“No bird ever flew nonstop from New York to Tokyo, or raced 15 miles high at triple the speed of sound.
But birds do something else.
They do not conquer the air; they romance it..”
Peter Garrison
My name is Jurgen Roeland, I live in Belgium and I'm very proud to call myself an aircraft builder. Wish you a warm welcome to my builders blog.
Some people called me nuttzzz. Some people buy a porche when they get into the mid life crisis age. Other people take a second wife. Others get depressed. I decided to start building an airplane. A what ???? Yes, an airplane ! I skipped the phase of building the small plastic versions with glue and paint and went right into the real thing. My time is precious now so let's cut the obvious questions upfront. I heared them too many times already so here is the -mandatory FAQ reading- if you plan to visit my workshop.
"You're building an airplane?" : Yes, I am. "A REAL airplane?" : Yes", "In your garage?" : Yes. "
"One you can actually fly in?" : Yes! "You can do that?" : Yes!!!
If you look at history, it's been thousands of years that people have dreamed about flight and it's only in the last 100 years that we have now the opportunity to build our own airplanes and fly. The current project work is the results of years of deliberation, evaluation and planning. I took the advice of fellow builders very seriously and so should you. The type I have decided to build is the Van's aircraft, RV-7. I will motivate my choice in one of the subsections of this site. I hope you enjoy following my building adventures and that you will return frequently to check on the progress. The latest activity will always be posted on the main page. You can also subscribe by RSSfeed. This will send you an email each time I post new progress. For subscription, click on the RSS icon in the bottom of the left menu on this page.
For people that live nearby, feel free to come and have a look. Don't forget to bring a six-pack. The most frequently used lubricant in my workshop is called "Jupiler", bring some as I'm frequently running out of stock.
I wanted to rig up my elevator pushrods so that I could have a better idea about the space for additional electrical wired and obstructions in the forward tunnel.
Looked everywhere for the pushrod that goes from the stick to the bellcrank only to find that I couldn't find it anywhere.
Until I found that big tube on my hardware shelf for what I thought for a long time : why did they deliver that and where would it be used ???
Turns out, I didn't fabricate the forward pushrod yet... dummy... Well, it brings a new small project to the table that reminds me of those sweet days of metal working.
The pushrod attaches in the rear to this elevator bellcrank. The hard part is that now that the plane is on it's gear, nothing is level anymore, so it's hard to tell that the bellcrank is in the full vertical position of not.
When I initially measured, I measured with a straight angle from the top of the F729-B angle attached to the F729-A bellcrank rib. The angle is slightly angled in relation to the full level position of the longeron so it's not the best of references either when measuring. The question I asked myself is if the bellcrank needs to be perpendicular on the bellcrank rib, or if the vertical plan should be aligned according to the rivet line of the F707 fuselage bulkhead (which in case the longeron is level, is 90° angled on the longeron). Another thing to consider is that the pilot stick is not vertical, it's tilted slightly forward and that also influences the length of the pushrod.
I'm probably overthinking this again but it's the kind of things that keep me busy and make me loose a lot of precious time.
I finally went the way that Vans tells you to do. Put a socket in the opening on the F729-A rib and get it as centered as possible. That's the vertical position. From what I can tell, it looks like my idea of F707 rivet line alignment is probably the correct one.
Then I started thinking about the length. Vans makes you cut off at 45inch 15/16. I found the measurement on the F790 to thight and wasn't sure to be able to get the "half way in" rod end bearings on both sides on the F790 so after some measurements putting it in and out of the plane, I decided to go with couple of 16's longer on the front rod. Even with that extra length, the rod end bearings still go in and there's play for adjustments.
Then started drilling the elevator pushrod for blind rivets holding the threaded rod end on the tube.
The blind rivets are evenly spaced and a piece of tape with lines at the required intervals does the trick.
All drilled to #30 for MSP42 rivets.
Other side will follow soon and then it's tube priming time before it can be finally installed
I continued cutting out Dynon modules from the instrument panel. When doing so, be carefull as the intercom does have another shape than the other modules.
I drew and cutout the rectangular intercom shape as last one of the modules. I try to make them sit as close as possible together .
Here is the result when sliding them into the holes. I'm still missing the radio SV-COM-833 panel which I will get pretty soon.
Smoothed and sanded the edges. This is now ready for drilling the screw attach holes.
Close up view with analog engines installed as well. As last I also installed the elevator trim button on the panel. I will have them both on stick and on the panel.
This is the back view of the elevator button. I made a mistake when drilling the two corner holes and made them too low. Fortunatly I could identify the error soon enough before cutting away more material. I installed 2 AD3 flush rivets which solves the problem. Drilled the hole for the screws. You can see the small error in the picture below. The front plate of the button covers the rivet heads completly.
One of the things that kept me busy and worrying for a while was crimping the batter wires, or let's call them "cables".
The battery cable draws up to 60 amps when the start is engaged and needs to be a very thick cable that can withstand this flow of energy. Some people use welder cable but I did purchase the electrical kit from vans before and that came with some 2AWG cable and the connectors and protector covers. Today, I made the ground block to battery ground cable and the battery positive to master solenoid cable.
The master solenoid is actually nothing more than a switch that can be engaged from the cockpit to allow the full power of the battery to be released in the system. A battery doesn't push energy, a device pulls energy. This means that carefull thinking is required when chosing cable sizes throughout the airplane. Most of the power goes to the engine start when engaging the starter switch. So all of the wires between battery and starter system will be pretty beefy.
If you would use a regular switch for the master switch would need to pass through 60 amp of current and the full current would flow into the cockpit and back into the FFW. A master solenoid is a device that is controlled by an external switch which when grounded engages the master solenoid and allows the electrical current to flow through. However, the switch itself only operates at very low amperage. The starter solenoid works in more or less the same way.
This connector needs to be installed on that wire. I had looked up crimpers before on aircraft spruce and they all were extremely expensive and only for one wire size. I'm talking hundreds of dollars for one.
Thanks to my friends from the "Fans Of Vans" dutch whatsapp group of RV builders, I found this hydraulic crimp tool from HBM-Machines which is perferct for the job and only costed 50€, and had metric sizes for all wire gauges. The conversion of metric to AWG can be found easily online. The tool can push up to 6 tons of pressure.
The cable has some inner woven cables which in themselves are woven and twisted together.
Here 's what is looks like when cutting of the shielding with a razor blade.
Crimping the cable on with the right tool is actually very very easy and a no brainer. Just slide on the connector, eventually already bent in the right angle and start crimping with the pneumatic tool using the correct crimp set until it bottoms out
My installation required me to bend the connector 45degrees for easy installation on the negative pole of the battery.
It's very important that you pay attention to the orientation of the connectors before you start crimping. These stiff wires won't bend themselves anyway you want. The connector angle has to be checked upfront.
Also don't forget your shrink tube before crimping.
With the ground cable ready, I installed it on the ground block firewall forward side and on the other end screwed it to the battery negative.
Forward view with the covers on.
Next I moved on to the positive battery cable. One of the connectors need a good bend because of the angled connection to the master somenoid.
The other side is flat. Again, keep control of the angle of how you crimp the connector on the cable. The cable won't twist much.
Installed the positive side as well and here is a picture of the completed work of the day.
I also connected my external charger wires on the groundplack and at the master solenoid so that I can easily switch on and off charging of the batter with the trickly charger.
I previously bought the BatteryMINDer 2012-Agm 12V / 2A Charger / Maintainer / Desulfator For Optima And Odyssey battery charger at spruce with the extention cable ring connectors.
Different angle view of the positive cable side.
Detail of the negative cable side.
Evolution is progress. Small kids grow. While we get older day by day.
There's always that moment in life where they stand on their own legs and start walking.
Today was my baby's first "standing on own legs" moment.
I hung the mount yesterday and still had to make the final connections for the tailwheel such as installing the AN6-30 bolt holding U tail wheel in the fork.
It's kind of hard to imagine what the drag has to be on this. After a couple of flights, this will "set-in" and loosen so you might not want to make it to loose. However, the wheel should be still possible to rotate without chafing of rubber.
The top of the tail wheel has a spring mount key that slides in a notch on the tailwheel spring. The key is installed inside the axle of the tailfork that slides into the tail spring.
it ensures a locked position within the range of the rudder pedal push range. (you can't push the pedals to go further than the range of the noth with the pin out.
But when applying brakes on one side only, the pin will push in and the tailwheel will give full deflection so that you could make a 360° turn on one wheel.
There is however no control with the pedals on this exceeded turn rate. as soon as the wheel straightens out again, the pin will click out and the pedals have control again.
Below is an image of the mechanism and you see the pin on the axle at the right side.
With the tail wheel inserted in the rear fuselage, the big moment has come to put the main landing gear on.
I had to think this over before actually doing it. It involves people to help and some heavy lifting so you better prepare well.
The only way I could see this would be easy was to put lifting straps on the engine mount and use the engine crane to lift the front of the fuselage while in the back, somebody holds the tail up.
Two people in front keep the fuselage balanced as 1 person in the back had put his knee under the tailcone. That last part seemed to be a bit heavier than initially estimated but we managed to do it in the end.
Applied some aeroshell grease on the inside of the landinggear legs, cleaned the spill grease up, inserted the two bolts and torqued.
The bolts used are AN5-21A with a MS21045-5 all metal lock nut. It get's hot in the engine compartment so no nylon nuts here.
AN5 has a torque range of 100-140 in/lbs so I could torque those with my regular torque wrench. I torqued it to 135 in/lbs.
An hour later, she was standing on the gear.
Time to make some "broom broom" sounds.
Close up view on the gear leg, wheel and attachment bolt.
It's never really the right moment to hang the engine mount because there's possibly still penetration holes to make later but you 'll only find those ideal spots when the engine is hanging. And no way to hang the engine without a mount. So I figured I had postponed this long enough in order to hang the engine mount. I have also been put the fuselage on it's gear and final installation of the engine mount has to be completed first. Just to clarify, I already had drilled the firewall attach holes a long time ago, so this workday was about final hanging, re-measuring and torqueing the castle nuts with final cotter pin installation. It's a simple process but I found it a big deal as it's the part that will finally enable the start of the gear and engine ffw work. The firewall is attached with AN6 bolts and AN310-6 castle nuts. My smaller torque wrench that only goes up to 150 in/lbs was unsuitable for these so I had to use another larger scale torque wrench. Torque range on these bolts is 160-190 in/lbs. They are fastened with a castle nut and cotter pin. The procedure on these is to torque to minimum value and then thighten till the next castle notch comes available that aligns with the hole. My torque wrench was with ft/lbs and it's a simple conversion of dividing in/lbs by 12 to get the right ft/lbs number. The range here had to be 13.33-15.83 ft/lbs. The image below shows my wrench set to 13.3 for initial torque.
The next image shows all 6 bolts installed with 2 spacers between the mount and firewall at the center bottom.
Some detail images of the cotter pin in place. I needed 3 washers on the top pilot side.
same amount on the top passenger side
only one was required on the bottom side
Next image shows the spacers and also one washer.
another image of the cotter pin installation.
Top view engine mount
Forward view with the level in place showing a 0.00° level mount.
Start | Done | Time | |||
Horizontal Stabiliser | 01/01/11 | 22/01/11 | 79h | o | |
Vertical Stabiliser | 22/01/11 | 05/02/11 | 27h | o | |
Rudder | 05/02/11 | 06/03/11 |
36h |
o | |
Elevators | 06/03/11 | 23/08/11 | 124h | o | |
Wings | 01/09/11 | 31/12/12 | 918h | o | |
Fuselage | 01/01/13 | ongoing |
1216h |
||
Finishing | 24/08/20 | 01/07/23 |
377h |
o | |
Electrical | 02/07/23 | ongoing |
105h |
At the Oshkosh airventure 2013, I took this cool shot with Richard VanGrunsven, founder and CEO of Van's aircraft. We had a short chat after he came out of a presentation where he attended putting the young eagles project in the spotlights.
Richard -usually known as "Dick" or "Van" was born in 1939 and became an American aircraft designer and kitplane manufacturer. These days his kits are so popular that the number of VanGrunsven-designed homebuilt aircraft produced each year in North America exceeds the combined production of all commercial general aviation companies.
Read more: Meeting an icon, the creator, a true hero for the general aviation community.
Use the kit buttons in the top ribbon bar to see a chronological overview per sub section per kit. For the full chronological article list, see chronological build link in prelude menu here below. The easiest way to lookup information is by typing in some part numbers or keywords using the search option in the ribbon bar
Some advice on reading my log for fellow builders !
In some articles, I made corrections at later date on the original article to rectify my own stupidities or faults. Read through the entire article if you intend to use my findings/experiences on your own project !
It’s possible (not likely) that I’m not as smart as I think I am. (Occasionally, I have moments when I know this to be true. Fortunately, the feeling passes quickly.) Although I have tried to make this information as accurate as I can, it is not only possible, but also quite likely, that erroneous and misguided information lurks within these pages. I cannot and do not warrant these pages to be error free and correct. Furthermore, I accept no liability for the use of this (mis)information. And, as many would say, your mileage may vary. If, after reading this, you are intent on proceeding, please be aware that the contents of this site are protected by copyright (copyright © 2011 and 2012). Nonetheless, you may copy this material subject to these two conditions: (1) any information used is for non-commercial purposes, and (2) the source of the material is properly credited. Of course, you may link to any page herein. At some articles, snippets of the plans from Vans are visible. These are for educational and illustrations purposes only and should never be used as plans for part construction or assembly as plans may have changed since the picture was taken and more important they are protected by Copyright by the Vans Aircraft Mothership company.