Be
sure to put "RV7" in the subject. My email (for this site) will
delete all mail without it.
September 20th, 2001 -
The Shop is done and I first started the actual building of the airplane.
This could be considered the 'from' WHEN date. But like many BIG
projects, the 'from when' usually precedes the actual physical start by a long
period of time. The 'to' WHEN is that I'd like to fly (in a little over 3
hours instead of drive a lot over 13 hours) down to Virginia for our annual
Thanksgiving weekend get together in 2003. (Today, 12/3/04, I'd say 2005 is
doubtful!)
WHO
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Tom
Wruble This
will be my third airplane, but my first "real" airplane. I
built an Easy Riser after college in 1977[2nd picture]. It weighed 86#,
had a 12.5 HP go kart engine and you picked it up and ran with it to take
off. That's how I taught myself to fly. I lived about 40 miles
south of L.A. during 80-81. I learned to fly a hang glider there, a Wills
Wing Raven 229, and flew what seems like every weekend at Crestline [ridge near
the launch shown in 3rd picture], 3300' above San Bernardino. Thermaling with
hawks a couple of thousand feet above the mountain tops on a beautiful summer
day is probably as good as it gets! My first high altitude launch
(1,350') was at Lake Elsinore. Aggie took the 4th picture just after I
launched from this site. It was April 4th, 1980, and that's San
Gorgornio Mountain at 11,502' and 45 miles away. Back in Michigan, I
built a Kolb UltraStar [last picture], too heavy to be a legal ultralight and
wanting to fly to Oshkosh, I registered it EXPERIMENTAL and got my day/night
SEL pilot's license. Flying there solo and camping under my wing was a
hell of an adventure. I had 60# of camping gear, 2-cycle oil and
clothes in my "cargo" pouch, which was right on C.G. The
effort and desire to fly there paid off with the greatest honor I've ever
achieved - Grand Champion Light Plane, Oshkosh '90. I've been wanting
to build a RV-6A for a while, but meeting and courting my wife 5 years ago,
planning an outdoor wedding on my Dad's farm in 98 (the first year in the
history of the world that there were no mosquitoes or flies in Michigan's
thumb was proof to me that the star's were in alignment for our marriage),
followed by COMPLETELY gutting and refurbishing our kitchen (Connie's a GREAT
cook), and adding an 1,800 gallon pond with waterfall held me back JUST LONG
ENOUGH for Van to introduce the RV-7! I recently changed direction and
decided to go with the tip-up canopy. I had thought the sliding canopy
was sooo cool - still do. I had rationalized the reasons for going that
way, but when it came right down to it, it was because it was cool. But
then I started noticing that all the pictures of folks flying in the
"sliders" had parts of their faces, etc. blocked from view And
then it hit me - if I can't easily see in, they can't easily see out!
Flying a hang glider or perched on the front on an UltraStar (engine and
'everything' behind you) VISIBILITY does NOT get any better than that.
And that's a large part of what I like about flying: seeing the landscape.
Connie and I keep a list of 'Flying Destinations' in my Palm Pilot.
We're up to 31 now. The first will be to Mackinaw Island for a weekend
at the Grand Hotel. Others include "Sister's, Oregon for annual
quilt show" (Connie's pick), and one that really caught my imagination -
I read about a couple from Oregon that flew their RV-4 to Venezuela to see
Angel Falls (where Jimmy Angel landed a 'Norseman' aircraft on top a long
time ago). And we only have to start from Michigan! |
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Constance May
Harkness My
wife! She and I are planning to do a lot of site-seeing with the RV
serving both as transportation to make weekend trips hundreds of miles away
feasible, but also as an observation platform, of the finest
kind. Connie is a
registered nurse. She's doing contingent home care these days which
gives her more control over her schedule. A 14 year stint as a CCRN
(critical care) at Harper Hospital ended when administrators demurred about
the length of our nearly month-long honeymoon a little over 4 years
ago. I'm sure they knew what a good nurse they had on staff and
foolishly chose to play their poker hand to the end. This is not simply
a prideful husband's idle boasting. You'd want her keeping an
eye on your condition, meds,... everything, if you were under the weather. As I've said
above, she's also a great cook , and that's no idle boast either! She
doesn't just follow recipes, can't really, it's not in her character.
She embellishes. Try her 'Veal Constance' some day: Veal Constance Connie Harkness, March 2001 1)
Beat the veal out thin, approximately 3/16" thick with a
meat-tenderizing hammer. 2)
Coat the veal in flour and beat it again forcing the flour into the veal and
beating it as thin as possible without having it break up into smaller bits. 3)
Take 2 big cloves of garlic, 1 large shallot, and if your daughter who hates
capers is not eating with you, some capers. Cut these up into something
between minced and small diced (but not the capers) and sauté them in olive
oil in pan. 4)
Season veal with lemon pepper and paprika and sauté them on both sides in pan
with the garlic, shallots, and optional capers. Add a little butter to this
sauté. If the veal cutlets are beat very thin, then by the time they are browned
on both sides, they will be cooked through. 5)
Take only the veal out of pan and deglaze pan with a splash of balsamic
vinegar. 6)
Add a little butter and "scrub" the sides of the pan with butter
using a wooden spoon. 7)
Deglaze pan again with the juice of a half lemon that has been micro waved
about 25 seconds on high and is covered with a "lemon net". (A
little tiny, very fine, "hair net" for the lemon, that keeps seeds
from escaping into your sauces as you squeeze the lemon, but if you feel the
juice run down your leg, your definitely getting carried away.) In this step,
your goal is to get the "stuff" that is stuck to the surfaces of
the pan free. It's got a lot of flavor and will also make the sauce thicker. 8)
Slowly pour in a little whipping cream at a time, mixing it with the deglazed
garlic, shallot, and optionally capers, but only until you have enough thick
brown sauce to just barely cover the veal when served. 9)
Serve with a side dish of your choice (almond-orange asparagus or feta angel
hair pasta have been tasty for us) and enjoy! Connie also
reads quite a lot. She'd love to work in a book store. She tries
to alternate between fiction and non-fiction. She's read 53 books this
year, a little over 16,000 pages, and has November and December yet to
go! Her favorite books so far this year are: Bel Canto by Ann
Patchett, Ava's Man by Rick Bragg, Tender at the Bone by Ruth
Reichl, and Looking for Alaska by Peter Jenkins; all having earned a
10. Connie also
likes to quilt and sew, garden (tomatoes canned for soups and sauces this
year, so she had to 'buy' zucchini to make zucchini bread this fall), and
keep track of the flower beds all around the house in addition to her
collection of Orchids. |
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And lastly, she
is being patient while I build this plane. Because when it's finished,
that's when we start decorating the house in a serious way. We both
like wallpaper and I like hanging it. The garage will be turned back
into a mostly wood-working shop to work up a new fireplace mantle and a new
stereo cabinet. Next time I go to my sister's I'll take a picture of
the mantle I made for her family a few years ago. It's pretty
massive. From the
beginning she wanted to be my 'bucking bar babe'. Our initial practice
sessions back when I started the empennage proved frustrating. But that
was before Bob came over and told I had the gun pressure set much too
high. We haven't tried it since then because much of the riveting thus
far has been with 1/8" rivets, which I don't think she has the strength to
buck or with 3/32" rivets where the bucking position has been mostly
blind. When I got to the top main skins of the wing, I felt I had a
large expanse of rivets that she could get her licks in on. My original
plan was to use the back riveting technique that has been widely reported as
being easy for less experienced buckers and produces very nice results.
What better place for very nice results other than the top main wing
skins? I set up a little practice session and we had a go at it.
Two things proved less than very nice. First, I couldn't seem to get to
tail to set straight down. With that little bend to allow for rib
clearance, the 'thrust' of the hit was off center. I'm sure it was me,
but when combined with the second 'less that very nice' item, I decided to
forego this technique. My concern, which manifest itself, was that
unlike 'traditional' riveting where each hit with the gun drives the
manufactured head flush with the skin, each hit of the gun with this back
riveting technique was trying to drive the manufactured head out of the
hole. Even though Connie was holding the bucking bar against the
countersunk head, too many of the rivets ended up 'flush' with the skin
surface, but not flush in the dimple - you could feel the edge with your
finger. So, we switched back to the traditional setup at the practice
bench and shot six. It turned out to be easy for Connie to get the
tails to set straight and we went to work on the right wing. Working out
from the center of the inboard panel, everything was going fine until I said
"Shit!". This coincided exactly with when I realized I had
just set ten AN426AD3-3.5 rivets in the outboard wing walk rib where
AN426AD3-4s were required. Time for a 'break', so I'll update the web
site with the new portraits before I drill those ten rivets out - but we're
making progress! |
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John Kean I met John at our EAA chapter
meeting. As a part of each meeting, members with projects stand up and
give a brief project status. Because I'm building an RV-7A and John's
going to be building an RV, he came up to talk to me during the break and we
discovered we live about a mile apart. To get some hands on until he
finishes his shop and starts his bird, he offered to help out from time to
time. I think John's pretty much made the decision to go with the
RV-9A. He doesn't want to do any rolls. He just wants to fly from
point A to point B, as he puts it, so a 9A will serve his needs
perfectly. John flew A4s in Vietnam, and since we share rides to the
chapter meeting, we talk about his military experiences in addition to the
issues and decisions to be made in building an RV. John will be going
down to Atlanta to build his empennage in the week program. From there
he'll be doing the quick build kit. |
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Mark Rupersburg Mark's long-time friend Morgan
built a Heinz CH-601 and so we met because Morgan gave a presentation on the
plane to the chapter. Though Mark has an interest in planes, his
passion is invested in his 38' sail boat 'Wings of Morning'. It's because
of Mark that I've come to realize that I can fulfill a life-long dream of
building my own sail boat. I used to think that all sail boats with
beautiful lines would be too big to build in my 20'x20' shop.
Luckily, sailing has also been of long-time interest to Connie as well.
So, after the RV is done, and we've spruced up the house a bit (2 years
effort estimate), a Haven 12 1/2 will probably be started in the shop.
It's a day sailor with beautiful lines: Haven 12 1-2 Builders Site |
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Harvey Muehl Though he is adamant that it's
not true, he is most responsible for me being an airplane builder. I
met Harv about 30 years ago. He was building a 2-place Volksplane in
his garage. He got it to the point of covering and then made the
mistake of buying an Ercoupe. After that he bought a Grumman Cheetah
and then a Tiger, and during the ensuing years, until actually just two years
ago, the fuselage and wings sat in his and Luann's (his very understanding
wife) living room with the tail partially in the dinning room. Not
to worry though, they have a family room, and the living room also served
double duty as their son Jeff's piano room as well as interim hanger.
Harv started building a Kolb ultralight with his son Jeff, so the Volksplane
is now in the hanger with his Tiger, and his son's gone off to college and
developed a stronger interest in music than aviation. Harv's been IFR
rated probably more than half the time I've known him. We've flown down
to see friends in North Carolina a couple of times. Once in the soup on
both legs and for hours at a time with nothing to see but the rain drops
hitting the wind shield. I finally asked
Harv for some help and together we riveted the firewall with firewall sealant
as required to keep fumes and the hope-it-never-happens fire out. |
WHAT
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We're building the RV-7A.
The plane in the foreground is an RV-7, while the other plane is an
RV-9A. The 'A' designation means it's a tricycle-geared aircraft.
The key statistics are: ü 2 people (you
caught that right away didn’t you!) ü Baggage capacity –
100# ü Empty Weight ~1114# ü Gross Weight –
1800# ü Fuel Capacity – 42
gallons ü Engine – 160 hp
AeroSport Power IO-320 See 9/24/03 Equipment page for
latest update.... As of 4/1/03, I'm almost committed to a new O-320-D1A 160
hp Lyc from Van's and a three-blade MT prop. Here's why in an email I
sent a friend: According
to Steve Logue, the OEM sales manager at Lycoming, fuel injection on an aircraft
engine in reality only buys you piece of mind with respect the carb icing.
There are no real performance improvements from it. The deal is - 'people
(customers) want it', so Lycoming supplies it, for about $6K+! The
performance improvement on the M1B comes from the tuned induction system,
which gives you a smoother running engine and about 5 more ponies, although
Lycoming markets it as a 180 HP engine, which is what the A1A gets on a dyno,
while the M1B puts out about 185 HP. Thing is they're within FAA tolerances
for certification so if they market at 180 HP they avoid mountains of
paperwork. So for $6K+ you get 5 more HP, which I don't need - about 9 extra
pounds of engine mass, and no fuel efficiency gains (more ponies - more
fuel). What I can do though is use the low drag cowl, which is
what I really want. And while I get a smoother running engine, it's not
smooth enough to eliminate the constant speed prop RPM restrictions, which
happens to be in the economy cruise range. Van's says it's not an issue, so
they must run their engines at 75% all the time (Hey, they gotta be making
money!). I went flying with Harv the other night and watched his fuel flow
meter show 16.9 gallons used in an hour and 50 minutes of practicing IMC
approaches, which was a little sobering money-wise, so I'm thinking I'll
probably trade a little speed for less fuel burn when Connie and I are going
places. So, how to deal with the prop? Turns out Lycoming is building a
IO-360-M1B6, with the 6 meaning sixth order counterweights, as an
experimental engine for a customer right now. And while it's not a 'front
burner' project, it seems a logical step to take for the engine (Steve says),
so it'll probably be available, maybe late this year - at about $1000-$1500
over the M1B and with 8# of pivoting, vibration absorbing steel bolted to the
rear of the crank. So, I can either use an O-320-D1A, or to be able to use
the prop I want in the power settings I want and USE THE LOW DRAG COWL, I
could wait for and buy an IO-360-M1B6 which has the following plusses and
minuses: PLUS: 1)
25 HP - actually the 160 HP of the 320 is fine for the plane - the 180 would
just be macho need. 2)
no carb icing concerns - I build the carb heat box in the firewall forward kit
and keep my nose clean on the known icing conditions issue. 3)
smoother running engine - but not smooth enough without counterweights. 4) low drag
cowl - this is what I REALLY want! MINUS: 1)
17# of extra weight from the engine and counterweights. 2)
thirstier engine. 3)
$7,300-$7,800 MORE - yikes!!! So,
a low drag cowl is not worth almost $8,000 coupled with 17# of weight. ü Top speed – 208 mph ü Cruise (75% @ 8000
ft) – 198 mph ü Range (75% @ 8000
ft) – 765 sm More
details can be found at Van’s site: http://www.vansaircraft.com/public/rv-7int.htm |
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Paint Scheme: June 16th, 2003 - I'm not sure I have a top-o-the-heap
anymore. At this point I'm just collecting ones that I like a
lot. We'll see where I go when it comes time to but paint and do the
masking. |
WHERE (& with WHAT)
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Music in the workshop is a must
for me. Being a woodworker, I enclosed the components with furnace
filters sealed with weather stripping above and below to keep any dust
out. The cabinet is lag bolted to the wall and screwed to the shelving
uprights on either side of it. The subwoofer sit underneath. JBL
speakers in the four corners of the garage and head-high provide good
surround sound which is very cool! I can play "Kick Out the Jams"
by the MC5 real loud with the surround 'stage' set to 'arena' and it's
amazing how acoustically poor (arena-like) it is and how believable it
is. The furnace is visible in the upper left of the picture, which
keeps me toasty warm as the winter winds howl. I recently (and once again Harvey
illuminated the way for me) added a SONOS
system into my music setup. Essentially, SONOS is a wireless digital music
delivery system. The “digital” aspect of it is very important. Because it
uses Wi-Fi computer technology to transmit the data, it is there and perfect
or it is not there at all. As far as not being there at all, I have one Zone
Player, i.e. Wi-Fi router, in my garage workshop, which is about 60-70 feet
away from its closest “sender”. The SONOS just routes the music from your
storage source to where you want to play it. In my case that could be the
living room or the garage. You can also play the same music both (all)
places, e.g. “Party Mode”, or play different music in each place where you
want music. SONOS allows up to 32 different zones, so if you’ve got a
mansion, you’re all set. Now, your “music storage source” could be your
PC/Mac, but most people I suspect use a NAS (Network Attached Storage)
device. You’ll want one that has redundant drives in it. You will not want to spend the time
digitizing your CD collection (I used Exact
Audio Copy to get our700+ CDs into FLAC - free lossless audio codec, i.e. not compressed like MP3), and
organizing it with a free tool such as Media
Monkey, only to lose it when your disk crashes, as it most certainly will
one day in the future. I bought a “diskless” NetGear
ReadyNAS Duo from Amazon along with
2 1-Terabyte SATA disks. I overshot a bit on the size since our 700 CDs and backup for my PC and my wife’s Mac
Book has only used 36% of the terabyte. On the other hand, if I had
bought the 500 MB drives, we’d now be almost 80% full. The important consideration for me with
respect to the NAS is that in early 2009 NetGear was the only manufacturer to
offer a hot swappable NAS. What
this means is that when (not if) one of your redundant disks fail, YOU can, at home, remove the bad
disk, slide in a new disk, and let the NAS duplicate the data from good
redundant disk to the new disk. In the case of other NAS manufacturers, you
would have to ship your NAS to them and pay them to do this. So what does all this mean?
Imagine you’re out in your workshop where you can play any song from any CD
in your collection, or all of them in any order, including randomly, without having to get or insert any CDs
into a player! Your wife and kids can do the same thing in whatever other
rooms of your house that you have Zone Players set up. You can also all
listen to any internet radio station from anywhere in the world – Paris,
South America, Ireland, etc for free. Or, you can subscribe to Napster or
Rhapsody and listen to their music offerings. The bottom line is that if you
like music in your workshop, SONOS is way cool and way convenient. |
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The Bench. I
built my Kolb UltraStar in this bench, so it's an old hand at building
airplanes. When I set up my shop to build my
7A I took that old workbench and added heavy castering wheels to each leg. So
it is always moveable. I have found a lot of situations where I want to move
the bench away from the wall. Either so that I can work with someone - each
of us on one side of the bench - as when I riveted my fuel tanks with my
friend John Kean. Or when I simply need a larger platform - as when I
recently glued up some rather large (48"x62") window frames. The wheels are fine for those
situations, but when you want a stable platform - as when you take a hacksaw
to something in your vice - you do NOT want a wobbly or even slightly movable
table. So, for "normal" operations, the table is anchored to a
lag-bolt in the wall at both ends, through a small piece of angle iron bolted
to the bench with a big wing nut. Very stable. Like the simplicity of the
RVs, my bench “landing gear” is fixed, and does not have the complexity of
the “retractable” EAA version recently featured on the VAF site. J The tools
that I have found to be very nice to have around: ü Drill Press ü 1" bench-top
belt sander ü Band Saw with metal
cutting blade & reduced speed via pulleys ü 6" Scotch
Brite Wheel on bench grinder ü Often enough the
rivet specification called out for in the plans is not of sufficient length
(given the variations in construction) to form a good shop head. On the
other hand, if the rivet is too long, there will be a greater tendency to
cleat the head. So, the tool to have is a rivet cutter. I chose
this one (2nd picture) even though it was damned expensive I thought at
$126. But it does a good job (the cut rivets have always easily gone in
the hole) and it's easy and quick to work with. Easy, because it is
screwed to your bench so it's solid and with the long handle you can exert a
large quick force. Quick, because you don't have to adjust length
guides. Most options you will need are built right into the stepped
cutter as different holes. (The pliers-type has a set of length stops
built in that are like a set of feeler gages.) |
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Just a day after reading about Dan
Checkoway's new heavy duty ball-bearing countersink cage he got with
Christmas $because his bushings were heating up too much to suite his taste,
my basic Avery bushing countersink cage died. Luckily as soon as it
started to "disassemble", I withdrew pressure. The surface
that acts as a stop wore through. Anyway, if you're going to do the
standard build kit, especially the wing kit (although at this point I don't
really know how much countersinking there is on the fuselage), I'd recommend
upgrading to the ball-bearing variety from the get-go. |
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I was riveting the
bottom main skins and had started working on the outboard section. Up
until that point all but one of the rivets driven in the bottom skins had
been good. One was cleated and I drilled it out and replaced it.
On the last bay with an access hole, I cleated 5 rivets in a row (I'll
speculated why that happened in a sec). What alarmed me was that by
just sense of touch and using the rivet gauge I couldn't detect that these
were cleated! Because they were near the access hole, I could use a
mirror to get a good view of them and saw they were bad. So, since my
bucking buddy and I had already been joking about how nice it would be to
have one of those optical scopes you see in the movies, and since I now had
"proof" that I could screw up and not detect it, I went to the
Aircraft Spruce catalog online just for the hell of it and wham -$242 later,
I've got a nice tool to check my bucktails that I cannot see enough with a
mirror and I'm sure it will come in handy for annuals and other
around-the-house "dark secrets". I bought the
1/2" x 36" model. According to the Spruce catalog: "10.6mm (1/2" -
Tom) scopes have memory. The 5.8mm scopes are smaller with more
light & heavier density, but don't have memory." If you check
out these scopes elsewhere on the internet, I don't think you'll find a
better price than Spruce - I didn't. But you find out that
"memory" does not mean you can sight something and then save for
later viewing or anything like that. They mean that the flexible bundle
of fiber optic cables is suppose to stay in the position you set it to i.e.
not droop once released. That's somewhat true. The actual
manufacturer calls this characteristic "obedient" - sounds S&M
to me. The lower picture is what you actually see, but it was a
challenge taking a picture with the eyepiece up to the lens of the
camera! What you see with your eye is considerable sharper than I was
able to capture, but it is NOT so sharp that you detect the beginnings of a
smaller than hairline crack - at least I don't think so. Sounds like an
opportunity to do some testing - later. I think the
reason I cleated five in a row may have had something to do with my technique
as bucker and with the technique of my buddy on the gun. and with the slight
misalignment of the skin to rib rivet holes. Clecoed and riveted to the
rear spar the holes were perfectly aligned, but moving to the main spar the
skin seemed to have shrunk a tad and so the holes were offset. I think
he wasn't maintaining enough. I think if the shooter maintains good
pressure on the gun, it'll hold the rivet seated straight. Naturally
the bucker can't be pressing hard because in between hits of the piston,
because the hole is misaligned, any pressure on the bar can push the rivet
off perpendicular. On other bays going out to the wing tip, good technique
was used and the skin did was is more normal when driving a line of rivets
from one end to the other, the skin stretched and by the main spar, the holes
were in alignment. |
