Dave’s RV-7A Building Log

I’m building a Van’s RV-7A kit airplane. At my current pace of about 50 building hours per month, I expect it to take about 3 years total to complete. Most of the building will take place in my 2 car garage in Seattle, Washington. As of June 2006, I’ve completed the fuselage, cowl, canopy, both wings, and the empennage (tail components). The engine is installed and the baffles and firewall forward stuff is mostly wrapped up. I still have a little bit left to do in some areas like fitting the fiberglass tips and riveting the wing bottom skins. The major thing I have left to do is the wiring. As a rough guess, I’m about 7/8 of the way through the project. Things I have left include: instrument panel, electrical wiring, various fairings, and seemingly a million little details.

I earned my private pilot license in the summer of 2004 flying Cessna 172 Skyhawks. I try to rent a plane every few weeks to keep current while I build.

The RV-7A can hold 2 people plug baggage. With the engine I am planning on, the cruise speed flying solo should be about 200 mph. The range at that speed is about 750 statute miles. The wing span is 25 feet. The fuel capacity is 42 gallons. More specific info on the plane is available on Van’s web site.

Airframe options: For those that know the Van’s kits, I’m going to have a tip-up canopy, tricycle landing gear, dual brakes, and all electric trim.

Engine: A TMX-360 engine from Mattituck, which is a clone of Lycoming’s IO-360-M1B 180hp. Options include Precision Airmotive Silver Hawk EX fuel injection, dual P-mag electronic ignition, forward facing sump (a.k.a. cold air induction), SkyTec starter, and set up for a constant speed prop. The engine has arrived and is mounted.

Prop: A Hartzell blended-airfoil constant speed prop, 74″.

Avionics: The plane will have an IFR-capable panel. The EFIS and EMS will be the new Advanced Flight Systems AF-3400, dual screen. I have 2-1/4″ analog airspeed and altimeter indicators for back-up. The autopilot is a dual-axis Trutrak Digiflight II. I’m using a Garmin GNS-430 as the GPS, which also has an integrated comm (two-way radio) and VOR navigation. A Garmin SL-40 provides back-up comm. A PS Engineering PMA-8000b audio panel and Garmin GTX-327 transponder round out the stack.

Web site: I update this web site on almost a daily basis, but only add pictures once a week or so. The menu to the right can be used to navigate around the site. Home shows the 15 most recent entries in the building log. Archives links to a month-by-month breakdown of the log entries, or Categories for log entries for a particular component. Or use Search to search for any keywords. The Areas section of the toolbar contains links for each major area of the airplane building process.

Common questions:
Q: Can you fit the whole plane in the garage?
A: I can build all of the parts separately in the garage. At the point where the wings need to be attached, I’ll move the project to a hangar at an airport and finish up. (No, I’m not going to take off from the garage.)

Q: Aren’t you worried about it falling apart?
A: Not really. There have been over 4000 of Van’s kits finished and flying around. It’s a well-known and reliable kit. The home-built industry as a whole is thriving. More home-built planes are completed each year than the top certified airplane manufacturer produces (currently a close race between Cessna and Cirrus).

See this entry for why I’m building an airplane.

Glossary

The airplane article on HowStuffWorks.com has good diagrams of the different components of an airplane.

Empennage - the tail of the airplane; derived from the French word for the tail feathers of an arrow
HS - horizontal stabilizer; the two horizontal stationary surfaces at the tail of the airplane
VS - vertical stabilizer; the vertical stationary surface at the tail of the airplane
Rudder - the movable vertical surface at the tail of the airplane; used to rotate the plane around the vertical axis
Elevators - the two movable horizontal surfaces at the tail of the airplane; used to rotate the plane nose up or nose down
Fuselage - the main body of the airplane
Squeezer - an pneumatic tool that develops 3000 psi of pressure to dimple holes or set rivets
Pneumatic - air-powered; a compressor delivers air at 50 to 100 psi of pressure, which can then be used to drive tools
Skin - a thin sheet of aluminum that forms the outside surface of a component
Spar - a primary structural component of the wings or other control surfaces
Rib - a secondary structural component of the wings or other control surfaces; usually many ribs are attached to one or two spars