I decided to go with a "Half Raven" system on Wablosa. Its called a half raven vs. a full raven, simply because you are only installing about half of a full inverted flight system. Essentially it is just the air/oil separator tank for a cost of ~$400 vs. well over $1000 for a full inverted system. Raven makes a good product for less $$ than the Christen system...nice quality too, I was very happy with this hardware. The tank is more than just a oil holding tank...there is a large ball check valve inside the tank, check out Raven's website for drawings that illustrate how the system works.
What does a half raven system get you? In the simplest of terms, it will allow momentary (few seconds) zero or negative G maneuvers without dumping huge amounts of oil overboard onto your belly through the breather tube. This should be plenty sufficient for the type of flying I plan to do in the -7. I always say, if I want to do more serious aerobatics (and I might), I will rent or borrow a Pitts or Decathlon with a full inverted system.
I used this excellent post by Paul Dye as my installation guide. Again, another great example of guys 'paying it forward'...taking the time to do a detailed explanation of an install for the benefit of builders coming behind them. Thanks Paul.
Tank mounted and starting to run my 6000-12 rubber hose. There are three connections on the tank...top one goes to the engine breather tube outlet, middle one goes down to the exhaust for oil discharge and the bottom one goes to the oil sump.
It took some creative routing of the hose to connect the tank to the engine breather outlet...going around my 90 deg oil filter adapter.
Since I will use my Pmags for tachometer readings, I needed to cover the mechanical tachometer port on the engine since I wouldn't be using it. Doing some research I found that Andair makes a cap for this...bought it through ACS. Not much to it, alum cap with an interior O-ring and holes for safety wire. As I do my FWF work, I am a fanatic about safety wiring EVERYTHING, above and beyond what is required on certified aircraft even...more on this later, but I am glad the cap had this capability built into it.
Here you can see it safety wired in place just to the left of the oil filter adapter.
And in typical Ron Duren fashion...I am bouncing all around with my tasks...here I am back on the panel, I have mounted my audio panel and radio's in place on the panel.
Back to the cowl fitting and installation. I still had the bottom cowl side and bottom hinges to install. Rivet and flox...same deal as before. I replaced the alum hinges on the bottom with SS versions. This is an area that is prone to cracking due to the high vibration from the exhaust pulses.
Bottom and top hinge pinned together while the flox dries....getting there. All cowl hinges are now installed. I needed to get this task done so I can move onto my plenum/baffle fitting since their fitting is most definitely inter-related.
Here I am starting to do some initial fitting and mounting of the baffles. I will need to trim these down quite a bit as I move forward....they really give you a lot of excess material to trim.
Placing my Sam James plenum on top of the engine to take a look at the fit. I need to make the Van's baffles work with the SJ plenum...no instructions on how to do this (the SJ instructions are not very good...but Sam says to call him if you have issues), so this will take a little brain power on my part as I get them to play well together.
A parting shot of my seats...still love the way these look! I better...right! I installed the hinges for the seat backs and want to drill through holes in the seat pan for the seat heater wires next. Then I will start putting together a plan for my center console construction. Once that is complete, they will be removed and set aside until much later as I finish up and get ready for the maiden voyage.
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