“No bird ever flew nonstop from New York to Tokyo, or raced 15 miles high at triple the speed of sound.                                                                                                   
  Birds do something else.   They do not conquer the air; they romance it..”

Peter Garrison

Jur's RV7 Aircraft Factory
3497 hours and counting

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. 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.

24/09/26 - Windscreen final install with sikaflex - 06h30

Written on . Posted in 4.3. Slider Canopy.

Glue time again... this time we are going to use Sikaflex glue to fixate the windscreen on the top forward fuselage and rollbar.
The product used is this 295 UV. You can easily appy this with a caulking gun. It's very sticky and creates a mess quite easily if you are getting sloppy on the trigger

The sifkaflex is very efficient but needs to be applied on a primed surface. There is a compatibility chart with recommendations on which primer to use on which surface with 295UV glue.

On the tof fuselage surface which is bare aluminum, I am using the sika activator 205 which prepares the aluminum before priming. I think it's an etching product.

After the application of 205, I will prime it with the Sikaflex Multi Marine primer (SMM).

On the rollbar which is already painted with a 2K epoxy primer, I am applying SP-209D primer as well as on the windscreen. The windscreen is made of PMMA and this primer is especially for that material.

 

 First I defined the line where the sikaflex needs to be applied so that I can apply a tape for masking before priming.

Also on the roll bar, I used black 3M tape to define the place where I want to apply the primer. It's hard to remove any sikaflex which comes in contact with the primer. glue that hardens next to the primer can quite easly be remove.
This allows you to make a nice straight line with the glue and fill the gap between rollbar and windscreen with the little fillet of sikaflex.

 

 Taped the windscreen with 3M tape to define the border for the primer. I'm being very liberal on the side of the primed surface but it won't be visible anyway because the epoxy fairing will cover this anyway.
Scuffed the exposed surface with red scotchbrite. Just getting the gloss of is sufficient, no need to go deep with rough sandpaper.

 Then taped the forward line on the top fuselage. once taped, I scuffed the surface with scotchbrite for better adhesion of the aktivator and primer.

One of the issues of installing the windscreen over the rollbar with all the sticky goo on it is that it becomes very difficult to place the spacers between the rollbar and windscreen. The black mess will be everywhere and no way to see where exactly the drilled holes were. So I decided to glue the plastic spacers together. Held them togehter and pressed on eachother with some screws and nuts. Once dried, I will glue this in the same way on the right locations on the windscreen so the are already in place when having to position the windscreen in the moment of heat.

I have made a small test piece of scrap lettover of the canopy and glued it on on the rollbar using the primer on the winsdscreen and roll bar. When cured, I stuck to it like you will never be able to remove it again.
I had to cut with a razor blade through the glue and still couldn't get the glue separated from the primer. This stuff stick really well to that primer. I recleaned the bar afterwards.

 windscreen fully scuffed now and ready for primer application

Also finished scuffing and matting the rollbar with red scotchbrite.

 Same on the front fueselage exposed skin.

 Here I have applied the SP-209D primer on the windscreen. This stuff flashes quickly and dries fast. I think it also has some glue in it. Your brush will become useless once you"re done with it.

 Same primer applied on the rollbar contact area

 Applied the primer SMM (sikaflex multipimer marine) on the aluminum skin after 205 aktivation. For some reason the PMM primer is transparent color. Doesn't matter much as it will all be covered by the black glue stuff.

 Once the primer dried, I glued the spacers on the inside of the drilled holes and did a final fit on the rollbar.

 Then applied aktivator and SMM primer on the clips.

 As the primer was now dry and the windscreen on, I drew a new line under the bottom of the windscreen to see the place where to apply the glue.

And then the mess started. Went all the way around with the caulking gun and applied a big bead of glue about a centimeter wide on the line all around the top fuselage skin and the rollbar.

You have to work quickly as the glue already starts forming skin after half an hour.

I started spreading out the glue on the outside of the windscreen using rounded plastic card in order to to create a nice round filet.

Then started cleaning up the mess by removing the excess glue. 

    

I did not touch the inside. it looked already good and is not visible behind the windscreen fairing.
Then started cleaning up the glue between rollbar and windscreen from both sides.
No clamps needed as I still have the screws in the windscreen around the rollbar and the rest of the windscreen is held in place by the clips. 

After all things went smooth. I thought it would be more of a hassle.

13/09/26 - Painting windscreen top fuselage skin - 6h

Written on . Posted in 4.3. Slider Canopy.

Brent came by today to paint the top fuselage skin part that lays underneath the windscreen and which is visible from the inside of the cockpit.
I first taped of all possible exposed parts and build a tent with plastic foil around it.
First he put a base coat on.

After having this dry for half an hour and in "tacky state", he applied the top coat black.

Seeing these guys paint is like looking at an artist and is true art. 

And after this had flashed out, he applied a coat of matt lack.
When seeing this wet, it's kind of scary as it looks very reflective and that's especially what you don't want here. You want to avoid any reflection in the windscreen.

Once dried completly, it looked marvelous and no gloss at all. Nice and matt.

 Very beautifull, we are now ready for glueing the windscreen on for good with sikaflex. 

 

24/08/26 - Painting the wings in white base color - 2h

Written on . Posted in 7.2 Painting.

The painting journey has really started ! Today we moved the wing to the paint shop booth. Brent painted it in the base color white and then it dried for overnight. The next day, we did the second wing. Both wings are now in white, ready for lettering and taping off for the wingtip red and grey accents.

We placed the wing, well protected, on a trailer. Blankets underneath and foam pads in front and the back. Straps help hold everything in place without being to tensed. Just making sure it won't move during the 20 minutes drive.

I have to admit, driving with these wings in the trailer and thinking about all worst case scenario's and what might happen if another car bumps into the trailer made me very nervous.
Fortunatly, we made it both ways without any incidents and below you can see an image of the wing in the wingstand in the professional paint booth.

One day later I walked in and got smashed away by the look of it. This is very motivating. The day after we did the other wing and the ailerons and flaps.

 

20/08/26 - Bill Lane Plenum finished - 0h

Written on . Posted in 6.12 Bill Lane Plenum.

The Bill Lane Plenum is finally finished... I took some images for fellow builders who need to form the mental pictures. I received some pictures from Bill himself which helped me picture the process so I hope this contributes to other people who also are looking for images of Bill's plenum. I described the process in earlier articles. Just search for Bill Lane or Plenum in the search and you"ll find them easily.
The plenum can be purchased at James Aircraft at https://www.jamesaircraft.com/ and I can warmly recommend it to everyone installing the James cowling. It allows you to use the standard Vans baffle kit and sits a lot higher above the cylinders than the version 1 James plenum does.

I decided to paint the finish color in the same color as my Superior Engine block. It came out really nice and the black rock covers stand out really well.

The fit is nice and tight, small remaining gaps will be filled with RTV on final installation.

 Passenger side top, #1 cylinder

Nice fit at the top on the baffle sides

A shot of the right side customised front baffle and anti rotation angle.

Similar shot on the left side.

It took me months to build this and get it finalised but I'm absolutly thrilled with the result !

I might still put some black paint in the air inlets for a nicer view from the front. That's on the to do list for final tweaking.

13/08/25 - Test hanging catto prop first time - 1h

Written on . Posted in 6.11 Catto 3 Blade Propellor.

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.

More Articles …

Page 1 of 2