Stjohn's RV-7

As much as it pains me to do this, I need to sell 313TD.    Life has course-corrected a bit, so flying and maintaining an airplane are not compatible.  Info is below the pictures.

QB
Tip-up
S/N: 72402
Location: KCPM
Asking Price: $105,000
IFR/VFR: VFR Day/Night (IFR equipment is installed, but never flown IFR)

Why selling: Life and aircraft ownership are now divergent.  
Total Time (hrs) on airframe:  137
First flight date: March 3rd, 2014
I am the original builder

Empty Weight (lbs):
– CG (empty weight – inches from datum):
– date of last weighing:
Year painted: 2016
Painted by: Century Air Paint in Chino, CA
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Engine Make/Model: Lycoming O-360-F1A6
– HP: 180
– Total Time Air Frame: 137
– Time Since Overhauled (hrs): 1180SMOH, 137STOH, IRAN/Reassembly by Tim’s Aircraft Engine
– Ignition:  Slick Mags
– Carb/FI:  AFP FI
– Exhaust system:  Vetterman 4-pipe
– Engine Purchased from: Private seller, eBay
– Engine Assembled by: Tim’s Aircraft Engines
– Date of last compression check: 8/8/2019
– – Cylinder #1: 76/80
– – Cylinder #2: 79/80
– – Cylinder #3: 78/80
– – Cylinder #4: 73/80
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Other unique features FWF:
Superior cold-air sump
PCU5000X front-mount governor
10-row oil cooler
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Prop:
– Hartzell CS Blended Airfoil
– HC-C2YR-1BF Hub, F7496-2 blades
– Inspected, re-sealed, lubricated, and tested by Santa Monica Propeller 11/10/2010
– “B” suffix serial number- no eddy current inspection required
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Flaps: Electric
Rudder Trim: none
Elevator Trim: Electric
Aileron Trim: Electric
Strobes Make/Model: Nova 606X
Landing Lights Make/Model: MR16 12v in wingtips
Age of tires/tubes: New tires, tubes from 2010, still good.
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Avionics:
MGL Odyssey G2 EFIS
Garmin GNS430W
Garmin GTX3207 xpdr
Garmin GMA340 audio panel
MGL V6 radio
MGL Stratomaster Velocity 3″ MFD
ACK 406 ELT
Dynon Heated Pitot
MGL Serial port Expander
MGL IO Expander
Trio Gold Standard Servos, pitch and roll, integrated with EFIS

Interior: Classic Aero Aviator, gray/dark gray w full carpet
Modifications:  Koger sunshade
 
Real World Cruise Figures:
– 180 mph IAS at  23″ of MAP spinning  2300 rpm while burning 8.5 gph.

Past incidents/repairs/damage repair:
New rudder in 2019 from wind damage
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Date last annual: 7/21/2019
– Maintained by: Me

Date last transponder check: 3/2/16
Date aircraft last flown: 9/29/2019
Willing to deliver: Maybe

Contact Info
– John Courte
– voice/text:  310-614-two five two four
– email: tangodelta313 at gmail dot com
– Preferred hours to call: 0800-2100 pacific time

1 hour.

This weekend we drove up to Menlo Park to visit family and unload some large paintings we’d taken with us a year or so ago when my brother-in-law’s mom passed away. We took the 101 because I needed to stop at the Oxnard airport to check out a hangar.

Looks like I’ll be sharing a space with an RV6 project a really cool old Luscombe, a couple of motorcycles, and a vintage Mini Cooper. It’s got a blacktop floor, which I’m not thrilled about, and no wireless, which I’m really not thrilled about, but it does have electricity and I can do first flight and Phase 1 out of OXR. Oxnard’s about another 10 minutes away from Camarillo and not as close to the freeway, but it’ll be fine. I’m looking to move the project probably about the end of this month!

I was hoping to get a spot at Camarillo, but I can’t count on that, and it’s close enough that I can still go there and borrow tools and stuff.

Sean moving out of the guest house avails me of two things. One is a place to live while we remodel our bedroom and have new windows put in. The second is a place to build an airplane. So here’s what has to be done to make it work. I’ll post photos of the guest house soon, but for now, bear with me.. It’s about a 500 sq/ft structure with a small attic, main room with vaulted ceilings and a small bedroom. The bedroom has been allocated as a true guest bedroom and our bedroom while we remodel and can’t use our master bedroom. It’s also a chillout space. The main room is party zone and aircraft factory. It’ll be a party zone until June when the kit shows up. Anyway here’s what has to be done before this can work.
1. Remove/relocate stove and fridge.
2. Remove cabinets.
3. Remove vinyl flooring in kitchenette and bathroom.
4. Remove carpeting throughout.
5. Remove baseboards throughout.
6. Tile (or concrete stain) bedroom and bathroom.
7. Concrete stain/floor seal main room.
8. Paint main room.
9. Install work lights in main room.
10. Build wing cradle.
11. Build fuselage stands.
12. Install shelving for parts.
13. Prepare attic for storage.
14. Finish Empennage (!!!!!!!)
16. Shrinkwrap and store finished empennage parts.
17. Upgrade electrical. 220v and an extra 30-40 amps.
Going to be a busy, busy May.

From the last entry, and the long space between entries since the test entry, that it’s been a while since I’ve done anything on the plane. For a long time, there were no weekends. For a long time before that, there were 1-day weekends where the running of the house took all the energy. And the occasional need to have a social life, but even that was rare. No time, no plane. Simple as that.
The plus side of this sad tale is that I get paid hourly. Lots and lots and lots of overtime. And no time to spend it. So after a year of saving and investing (thanks for that iPhone, Apple), I’ve got enough to do a couple of things: 1: Order the quickbuild kit. 2: take enough time off to put in a significant amount of time on it. Oh, and our tenant is moving out of the guest house this Saturday. That means I have a place to put the fuselage. Farming gear goes in the storage portion, wings go in the newly liberated garage. Bedroom stays a bedroom for guests.
So.. Do I order the kit?

OK, a lot of Nothing has happened in the past few weeks with NOTABLE EXCEPTION. Event number one, I got a ride in an RV-7, that somewhat famous taildragger known as N714D. Dan was kind enough to swap half an hour of flight time for a ride to SMO from his office, so we went up in 714D and it confirmed all my suspicions/expectations of the RV-7.. It’s a joy to fly, it’s fast, it’s as nimble as a meth-cranked ninja on Mars, and it’s rock-solid stable in slow flight. That was pretty much the last nail in the RV box. I’ve been in a couple of composite canards, which were fun, but they eat up runway in a big hurry and if you taxi on gravel, you risk taking a bite out of your prop (yes this happened to me). The RV is an airplane I feel that I can grow with. I’m not the highest-time pilot on earth, so a plane with really good power-to-weight and forgiving low-speed behavior is a definite plus.
Second event, I finished the training kit. No, you don’t get any pictures, because during the course of “learning,” I made a few errors that would have necessitated a lot of backwards steps. But what I did get out of it is a feel for aluminum construction. Not every rivet is perfect, but the more I did it, the better at it I got. There are things you just have to learn by doing, so you can see the results and attach a specific technique to each one. Rivets behave certain ways under different conditions, and it’s more than just an academic exercise. Reconciling what you read in the handbook with the results you’re getting is key. So I think now I’m up to tackling the Emp kit, when it arrives. That brings me to Event Number Three.
Third major event, and the first of hopefully a few more, is I ordered the Empennage kit. It should be here on Tuesday. I hope I have a couple of days to work on it before I get sucked into a commercial at work.
BTW, the rivet squeezer also arrived today. what fun! Of course, the sets they send are pretty much a grab bag. fortunately, I was able to manufacture a flush set from a couple of weird outsized dimple dies. All I did was grind off the point with the trusty grinding wheel and blammo. Flush set.
Eagerly awaiting emp kit.
-stjohn

OK, so I’m getting back into the training kit. First full weekend I’ve had in several months. If anybody says to you that doing CGI FX is a cakewalk, think of something anatomically impossible and tell them to try it. It takes your time and your life, makes you fat and turns your hair gray. But I was able to sneak away this weekend (since my stuff’s done anyway) and try to get as far with this kit as I can.
Today we unleash the full power of the radial drill press upon these aluminum parts. The first two pictures show how this thing will contort to match non-square angles. It really makes this stuff easy and I can lay off the air drill for a while.

Head angled, piece clamped to articulated table.

Closeup. I love this thing.
The toolfest doesn’t stop there. Here’s the rivet spacer fan in action:

Notice how it’s way too long. I might order the 10-hole one from ACSpruce next time I need something, which is now. More on that later.

Here’s the spar and ribs drilled and deburred, ready for clecoing.

And here’s the skin clecoed to the ribs and spar.

Who’s the dork and what’s he doing? Oh. I see. HE’S BUGGERING UP THE RIBS AND SKIN! STOP HIM!

Too late. Although this looks fine, Yours truly managed to drill the holes in the ribs with a #30 instead of a #40. So this means the skins get riveted to the spars with 1/8″ rivets instead of 3/32. Not a big deal, but definitely a big oops.
FIRST RIVETS EVER! Woohoo! Yay!
Shit.

This is what happens when you dont’ have a back-rivet plate and you try to use a big bucking bar under the skin instead. The work slipped off the bar and the back-rivet set dinged the crap out of the skin and stiffener. Looks like I’ll be bookmarking the replacement part page at Van’s Aircraft.

Yeah, big badda boom. Totally dinged. Discouraging, but not enough to make me seriously consider 7 years of sanding.

One more for good measure. Ouch!
So what did we learn today? Well, for one thing, Home Depot doesn’t have quarter-inch steel plate. Doesn’t have it in any form, other than with something non-aircraft-useful welded to it. Another thing is that trying to cross-purpose tools that don’t like to be cross-purposed will sometimes result in damage. Had this been an actual airplane, the little adventure with the skin and the stiffener would have necessitated ordering a new skin and fabbing a new stiffener. Same with drilling the rib holes out to the wrong size. That’s the problem with repetitive production made easy: you don’t realize you’ve screwed up until you’ve screwed up a whole lot.
It wasn’t all bad, though. Riveting the stiffeners to the skin was OK, except for that one event, and from what the AC Handbook says, they’re good rivets.
We also found out later that it’s probably not cool to run a rivet gun at 11:30pm. It’s freaking loud, especially with the garage door open. My next door neighbor has a concrete block wall between my garage and her house, but I need to think about soundproofing. Moderately effective at best, a complete waste of time at worst. I need to do a sound check, but that involves having somebody in there running the gun while I walk around and check the noise levels.

My shipments from AC Spruce, USATCO, pan-american tool co, and others are trickling in. I now have the scotchbrite wheel, 3/32 and 1/8 dimple dies, the c-frame dimpler, the right countersinks, and some cleco clamps. The Scotch-brite wheel is freakin’ magic, it makes sharp edges silky nice. Unfortunately, it’s not all that well balanced, so running it makes the grinder try to walk off the edge of the bench. I realize that you’re supposed to bolt the grinder down, but if I do that, it’s just going to shake the shit out of everything on the bench. I read somewhere, maybe it was Checkoway’s site, that you need to take an old coarse file and file off enough of the wheel to smooth the vibration, like balancing a tire. Waste of good scotchbrite, but whatever. I tried doing it with a planer ($9 from HD a long time ago) but all I ended up with is a useless planer. Gotta do what you gotta do.
I haven’t shot any pictures today, since it was all about cleaning up the space, but then something took hold of me and I drilled, deburred, and dimpled the two stiffeners I’d made last time. Then I drilled and countersunk one of the rib sides. ARe ya supposed to drill or countersink ribs and spars? Well, I don’t have a squeezer, and I couldn’t get a good angle on the rib flange with the c-frame, so I countersunk ’em. Maybe this is bad, I dunno. I’ll tell you one thing, though, deburring both sides of the holes down in the skinny end of the rib where the flanges run together is a beeyotch. I also found out that a dremel (black and decker rotary tool, to be specific) does a half decent deburr job with a pointy stone bit in there, but if it gets loose and chatters, look out.. I think i’ll stick with the countersink-bit-in-the-cordless-screwdriver gambit.
The other ‘doh!’ I had was when dimpling the stiffeners, I dimpled the first two holes the wrong way. I didn’t see this covered in the Handbook but I don’t remember anything about what to do when you seriously arse up something this fundamental. What I wound up doing was pounding it flat with a flush set/die and redimpling it in the proper direction. Probably a no-no right up there with dating your sister, but it seems to accept a flush 3/32 AN426 rivet just fine.
I’m going to go back out there and shoot some pix, then post them later.