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.



Friday, March 8, 2013

Mid Fuse HOBBS 1793.5 hrs

First off, let me apologize, I just realized I didn't take many pics this week. You know you are preoccupied when you not only forget to take pics, but also not even realize that you didn't take many pics until you look at the camera! :) Its a great indication how focused I am right now on getting things done. As evidenced by another strong week in the Factory, logging 22 hrs, closing in on 1800 hrs on the HOBBS....wow!
 
In other news, I contacted a local DAR, visited the Denver FSDO and started the registration application process with the FAA...much more on this later. For now I'll just say...I should've started this much sooner, I may have screwed myself a little bit in the fact I will have a flyable airplane and be waiting on paperwork to get it in the air...ugh.
 
 
As you know, the plan is to work my way from the tail forward. The tail is 95% ready to go...just dragging my feet on doing that last fiberglass work on the cap...in due time though. Next up, is moving through the fuse toward the cockpit. Mainly this is the mid-fuse that I am now focusing on.
 
Behind my baggage bulkhead resides my ELT (wired and finalized the antenna) and Dynon A/P pitch servo. I also planned to mount my PAR100EX (second comm) remote radio module and the remote Dynon transponder back there. The reason being, the tip up canopies are notorious for leaking water...I figured why not mount as much expensive electronics in other places as possible. Also, if my main Garmin SL40 gets wet...having a second one in a dry environment offers good backup redundancy.
 
First order of business was how/where to mount them? Well, another one of those tasks that you spend a couple hours thinking about it and a half hour actually doing it. I decided to build a small tray to hold both components. You can see three large holes I added as lightening holes. 
 
Disclaimer: I don't know if I will get any EMI interference mounting these so close to the A/P servo? Both manuals for the components didn't mention any kind of warning that I could see. But...I decided, just build it, test it later...EMI interference is very hard to predict...and I can move them later if I need to.

 
The Dynon transponder has a nice clip in tray for easy removal. You can see, my lightening hole didn't come out concentric...oops. Oh well, you'll never see it...and it adds character. ;)

 
Both components mounted on the tray. The tray was then pop riveted (and sealed with my paintable silicone) directly to the bottom of the fuse. You can see my transponder antenna from Delta Pop in the background. I mounted this almost directly below the transponder. I will post some pics of the entire setup later.

 
Lastly, I started to wire in my infinity stick grips and also cut the sticks to length...this is the co-pilot side. Here is what the grip looks like when disassembled. I will post more on these installation details later...but it is in progress as I write this, and its kinda fun.

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