Dave’s RV-7A Building Log

Celebrated one year on the project by taking the night off and having some fellow builders over. It was fun having folks come by to check out the shop and my progress. Thanks Bob, Todd, and Will.

One year ago today I received the second empennage box and inventoried it. That was the first official hours I logged on the project. In the meantime, I’ve built the empennage, wings, and started on the fuselage. Not bad. I’ve learned a lot along the way.

I still occasionally wonder if I’ve gone crazy. Building an airplane?!? It definitely sounds crazy. It has been a fun project so far. Among the projects I’ve done in my life, mostly house stuff like re-wiring or re-plumbing an old house, I’d have to say that this has been the most fun and rewarding. And I’m not even flying it yet! I’m looking forward to having it done some day, and having a great plane that I can fly and know inside and out.

One year down, and I hope only two more to go. I’m about 600 hours into the project. I’m guessing the total hours will be around 1800. Hopefully that means I’m about 1/3 of the way there.

Re-organized and cleaned up the garage. Julie’s car now fits in the garage–just barely. I need to get some more shelves and unpack the fuselage crates.

A few new tools arrived from Cleaveland. I finally broke down and got a #8 nut plate jig. I guess there are a bunch more nut plates on the fuselage and this will make it go faster. I also bought a 3X rivet gun. The 2X just isn’t able to effectively set the leading edge rib to wing spar rivets. I’m going to use the 3X gun for that.

I took the day off from work and went up to the Northwest Fly-In at Arlington, WA. My friend Jeff and I decided to go up on a weekday when it would be less busy. It was certainly quiet. It gave us a good opportunity to talk to the vendors. Unfortunately, not all of the vendors were there. I particularly wanted to talk to Aircraft Finishing Systems, but they weren’t there. Maybe they are showing up just for the weekend.

Cleaveland Tools had a big bus there with lots of tools. I saw a few things that I wanted, but didn’t need them right away.

We talked with Aero Sport Power for a while. A nice lady there (can’t remember her name) was very knowledgeable and answered lots of our questions. She said Bart was off at a forum, so we didn’t meet him. I asked about FADEC, and she said they aren’t able to install FADEC on the engine, but can make the engine “FADEC ready.” They basically test the engine with a carb and magnetos, and then take them off before shipping. You put on the FADEC yourself.

The first stop was really the Van’s display. Cleaveland and Aero Sport just happened to be on the way. Van’s brought up the RV-7A, RV-9A, and RV-10. We sat in the RV-7A and already had the RV grin going. I am pumped to hammer some rivets now. It is just such a cool plane. I didn’t have much headroom under the canopy, but enough. It’s definitely a little tighter than in a Cessna 172, but comfortable. Jeff and I looked all over the plane close up. We felt much better about our workmanship. For example, I have some pillowing around the fuel tank screws. The same thing is evident on the RV-7A and RV-9A.

We took a quick look in the Lancair that was there. Not bad for plastic. Two more Lancairs were supposed to show up before the weekend, including their jet.

At that point, we went to listen to Van talk about the side-by-side models. But Van was apparently at a soaring event. Scott gave the talk instead. There wasn’t really much info about the planes, which I didn’t mind. I know enough about them already, I think. Instead he had a slide show that walked through the factory. It was quite entertaining. We learned lots of trivia like why the Van’s Aircraft sign on the building is painted yellow and how they made the sign on the CNC machine.

We talked to lots of other vendors: Garmin was there. We watched a demo of their GPS. Looks complicated. It still seems strange that Garmin bought out UPS. I hope they make a new model in the near future with the best of both lines. It seems unlikely since they have much less competition now.

Clear Air Tools had a nice tent set up with lots of tools and some parts. Nothing I absolutely needed.

ECI looked pretty busy. We grabbed a booklet on their Titan cylinders, but didn’t stick around.

Trio had their auto pilot on display. We learned that it uses a teeny tiny mechanical gyro made by Analog Devices. There is info on the device on Analog Device’s web site. It’s strange that it’s a mechanical gyro device. I thought other manufacturers were using some sort of flux thingy. Their unit was very responsive. The new display looked cool, at least in the dim light of the tent. He said a GPS input was required, but the gyro would keep the auto pilot tracking a straight line for quite a while with some slight drift after 20 or so minutes. They use NavAid servos.

Dynon was there with their EFIS and engine monitoring unit. I’ve seen at least the EFIS before, and their units still look cool. They said the heated pitot tubes are way back ordered.

A guy from Lycoming looked up from his book briefly to ask if we had any questions. Nobody was gathered around that booth.

A guy from Eagle Engines was there representing Superior, but also pumping his own clone engines. He said an O-320 engine would be announced at Osh Kosh and an angle valve IO-360 would be available at the beginning of the year. Not sure if he was talking about his engines or Superior. He also said that only he and Mattituck were able to install FADEC on an engine. Not sure if that’s true, but not many companies advertise FADEC as an option. He also had a prop govenor available that was smaller than what everybody is currently using. He said the recess in the firewall was unnecessary with his unit, which is FAA/PMA approved. He was also saying something about the fact that the unit could be overhauled versus thrown away. It was hard to keep track of what he was saying–too much info.

A guy from AeroCraft Avionics was very friendly. They are apparently a spin off from Lancair, and are very interested in working with the RV market. They do panels from design through wiring, or any step in between. He was also talking about making a wiring “kit” that included a DVD stepping you through the process of wiring. He was just exploring the idea for now. He had on display a very cool panel (apparently made for a guy at TruTrak) that had a Chelton Sport system in it. He said something about the “Sport” model being only $20k. Ouch.

Spoke to Washington State Department of Transportation. Apparently all Washington pilots are supposed to register with them for $15 per year. The money goes strictly toward airport maintenance, so I’ll sign up for that. Just for promising to sign up, she gave me a very cool “Pilot’s Guide to Washington Airports”.

We were also able to watch the formation flying of the BlackJack Squadron. That’s the first time I got to watch fun. The coolest part was their landing. They flew over the runway at pattern altitude and split off one by one and swooped in for a landing.

On the way out, we looked through the RV parking area. There were a few dozen RVs there, and I’m sure there will be more this weekend.

I took one other picture (too busy gawking to take pictures) of this WWII vintage airplane. It was incredibly huge. I can’t imagine flying such a thing, let alone landing it on a carrier. The really freaky thing was we looked over a few minutes later and the wings were folded up. Incredible.

That’s pretty much the highlights–pretty good show overall. It’s not huge, but we learned a lot. It was very worthwhile to see some of the vendors in person, especially the engine folks.

Since Julie liked the flight on Friday, we went for another today–a cross country up to Friday Harbor, San Juan Island. By car and ferry, it’s about a 4 hour trip one way. By Cessna, it’s less than an hour. We flew up, had some ice cream, poked around in a few galleries, and flew back. Julie loved it, which is great!!

Taking off from Boeing Field, right by downtown. The Space Needle and Lake Union are in the second shot.

The happy passenger.

Kingston ferry dock and the Hood Canal Bridge.

It was kind of hazy today, but this picture basically frames the entire San Juan Islands.

Friday Harbor Airport, the town of Friday Harbor which is just a short walk away, and short final for runway 16.

Mount Rainier and downtwon Seattle on the way back.

Flying into Boeing Field from the north is very cool. You go right by downtown Seattle. The pointy white building in the second picture is the Smith Tower. It used to be the tallest building west of the Mississippi River–it’s obviously not anymore.

The B-17 and B-24 are in town for a few days. The B-17 happened to be taking off in the opposite direction from the parallel.

Overall a very fun flight.

Took Julie out for her first flight in a small plane. The ceilings were pretty low (3000′), so we just did a short flight, a big loop around the Seattle area. The straight in approach for 13L at Boeing Field takes you right by downtown, which even after doing it many times is very cool. She seemed to enjoy the flight and kept saying “that was so cool” at random times during the rest of the evening.

Passed the private pilot check ride this morning!!!

Now I can get back to building instead of studying. I want to finish this plane so I can fly it instead of renting spam cans.

Decided to try out using a Jacobs chuck in the air drill. I picked it up at Home Depot. I’m tired of using the chuck key to switch back and forth between bits. The new chuck is significantly larger than the old one. We’ll see if it gets in the way.

[edit 1/13/2005: This chuck has worked out great. Run down to Home Depot and pick one up. It’s much easier to change drill bits. There have only been a few places where its larger size has been a problem, and then I just use the 12″ bits.]

Time to document the additional tools I’ve acquired over the past month or so.

From left to right starting at the top, there is the flaring tube, racheting crimper for electrical connectors, flexible shaft that I use sometimes with the electric screwdriver and deburring bit, an extra pair of cleco pliers (tired of always chasing down the one I have), black clecos (work great in the #8 screw holes), 3T tank dimple dies, angle die grinder with fine and coarse Scotch-brite wheels and some cut-off disks and mandrel, smaller fly wheel cutter that I picked up at Lowe’s, a Unibit with more steps and goes larger than the one I have, 1/4″ reamer for the bellcrank bushing, and finally a tap and die set from Sears.