Ron's RV7 Aircraft Factory


Welcome to my personal blog. This site was created as an informal description of my build progress in the construction of a Van's RV7 aircraft. A place where family/friends/builders/curiosity seekers can follow along. It is not intended to be a detailed description of every step in the building process as that would be much too time consuming. There are plenty of sites that do a great job in that arena, that is not my intention with this site. My intention is for this to be a philisophical/motivational/inspirational account of the emotional ups and downs of the life changing journey...and it will change your life. I hope this will give you an idea, through my eyes, of what its like to make this transformation. A note to other builders, I am not 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. Thanks for visiting.



Monday, July 16, 2012

Dynon SkyView HOBBS 1385.0 hrs

A couple quick updates... My prop is finally, after two delays, on its way. Supposed to arrive at my house via UPS in two boxes/crates tomorrow (7/17/12)...the spinner is the second box. I am VERY excited to see this puppy...almost as much as I was for the engine. I will finally get to see my chosen colors on an actual aircraft part...and also the prop itself, since I don't think I have ever seen this particular version before since its a fairly new offering at Whirl Wind.

My carbon fiber panel from Aerosport Products is also on its way...in fact, it should also be here later today. This is another product I am pretty excited to lay my eyes on. I'm jazzed to start doing my panel work, and this part is obviously a crucial part of that puzzle. A lot of exciting stuff happening this week in the Factory!


I received my 10" Dynon SkyView from SteinAir and after a slight delay, decided to fire it up and see if the darn thing worked. ;) I purchased this "used" from Stein...its actually new, but the owner decided to go a different route so Stein sold it to me for a slight discount on the VAF forum. I completely trust Stein and knew he would stand behind his product, but wanted to test it just the same to make sure I had a good unit.

I hooked it directly up to my power supply and had no problems getting it powered up. Although, I later read the installation manual and it recommends using a 5 amp fuse for such matters just to be safe. I bought one and will use one for all future bench testing. Probably not too bright of me...don't want to mistakenly fry a $4600 computer!


My first power up just yielded a screen like this...not too exciting. Nothing was hooked up...no ADAHRS, no engine instrumentation and no GPS so there was no data for the computer to display. Wanting more than a couple "X's"...I quickly grabbed some alligator clips and got my GPS antenna temporarily tied into the SkyView 37 pin harness and tried again.


Ah, now we're talking...I now have something to look at! It took the unit a little while to get an initial position fix, but once it did, this is what I saw. I played around with it for awhile zooming in and out. Notice the "30 hr" trial mode message for the map software...I already bought my software license ($500) for this but haven't installed it yet. Once I do, that message will go away. Its just a software code you need to enter into the system to unlock it. Anyway, this was just a quick test run to ensure I had good hardware, looks like all systems are go with the SkyView...more to come as I get started on my panel real soon.

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