Yes, it’s been awhile since I’ve updated the construction log.
No, I haven’t given up on building the plane. There just isn’t much left to do on the wings, and a few house projects have kept me occupied.
However, the time to order my fuselage kit has finally arrived!
The great part about RVs is that the sub-kits are relatively inexpensive (compared to other aircraft kits), and they can be ordered individually. For someone like me, this is crucial because it allows me to buy one kit and work on building it while I save money for the next kit. The fuselage is the third of five sub-kits (empennage, wings, fuselage, finishing, and fire-wall forward). The fuselage kit is also the first time you have to make a couple of very important decisions…type of canopy and placement of the third wheel.
The canopy decision has always been an easy one for me. I’ve been planning on a tip-up right from the start and I haven’t wavered from that. While it would be nice to slide the canopy back right after landing to generate some airflow, I greatly prefer the look of the tip-up canopy. While the canopy comes in the finish kit, the decision has to be made now in order to work on a couple of areas of the fuselage such as the panel.
The third wheel is a bit tougher decision. I had originally planned on an RV-7A. The “A” designates tricycle gear or a nose wheel. However, after receiving my tail wheel endorsement, I decided to change to an RV-7 and put the third wheel in the back. If Van’s nose gear design was different, I might have stuck with it, but the way things stand, I’ll take my chances with a ground loop as opposed to bending the nose wheel and doing a slow motion somersault.
As for the other fuselage options, I decided not to decide just yet. The only other things I need to decide are manual vs. electric aileron trim and whether or not to install passenger side brakes. Electric trim and dual brakes would be nice to have, but they are expensive options. Right now, I want to save money and get the plane flying. Both the brakes and trim system are installed later in the fuselage build, so I decided to take some more time and order these separately once I make up my mind. If I had to decide today, I would keep it simple and just go with manual aileron trim and no passenger brakes.
The factory website currently lists the RV-7 standard build fuselage wait time as 8 weeks. This means I will likely get my kit sometime in December. This should give me just enough time to finish up a few lingering tasks on the wings (rivet the last bottom skins and install the landing lights). At least the Texas weather is cooling off enough now to make working in the garage bearable again.
