What and Why

This blog is about three friends' experiences building a Van's RV-7A, one of the most popular kit-planes around today. The RV-7A is an all-aluminum, two-place, 200 mph, aerobatic, low-wing aircraft with a constant chord NACA 23013.5 airfoil section. We will probably build it with a 180 HP fuel-injected, four-cylinder, horizontally opposed, normally aspirated engine, with inverted fuel and oil systems. We are leaning towards a constant-speed, two-blade prop. We plan to have a modern, all-electric, glass-cockpit-type of panel, with a few "steam-gauge" backup instruments.

What motivated us to do this? One important reason is frustration with what we can afford through the certificated aircraft market. We hope to build the completed aircraft for around $100,000, which is certainly not cheap, but way less than even the closest thing available in in the certificated market. We like to think that each of us is paying about what we would for a sports car. Another reason is that we are all spacecraft engineers, who also love airplanes, and this project is giving us a chance to see the airplane side of our profession, in some small way. Although one of us got his Airframe & Powerplant repair certificate many years ago as part of his education at Embry-Riddle, he has never practiced as an A&P, and none of us have ever done anything like this before.

We have been at it since March, 2006. Given our lack of experience, we decided to attend a "builder-assist" program given at the Alexander Technical Center, in Griffin, Georgia, which is south of Atlanta. We had already decided that we would do a "Quick-Build" kit, in which much of the wings and fuselage are already finished. At the builder-assist course, we built up the empennage, that is, the horizontal and vertical stabilizers, elevators, rudder, and trim tab, from the "slow-build" empennage kit, that is, from pre-punched ribs and skins. It was a 3+ long busy days (they certainly don't build it for you!), but we left with a completed empennage, and a solid understanding of what we needed to do to finish our kit. All-in-all, a great experience, that we'd highly recommend. Since then, we have generally met two nights per week, after work, putting in about 4 hours each of real work. So far, we still look forward to it!

I expect that most of this blog will pretty closely track our builder's log, but I hope it will also be more than just a list of what we did. Even if we never get any useful comments, at least it will serve as a kind of diary for us to look back on, and remember what we did and why we did it. If it can inspire anyone out there in some way, that would be even better! Keep in mind though, that, like anything else you read on the web, don't go off and do something on your project just because we did it!! None of us is an aircraft engineer, so anything you take from this, use at your own risk!!!