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.



Sunday, August 8, 2010

Mystery Access Hole HOBBS 276.5 hrs

So I build my leading edge cradle and started to assemble the left wing leading edge and I see a mystery rectangle access hole in my skin. I go through all of my 'current' drawings and dont see this access hole shown anywhere? So I'm baffled, not only by the fact I'm not sure if its supposed to be there but also if it is, what is it for? It is right near the tie down and the pitot mast location.

I asked my RV friends Scott (RV9A) and Gary (RV6A) about it during our saturday Young Eagles session. They didnt have this access hole on their planes and didnt know what it could be for either. So, off I go to VAF and fire off a post and a couple of pics...see if they can make sense of this so I dont have to wait til monday morning to get an answer from Van's.

Well, long story short, piecing together feedback from the VAF group. It turns out this is an access hole for the stall warner system shipped with all RV's now. They never used to include these and I'm not sure how many guys nowadays utilize them with AOA's being so prevalent and far superior to the old stall warner systems. But thats what it is, and after digging out my stall warner kit, I found a supplemental set of drawings showing the details for installation. So once again, Van's was on top of things in a roundabout way...I still think they should update the drawings with a note at the very least but its all good, mystery solved.

I will be using an AOA system so will not even install the stall warner...may try to sell it? Not sure what Van's charges for them?



The part and the drawing do not match part numbers...that seemed strange until I figured out what was going on.



Here I am fluting the nose ribs at 0630 saturday morning while drinking my morning coffee. I know, how pathetic, a single guy up at 0630 on a saturday morning working on an airplane...and the kicker, I really was enjoying myself believe it or not! But man, by the time I was done with this stack of ribs, my hands were hurtin' for certain! Even with gloves on, I had blisters everywhere...fluting is tough on the hands!

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