“No bird ever flew nonstop from New York to Tokyo, or raced 15 miles high at triple the speed of sound.                                                                                                   
  Birds do something else.   They do not conquer the air; they romance it..”


Peter Garrison

Jur's RV7 Aircraft Factory
3497 hours
and counting

Preparation work continues on the Z-brackets.

As the name says, the Z brackets have a Z shape aluminum form.

They are used to support and attach the fuel tanks to the main spar.

First you have to pre-drill them, them install to spar and matchdrill. Later the fuel tanks are fitted on top of them and matchdrilled from the top to ensure a good match between leading edge skin outboard and fuel tank skin.

This is a deviation from the plans. Vans manual follows another procedure but I will follow a method called the 'Dan Checkoway' method. It's known by most and you can find good illustrations on it on multiple websites. I will explain later as I move on to the matchdrilling part.

All brackets are edge cleaned and the center line is drawn on one side, ready to drill the center hole for the AN3 bolt.