From the Maplewoods workshop: Steve's RV7 project: More progress on the wings

The Mission:

I am building an airplane. I really can't tell you how weird it sounds to me to hear those words in my head as I type. I am keeping this blog as an adjunct to my written log, which is required to comply with FAA requirements for Experimental Aircraft construction. My son Doug is my partner in this project. There are two goals: to build the best, safest, and yes, COOLEST, airplane we can, and to allow Doug to acquire some truly awesome experiences, not to mention building skills. Thanks for viewing.

How to use this blog

The most current post is displayed on this opening page. To access the older posts, click on the "Blog Archive" on the right hand side. The drop down menu is arranged by the month and lists the posts, by title and by date posted, in reverse chronological order.

I will arrange the hypertext links to other websites I find interesting better some day, but they are at the bottom.

If you navigate to my first post, there is a link to my luthiery pages. I miss working with wood. Aluminum is nice, but it's boring. Give me a highly figured maple any day!

Sunday, February 27, 2011

More progress on the wings

I had a visit from my EAA technical counselor, Wally Anderson. He did find a "few" things for me to do. I am waiting now on the roll servos for the wings before I finish riveting the bottom skins on the left wing. I trialed the wingtip nav and strobe lights and the HID landing lights with a 12 volt battery. They worked well. It was impressive to see the intensity of the LEDs on the strobe/nav lights. I have also wired in the pitot, but I haven't bench tested it for heating yet.

The right wing is coming along quickly, and we will be moving the completed wings out to the hangar soon. I'll have to move a fair bit of the tools from my garage temporarily out to the hangar.

I ordered my engine and exhaust system. I will be using an IO-360, a fuel injected, horizontal inducted beast from Aerosport in Canada and a Vetterman four pipe exhaust. The engine and the finish kit from Van's (slider canopy, motor mount and main gear) arrive in mid April. Doug and I have our work cut out for us from now until then.