Jur's RV7 Aircraft Factory
3497 hours and counting

Still in the process of trying to finalize the electrical work and being able to close the top fuselage skin, I broke my head and tried to figure out if I really hadn't forgotten some needed wiring.

The only thing I could come up with was the desire of having a taxi camera available. A taildragger has the nose up in the air and it's often quite difficult to see what's going on in front of you. 
The common technique is to zig zag over the taxiway. Other than looking quite funny, it's also not the safest way to avoid hitting into something in front of you.

I found a couple of builders who had installed a small camera under the wing and started searching for a similar product which I could use and install on my plane.
After some searching for "rear car cam" on amazon, I found this product which looked small enough and good to use.
The amazon ASIN number is B0CX1RQXP7, The manufacturer is Jansite and the model number P069.
I doubt it will exist for long as these things change number and version every couple of months. But you get the idea what to search for.

The nice thing about this camera is that it's low cost and that you can adjust the angle and tilt of the camera up to 45° which should be sufficient to move it up high enough to get a good forward view from underneath the wing.

The attachment method is very convenient with just a single hole which I will drill in to an underwing access plate and a single nut holding it in place.
The camera has a long wire which has ground and power, which you connected to one of the VP-X power pins and black to to forest of GND tabs on the firewall.
The camera signal (the yellow wire) is what goes to your Dynon adaoter video input.

The camera can be used with PAL, NTSC, AHD and has a small inline switchbox to switch modes but just pressing a button. The resolution is 1080px.

It had night vision (for those flying night vfr) and has a 170° wide angle.

Here is the camera.

I pulled the wires and then had to cut the very long camera wire at the point where it passes the side of the fuselage. I crimped some Deutsch connector pins on them so that I could make it part of my wing root plugs for easy disconnection of the wing wiring. Important is that you keep the connector part of video signal and shield as short as possible. The longer this interuption of the shield is, the more chance you will get video interference by other nearby signals.
I had no idea if it would work or not and just opportunistically cut the wire.

Once the connectors were attached, I brought the big TV out and connected the yellow video signal plug into the TV. ( just like it would in the Dynon video adapter ).

Some clicks on the button in the wire and I got this image. Pretty neat and rather sharp !

Here is how I will install the camera. I have mounted the camera on the most inboard inspection bay cover on the passenger side.

As you can see, it's very small for minimal interference of the airflow.

I didn't take a picture of the view it will give as my wing is not on the plane, but estimating it's position and looking forward, it looks like it will give a nice wide angle view with the passenger side gear leg and wheel fully visible.

Some friend builders have concinved me to start painting. Their idea is that whatever is already done, is done rather than waiting for everything to be ready and still having to do the entire paint job.
I got convinced on the idea and decided to start the painting work. 

We are preparing for the base white coat on the wings this week.
In order to be able to paint the wings in a paintbooth, you will need some form of supports that lift the wing on the non painted area's and lifts it high enough so that the painter can paint the lower section which in my case is the leading edge. 
We made 2 wooden stands. on the inboard side, the spar lays on the stand and is supported left and right by a small angle that prevents it from sliding of.
On the outboard side, I reused the angles made for the wing jigs long time ago. The outboard stand had an aluminum angle on it which fits the holes in the small angle attached to the tooling holes of the outboard wing. 
Wing tips will be painted separatly.

 Next job was to remove the blue vinyl plastic and expose the aluminum so that my painter could come over and buff the skins. 

 A lot of plastic on the floor and a shiny wing. Almost a shame to buff it lightly now with 220 grit sandpaper for paint adhesion.

A big day again in my project. Nothing substantially done but I have hung the propellor on the engine prop hub for the first time.
I kind of wanted an idea how everything would fit together and what is delivered by Catto with the propellor, spinner and saber extention.

I have a 4 inch Saber extention, spool type. This is required for the Sam James cowling installation.
It took a couple of tries to find the way to do this but it's pretty self explanatory once you understand things. The spinner is predrilled and cut and the holes in the spinner plate are also made with nutplates installed. This makes it pretty simple.

Short bolts hang the spool to the prop hub behind the starter flywheel. You bolt these in in a star pattern. I am just doing this temporarily so there is no torqueing involved yet. This will come of a zillion of times. The long bolts holding the propellor and everything forward of the spool extentions are very long. The threads also extend quite far through the extension. This is probably for having enough space if an additional weight plate has to be added up front.

Here is a view with the prop bolted on. This is pretty damned cool seeing this a first time.

Front picture.

Milestone day ! 
This is one of those days that you know mark the timeline of building your airplane. The moment you hang the engine in the engine mount.
After many days of thinking about missing any things on the firewall, I came to the conclusion that this is the right moment to hang the engine and move on to the firewall forward work. There are some more things I need to do on the firewall, but it's not possible to be sure about the exact location to drill large holes in the firewall until I can actually evaluate the position with the engine in place. i'm thinking of the mixture and throttle cable and alternate air cable. Other than those, I'm pretty sure everything on the firewall is in place.

The same thinking goes for the rear of the engine case. Make sure the 45° restrictor fitting for the oil pressure is mounted in the engine case prior to hanging the engine. It's almost impossible to install this once the engine is on the engine mount. Mine was already installed by PMM during engine assembly. While you are at it, also install the other oil cooler fittings in the engine case (in and out). These can also be done later but it's easier now.

First step was to remove the safety straps that held the engine to the wood pallet that was used for transport. I want to keep track of how this was done as this engine is a brand new engine that has not yet been on the test bench. When all is ready, I will need to unhook the engine and bring it to PMM Wingservice to have it running on the test bench for a first time. This has the disadvantage of extra work on removing the engine and all connections again and having to do it again after it has been run. On the other hand, the major advantage is that I do not have to worry about corrosion and idle time of the engine as it has not yet been running. The cylinders are as if they would be in a stock location on a bench waiting for an engine. There has been no movement of the cylinder heads on the cylinder walls and everything has an oil film on it as delivered from Superior Air Parts. Whether building takes me another 3 years or just 1, it won't matter. I'm gladly willing to take that extra work knowing there is no pressure.

The engine was protected well on the front and rear crankcase and supported in the front under the front with some wood block supports. I'll have to keep all this in stock so that I can re use it in the same way when I bring the engine back to PMM.

Using the engine hoist, we pulled it up, removed the pallet and moved it over to the front of the airplane. Alain helped me on this task to keep the engine in position. It's best having some extra hands around when you do this as the engine is heavy and the bolts are not always willing to go in as easy as you think it would. 

The last part of the moving is the most critical as you don't want your magneto's or fuel pump to bump into the engine mount. Having one person moving and another one guiding the engine is no luxury.

Also notice I leveled the airplane in flight mode. This is much easier to position the engine than if it would be sitting on all tyres which would require you to position the engine at an angle. This leveled way makes it much easier.

I found some documentation online from someone who did this before and described the process. I studied this carefully and upfront, had a close look at the barry mounts and dyna bolt set. You can read it following this link https://www.myrv14.com/buildlog/20150917/Engine_Hanging.pdf. Vans Aircraft also has some drawings available which are not part of the standard plan set that you receive with the kit. 

Study the plans carefully, the barry mounts have to be positioned so that the engine rests on the compression side in the bottom and the compression side in the back on the top mounts. The compression barry mounts are the ones that have a step in the rubber. The non compression ones don't have the ribble on it and look like plain rubber. If I remember well, the non compression ones also are a little larger. Also take care that the washers are in the correct locations. The barry mounts come with one big washer in the box. It's good to assemble the order of all this before starting to move the engine and have thing prepared well. I colored the position of the large washer red in the picture above.

There are 2 lengths in the dyna bolt kit. 2 x AN7-43A and 2 x AN7-44A. The longer ones go on the bottom side, the shorter ones go on the top. The difference is not much more than the length of one of the washers.

Start with the 2 top bolts. The first one is very easy... tighten the bolt but don't torque it yet, you'll probably have to loosen them again working on the bottom bolts.
You do need to tighten the first so that the barry mounts compress allowing the other hole to come in line with the engine case. Remember this is a dynafocal mount, the bolts point inwards. If the bolt is not tightened enough on one side, it's impossible to insert the second one. As you tighten the bolts, the barry mounts compress and also position themselves in the engine mount. That's important.

What I found very annoying is that you can't put a socket on the bolt head as the engine mount is in the way.  I used an extension on the wrench but that didn't make it easier.

The engine sometimes needs a bit of persuasion to get it in position :) Although I don't think this did much. Found out later it's more important to tigthen the other side and use the engine hoist to lower or lift the engine a bit in order to get a bolt in.

The large washer goes between the compression mount and the crankcase as a spacer for the bottom mounts. On the top mounts, I have put that washer on the compression mounts under the bolt head as you can see in the image below. The image has both top bolts in place and tightened.

From there on, things went less smooth and it took about an hour or 2 before I got the last bolt in so I did not take any more pictures until it was done.

I'll try to describe the further process I took.

As both top bolts were tightened, I lifted the engine a bit using the engine hoist. This allowed me to slip the barry mounts between the case and the engine mount. Don't forget the large washer between the barry cookie and the engine case. Don't forget the compression side of the barry mounts is against the engine for the bottom mounts. Then I lowered the engine again and after some wiggling I was able to put the 3rd bolt in. I did have to loosen the top bolts a bit though. 

The fourth bolt is the most difficult one. Looking with a mirror through the hole there was no way the bolt would go in. After a lot of moving up and down, I finally discovered my problem : the washer between the barry mount and the engine case was not aligned and the pressure on it is high enough that it makes it hard to move it. After lifting the engine a bit and tapping on it, I could get it more or less into place. 
A second trick I used was to take an old bolt which was smaller in size and grind down into a guide pin. Once I could slide that smaller bolt in, I was able to wiggle it around in order to get that washer and the engine hole into alignment. I put some grease on the final bolt shank and finally was able to put it in with only very light tapping of a rubber hammer.

I was feeling relieved as I bolted the final nut on that fourth bolt.

As final step, I torqued the bolts. These are AN7 which take 450 - 500 inch/lbs. I used the middle value of 480 inch/lbs. The engine will still need to come off as mentioned earlier but the position of the engine is very important when installing the cowling so I torqued it to the final value.

Took some pictures of the plane with the engine in place. This surely is a big milestone and is a "feel good" moment during the build.

Happy camper...

As I had some time left, I took out the fuel throttle body. This comes with a plastic spacer.

The orientation of the throttle body was a bit of a mystery at first but soon figured out what side was the throttle lever and which side the mixture. 
In the image below I installed it on the forward horizontal induction air intake at the cold sump of the engine. In the image below, the throttle lever is the gold colored arm.

Finally I covered the intake with some paper and masking tape in order not to get foreign objects entering the engine.

End of a productive day was off course celebrated with Alain with a good strong Belgian HQ beer.