away because, well, disaster is just around the corner.



But I don't turn away, I watch and wonder what the astronauts are thinking and how exciting it must be for them. And I -- just for a second -- think, "I'm going to do this when I grow up."

My love of flying actually started as a love of the space program. When I was a young teen, I had my whole life planned. I'd go to the Air Force Academy, I'd become a pilot, I'd join the space program, and I go into space or, if not, I'd fly a commercial jetliner for a living.

That lasted as long as an eye-exam after getting the requirements for entry to the Air Force Academy (I chose the Air Force because I don't swim all that well and I figured in the Navy you'd have to, you know, swim). After that, I chose a lower altitude and thought maybe someday I'd fly a plane.

But even that gave way to other realities and writing and me seemed to get along OK and I liked sports and so I thought I'd end up working as a sportscaster in Boston. Years later I was working in Boston, but as an editor, not a sportscaster. Close enough. I love Boston. As I commuted to work aboard the Red Line train going over the Longfellow Bridge, I'd see the gorgeous city before me and think, "I'm 27, and I've already accomplished my dream of working in radio in Boston." By then, I'd forgotten about space, and about flying.

The years went by and somehow I ended up in Minnesota and my twin brother visited me one weekend and we started talking about old dreams. From somewhere, flying got mentioned. He had recently gotten his private and I recalled to him my dream of flight. I dropped him off at the airport at the end of our too-short visit, and a few days later he called me and said, "Happy birthday, you start flight lessons tomorrow." He'd dropped a wad of cash at the local flight school, enough to pay for my entire flight instruction if I didn't flunk too many checkrides.

Dreams are funny like that. Even after you forget they're there, they come back, and sometimes even come true.

Last week I had the pleasure of listening to RV builder Paul Dye, the lead flight director on the last shuttle mission, and astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, another Minnesotan, give a talk in Minneapolis about their careers, and about that mission. The video was astounding and as I watched it, I once again thought, "I'm going to do that when I grow up."

"Shuttle, go at throttle up," the voice said tonight, snapping me back from my dreams. For a moment, I turned away. Disaster is always around the corner, you know. But it flew straight and true and a few minutes later, I realized, a bunch of dreams came true for someone else. They were in space.

We sit at the end of the runway the way those astronauts sit on that bomb, or the way some of us approach drilling a spar hole in a wing doubler -- excited about what's to come, maybe a little nervous. Disaster might be around the corner, but we push the throttle forward, and we roll on toward a dream.

This week we'll, no doubt, read again of one more first flight, one more ordered kit, one more first rivet. Dreams, one and all.

Never give them up.

When is good enough good enough?

This article, which I wrote, first appeared in the now defunct RV Builder's Hotline. Fortunately, I still have the entire site archived on my computer.


(Dec. 24, 2006) -- One of the things I enjoy about building my RV is how the project has made me particular about approaching various tasks in search of perfection. One of the things about building my RV that has frustrated me no end is how rarely I find it.


A few weeks ago I was wandering along the flight line at the Minnesota Wing of Van's Air Force meeting, looking at some truly fine examples of workmanship. My friend Warren Starkebaum was with me.

I was telling Warren about my experience building the "new" rudder on my 7 last winter (the one with the AEX wedge trailing edge rather than the single-piece bent skin trailing edge). "I worked very carefully to get it perfectly straight and it came out OK. "It didn't come out perfect, but it came out OK," I said. But I wasn't finished telling the story.

"And then I went to Oshkosh last summer and looked at all of these beautiful RVs," I continued. "And I looked at all of the trailing edges on the rudders and they were dead-on straight. Man, did I feel like the world's worst builder after that."

As we looked over Paul Hove's beautiful (and almost ready to fly) RV-7A, I was waiting for Warren to lecture me on stuff I already knew or should've known. But Warren's not the type of guy to rub it in.

"You gotta stop looking at other people's planes so closely," he said.

We only see each other a couple of times a year, even though we live fairly close in the Twin Cities and have a lot in common, RV-wise, but that's why I consider him my best RV-building bud.

Unfortunately, even if I stopped looking at other people's RVs so closely, I'd still have to answer to the one person who insists on perfect execution. Me. For all of the questions we see regularly on the bulletin boards from "newbies," this, it seems to me, is the thing every builder needs to learn: when is "good enough" good enough? And who do we rely on to decide?

Sure, we have rivet gauges, AC43.13, an occasional tech counselor visit, and the admonishment of Van's in the instructions and on the plans to guide us, but sometimes we have to answer to a higher authority and sometimes we don't like ourselves much because of it. Sometimes we're like the 4th grade piano instructor who says "again" after you just played a flawless version of "Jingle Bells."

The favorite expression on bulletin boards is "build on!" when someone posts a question about a task that he or she has questions about. And, yes, this is a person learning when good enough is good enough. But most of us on those boards aren't engineers and when you get right down to it, the place to go for these answers is actually the designer of the plane -- Van's Aircraft. Aside from the convenience of the boards, I contend that one of the reasons we don't rely on Van's expertise more often, is we're not sure we want to hear the answer to some questions.

It's true that we'd rather hear "build on!" than "again." But I've found over the course of this project that "build on" doesn't make the little voice in my head that says "again" go away.

Some things are just too important to ignore that voice. And quite often, you could just kick that voice's rear.

The scene of the crime

It happened to me this morning, as a matter of fact. You may recall from my wing-mating experience last summer, that I stupidly didn't drill the rear spar bolt hole straight on the right wing, despite my attempt to use a drill bushing to get it just right in that hard-to-reach spot for drill bushings. Here's a note: eyeball it! Van's said "be careful" here. I was careful. I still screwed it up.

After I installed the bolt and saw that it didn't go in straight, I, of course, kicked myself for again messing up. But there's no easy"again" with this part. And Van's makes it pretty clear that a 5/8" edge distance is required here. I immediately checked the edge distance on the fuselage "forks". Seven-eighths inches. "Whew," I said to myself.

I might not be perfect, but I am careful. And now that winter is here -- sort of -- and I have an unheated garage with an airplane in it, I usually spend much of the winter checking all of the instructions again, poring over the plane parts, and taking another look at every part I've built, reassessing whether it's "good enough." I also take care of some of the little dinky things that I figured last summer I could take care of later -- nutplates in the wing skins for the wing fairing, and the shims for the not-straight bolt etc.

As I was making one of the shims yesterday, I caught myself several times thinking it was "good enough." The bolt head was just about sitting flat against the shim and probably would be fine with a washer underneath the head. But each time I caught myself. "Good enough is not perfect," I said. I figured that someone would tell me to 'build on!", and they'd probably be right. But someone would know that it wasn't up to the best I could do. Me. So I continued until I got the shim perfect.

As I reviewed the plans, I knew I'd have to get a larger bolt than that which the plans called for, and I noticed the plans called for three washers. And so I was on the RV Builders Yahoogroup (Van's was closed) asking about their distribution when it hit me: "You measured the edge distance on the fuselage 'forks,' but did you measure the edge distance on the rear spar doubler?" I thought to myself.

I had -- once again -- the sinking feeling of a mistake. The admonishments -- many admonishments -- for the 5/8" edge distance zipped through my mind and I couldn't remember measuring the rear spar (the edge is blocked from view when you're actually drilling). I grabbed the Stanley 6" ruler out of the garage, and headed to the basement to check.

I held my breath as I measured from the center of the hole: 19/32" on the rear side, 18/32" on the forward side. Oh no!

Unless, of couse, I slid the ruler slighly outboard a bit. "Why not," I said, "maybe I'm not quite centered on the hole? Or maybe I'm not quite seeing the edge lining up with the 19. Maybe it really is the 20?"

But the voice in my head said "no." The voice in my head said "close enough" is not "good enough."

Stuff like that can really ruin a good day; especially since Van's is closed and there's nobody to tell me what to do. And so, like a kid who's been bad wondering what will happen when Dad gets home, I'm spending the weekend -- Christmas weekend of all things -- with a hundred different scenarios going through my mind. If Van's says rebuild the wing to get a clean doubler in there, I will. If they say "build on," I will. If there's something in between those two they want me to do, I'll do it.

What I won't do is listen to any voice in my head that says it's "good enough," if in my heart I know better.

(Post script: I ended up deciding to remove the doublers and fork from the wing as well as the stubs from the fuselage and replacing them all)