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, August 31, 2009

FTG Car Show & Aircraft Display HOBBS: 120.0 hrs

Onward to the left elevator! This sub-assembly is chewing up the hours. I ended up logging 10.0 hrs on the project this weekend, by far my highest weekend total in quite some time. I actually hadnt intended to spend that much time on the plane as I had other chores to do, but gosh, it has been a lot of fun doing this part of the plane and I just became engrossed in it. The chores can wait. ;) I am progressing along, but because of the complexity and a little less than explicit instructions in the plans, it is taking a little longer than previous sub-assemblies. I bent my elevator trim tab this weekend with...all together now...mixed results!! Sound familiar?? :) It was a little tricky at first but I got the hang of it pretty quickly. Pics and a detailed description in the next post.

Saturday I made the 10 min drive from my house out to Front Range Airport (FTG) for an annual car show and aircraft display. I have been to this for the last three years and it is mostly a small affair and more about the cars than the airplanes. This year though, they had quite a few more cars on display, someone said 500? Not sure about that, but noticeably bigger. They also had some flying displays this year, some light aerobatics by a Sukhoi and flyby's. Nothing too elaborate, but hey, it was free and a good way to get out of the shop for an hour or two.

As I was looking at the airplanes on display...the usual stuff...Remos, Pipers, Glastars, Carbon Cubs, Cessnas, Maule's, a couple warbirds, etc., I came across a really nice looking RV parked on the ramp. It happened to be the only RV out there which was rather surprising, and low and behold it was an RV7...and upon closer inspection, very nicely done construction. I also really liked the paint job, as you can see from the pics, it looks pretty snazzy. I snapped several pics on my iPhone and then the owner, Ron Davis, came up and we ended up talking RV's for about 30 minutes. Funny how RV owners and builders can talk for hours about their planes! ;) Nice guy, flies for United, and absolutely loves his RV. He also got his paint job done locally...so I was quizzing him about the details of that. Always nice to see planes out flying and talk to the owners about building...inspiration to keep chuggin' along!





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