Ron's RV7 Aircraft Factory

Welcome to my personal blog. This site was created as an informal description of my building progress of a Van's RV7 aircraft. A place where family/friends/builders can follow along. It is not intended to be a detailed description of every step in the building process as that would be too time consuming. There are plenty of sites out there that do a great job with that, that is not my value add with this site. In addition, I am learning this as I go, no sense in having the "blind lead the blind." ;) My intention is for this to be more of a philisophical/motivational/inspirational account of the emotional ups and downs of the build process. I hope this does give you an idea, through my eyes, of what its like to take this journey. A note to other builders, I am by no means an expert so do not put your safety at risk by attempting anything you see on this site until you have done your own research, or send me an email so we can discuss it. Any deviations from the plans are not approved, nor endorsed by Van's Aircraft or myself. (Photo used with permission of Chris Sands, who is the proud builder. Photograph by Curt Gearhart. Photo editing by Ron Duren.)

Monday, December 12, 2011

Finishing Kit HOBBS 1008.5 hrs


Ah, behold, the wonderful canary 'yellow letter'...if you're building one of these along with me, you know the joy you get when you see one of these babies come in the mail from Van's. Second only to the day the crate actually arrives. Only builders of aircraft get to have 'Christmas' multiple times on days other than December 25th. :) As you can see, my delivery week has arrived, although I haven't been contacted by the shipping company yet for a delivery 'day'...I'm pretty excited to get this thing in my hands.

My personal goal was to cross the 1000 hr mark and be done, or almost done, with the fuse by the time this arrived. I am tracking pretty close to my goals....1000 hrs? check...wow, 1000 hrs...that looks nice, I remember when I finished the empennage how far away 1000 hrs seemed but here I am...great feeling. Fuse done? not quite, but really all I have left is mounting the wings, top skins and some odds and ends so I'm fairly close. It takes some doing to plan the arrival of these kits so you are ready for them but they also aren't sitting in the corner taking up valuable shop space before you need them. Or worse yet, you have to stop working to wait for delivery...so arriving sooner is better than later.

Let me add, I naively thought, hey, this is my finish kit...my LAST sub-kit in the procession...woohoo! Hmm, wrong...I recently realized I need to also purchase a firewall forward (FWF) kit as well. I don't really know why Van's kind of glosses over this when they publish kit prices...marketing maybe? The FWF kit is $3500...its not trivial and absolutely necessary for a flying airplane so don't be like me...factor it in from the start. Yes, I realize Van's does mention that their kit prices don't include this...but it just seems like it should clearly be listed in the kit list...no? Oh well, complaining about spending more money...isn't that a builders second (or third) favorite hobby?? Anyhow, getting there...things are progressing nicely!

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