Jur's RV7 Aircraft Factory
2917 hours and counting
Some decisions in life are bare of any obvious logic

31/05/2024 - Aeroleds VX Landinglighhts 2 - 3h30

Installation of pilot side landing light continues. I finalised that cutout and sanded it smooth.
The next step is to protect the landing light with masking tape and then slide it into place using the two set screws on the inner corner.
Be carefull doring this, The ears on the landing light are in plastic and not very strong.

The next procedure is to sand away more material from the contour until the landing light can freely move and kind of floats in the gap just supported by the two inner ears and a single connection point in the wing tip outer corner.
The size required around the perimeter is close to the thickness of a card or business card. I used small carton cards to slide between the lamp and epoxy to check for clearance. It 's a process that requires patience.

 First cut out complete, next wing tip ready for the same work.

 Applied the template other side and traced the perimeter with a sharpie. Surprisingly, using the same template, the upper edge clearence on the passenger side is more liberal. That means there must be some small differences in the molds of the wingtips.

Same procedure of installation on the passenger side. My cutout on the inner side is a bit liberal but I will live with it. If I have a lot of patience and time left, I may fill it up with some epoxy later but I doubt it is worth is.

 This is the inside look with the screws installed. The light floats inside the gap and is support by the two screws. and a single tab on the outside. The screws allow the lamp to be tilted slightly up or down.

 Left wing also close to done.

20/05/2024 - Aeroleds VX Landinglight 1 - 2h

The difficulty with being passed the Vans Manual plans is always the question : what will I do next ?

As I'm working on wiring and becoming summer time (able to move plane outside with wings on), I decided to tackle the aircraft lightning.

Started with the Aeroleds VX Landing lights. These are lights that Aeroleds produces especially for the RV fleet and contains both Landing Lights as Taxi lights which fit perfectly in the rear tab of the plexi wing tips.

The landing light installation kit coms with a precut wooden template and a nice and clear set of instructions with lots of pictures.

Although the instructions are clear, doing the actual fitting raised a number of doubts.
The little gaps around the cutout area are inspection holes to verify how much material is still visible in the hole and to be able to align that so that finally you end up with equal clearence from the tip border on all sides.
Easier said than done. On one tip, I found that the upper side of the gap was going to be awfully close to the wing tip edge and decided I needed to move the template down a bit.
Doing that creates a problem on the lower side as the wood interferes then with the curved 90° edge inner corner of the tip.
So I sanded a radius on the bottom of the template and tried again. This time got satisfied with the alignment and drilled the two holes which position the template

With the template positioned, you can now draw the countour using the template

This is how it ended up after drawing. I still wasn't satisfied as I found the upper edge still too close to the tip corner.
As you can see in the image below, I made some epoxy and closed the holes again to restart from scrath :(

After curing, redrilled and got closer to how I wanted it.

 Still pretty close but better than what I had before.

Cut out the plexy with the dremel and a cutting wheel and then will continue with sanding drum on the dremel to sneak up to the line.

26/12/2023 - Bringing the plane out to test GPS + ADAHRS install - 4h30

Got the plane out of the garage. A lot of people were looking in a very strange way when driving by.

Some posts back, I connected the GPS wiring to serial input 5 of the Dynon HDX D37 connector. I got the display visible but no location was detected as I was inside. Now I moved the plane in the open on my driveway.

When firing up the Dynon, after some moments, my location got shown on the moving map ! Very cool !

Next I connected the SV-NET cable from the ADAHRS which is located on the F707 rear bulkhead to the SV-NET-HUB block on F728A bellcranck channel. Went into the network configuration in the setup menu of HDX and detected devices.

Eh voila... in the network configuration setup screen I see my knob panel, ap-panel, the display itself and... yes, the ADAHRS module...

 When coming back to the main screen, we now have a PFD. ADAHRS is working.

It's always a nice view when the plane is outside of the garage. It also gives a better impression of the size of it.

I checked the satellite reception and being surrounded by a house behind it and a big wall on the left, the reception turns out rather ok. There will be more green bars when it's standing in the open on an airport.
In the image you can clearly see that the satellites with poor reception are behind the plane.

Visit Oshkosh Air Venture !

Oshkosh is to you like Mekka is for a Muslim.
If you haven't been there at least once in your life, you will NOT go to aviation heaven !

From Belgium, it's quite a trip but in the last five years of building, we managed to go twice to Oshkosh.

Nothing beats the experience of Oshkosh air venture in Oshkosh Wisconsin.

The first time we went, I visted sun'n fun in spring and decided to also visit Oshkosh. On sun'n fun there were rv's but the experimental parking there is kind of isolated and more difficult to make contact.
So my idea before arriving in Oshkosh was, 'wel I hope there will be some RV's'.

There are hundreds !

Most even camp next to their airplane and it's a real family style setting which is very inviting to go and have a chat to the owners.

I strongly recommend it to anyone, anywhere around the globe. Anything GA related will be represented at Oshkosh and it's definitly the only location in the world for home builders in the world where all info, resources and suppliers are availble at your fingertips. Wanne play with the next Garmin G3x hands on ?  and some minutes later compare it you the Dynon skyview touch ? well... only at Oshkosh. Strongly recommend also the local hardware vendors where you feel like a kid in a candyshop having all those rivets, bolts, tools laid out in front of you. (small side remark: travel light, you will return heavy). There are often also the best discounts and deals to be found during the Oshkosh week when you buy there. Some even send it later at same price when you order there. I bought my VPX, aeroleds and lots of other stuff there.

I can also recommend the vansairforce.net gathering which takes place every time after the show in a house just outside of the airport. There 's hundreds of vans of builders there.

Another good tip: plan ahead ! there's hundreds of workshop, celebrity appearences, shows, movies, honourings, lectures, .... You will not be able to do all. Let me rephrase that: you will only be able to see a fraction of it, so it's very important to plan your trip ahead. The full agenda is available upfront and they even have a smartphone app. But save yourself the trouble in the evenings of your visits and plan ahead. You will be tired from walking all day, busy with late evening show or events so you just don't have the time for it. Do it at home, The agenda is fixed months upfront so plenty of time to prepare.

Vans aircraft has a tent withsome planes at Oshkosh, so it's a good opportunity to meet some of the well known names from van's support in real life. If you're lucky you can spot Van himself and take a picture. Also the vans dinner is a good moment to meet fellow builders but it's kind of like a static setting where once you sit, you are with the same people around your on your table.
Fir the vans dinner, you have to reserve and pay upfront via the mothership.

The vansairforce.net keg party is more like beer drinking thing in a garden outside of the house and gives much more possibilities to walk around from group to group. Ask on the vansairforce net forum for the exact time and location as it sometimes varies. Doug will be glad to help you. You will also meet some of the more famous builders like the members of the teamaerodynamix.

When organising your visit, make sure to book a student room in the local oshkosh university. Rooms are much cheaper than in the local hotels and if you book late, you might end up in cities far away from airventure as hotel infrastructure is very limited in Oshkosh itself. If you want a room in the university, book couple of months after the last airventure ended as they also sell out quite fast. The university campus will be full of aviation enthousiasts and there is a nice beer-terrace just outside of the parkinglot where a lot of them gather in the evening. Very nice place to get to know new people that share your passion. Busses to airventure are organised from the campus to the Oshkosh airfield and run in 15 minute intervals.

https://www.facebook.com/UWOEAAHousing/

If you have some spare time, the Oshkosh air museum is defenitly worth a visit as it has some of the original RV's on display like the prototype RV-1 and early versions of the RV-3 and RV-4.

Visit airventure website for details on schedule.