Alex's Vans RV-10 Build Log

With the side skins (almost) completely riveted on, I moved on to working on the landing gear mounts. This involves match drilling a few holes through the side skins, side plates and doublers directly into the landing gear mount flanges.  Steel drill templates are provided to ensure that the holes are correctly positioned, and to help guide the drill bits while drilling through the 1/8" steel. As suggested in the plans, I added some foil tape to the surface of the steel drill guides to make it easier to align the drill bit correctly for drilling. Drill templates clecoed to the side skin on the left side. 7 holes need to be match drilled to 1/4" diameter through the landing gear mount weldments After clecoing the side plate doubler and drill templates in place, but prior to placing the landing gear mount, I decided to cut away the corner of the center section rib flange using a hacksaw to make it easier to slide the landing gear mount downwards. I then inserted the left landin...

Prior to heading to Oshkosh for Airventure 2025, I decided to build a fuselage cradle following these plans  that were referenced on rv10.org . I had previously purchased all the required lumber and cut it to length, so it was a matter of just following the provided instructions for assembling everything together. I did, however, make a couple of small changes as I put the cradle together. These are described in the photo captions below. Fuselage cradle lumber cut to size The first modification I made was to widen the space that holds the spars to accommodate the 6" spar alignment rods An advantage of widening this space is that the side pieces can be unscrewed for riveting the side skins in this area in section 29 without having to move the fuselage I also modified the rear support as suggested in the RV-10 wiki. This will allow me to remove it later for riveting the tailcone. Here I have the fuselage supported by some foam to give me room to cleco side skins when I get to attach...