PreparationAndTools

Received the bearing greaser that I ordered from Amazon. This will make it a lot easier to grease my wheel bearings.

Bought a bending brake from Harbor Freight. I plan to use it to make a housing for the fuel pump structure on the floor of the cabin.

I've ordered a whole bunch of tools and materials from ACS to start fiberglassing. As most people have done, I'm going to use the West System Epoxy kit as the basis.

Haven't updated this page in a while so it's about time some new tools are shown here. I bought a crimper tool for the battery terminals and the hobbyair fresh air respirator (it's still in the box) as I am planning to paint the inside of the cabin myself.

Spent some time today installing my new Skil 9 inch bandsaw. I installed a 18 tpi sawblade on it to start cutting some metal. Cut some alu angle for the firewall with it and man does that cut like butter. So much nicer than with my hacksaw!

Bought a plastic tubing cutter at Sears today to help cut the dynon pitot and AOA tubing to size.

To help test the electronics, lights and avionics equipment I have and plan to buy in the future, I have ordered a DC Power Supply from BK Precision. This system can deliver 3-14 V DC and a max of 12A. That means I can even test my halogen leading edge light with it. Looking forward to start doing some electronic design.

I have ordered some gear that I will need for my wings today. Safeair1's pitot static tubing kit, alternate static source kit, aoa port plumbing kit and quick disconnect kit. Got the dynon combined and heatet pitot and aoa port from Aircraft Spruce and ordered some more zinc-oxide and self-etching primer as well. I also have decided to order the Aveo combined nav/strobe LED lights; I guess this is a bit of a risk as nobody seems to have used these before, but we'll see how they turn out. NOTE: the Aveo lights are great! The strobes are incredibly bright and I have a hard time believing these are actually LED's...

Guess what I got for my birthday today:

It's like Michela reads my mind :-) Oh, and she got a spare battery pack for it as well (more mind reading).

I got the tools and mini air filter today that I ordered from Harbor Freight recently. All preparation for my wing kit which will hopefully ship in about 4 weeks!

Tap and die set

Electric engraver to mark parts

A mini air filter for my compressor (turned out to not work at all so don't buy this!)

And here is the thing mounted on my work bench

Also bought a digital level from Sears (on sale!).

And a couple of jacks which will be useful when the wings are hanging in their structures.

I finished the paint tent today and added the plastic sheet walls and a fan to blow the bad air out. Also bought a suit to protect me from the paint when I'm busy in the shed.

Oh yeah, bought the Avery hand squeezer today as it will be useful to get into tough spots for riveting wing ribs. Also put some Snap-Socs and emery cloth on the order. Oh and a Vans Air Force cap of course :-)

Went to Lowes today and bought some raw materials to built some tools.

I made a rack from PCV pipe and chicken wire to help me prime parts more effectively.

Started to built a small tent from 2x3's to make priming outside easier and to make sure the wind does not blow away all of my paint before it gets a chance to attach itself to the parts. Tomorrow I have to wrap this structure in plastic. Hmmm, maybe I should bolt some handles on the posts as well to make it easier to carry it out.

Also bought a flaring tool, a tube bender and a tube cutter (max and mini).

Made the rod-end bearing installation tool shown on Sam Buchanan's website.

Made the bending tool out of some particle board and hinges as per the instructions in the manual.

I received the new bucking bar from Cleaveland Tools today. This bucking bar is made from tungsten steel and weighs 1.7 lbs (pretty heavy for such a small piece of metal).

I received the used angle air drill from Brown today and the thing works great. It's a really good tool to get into these tight corners, so although I've only drilled 8 holes with it, it's already worth the 155 bucks that I paid for it.

I've been on a shopping spree at both Brown and Cleaveland Tools this week and let's not forget Aircraft Spruce where I bought some of the zinc-oxide primer and alumi-etch that I will use to prime all the parts with (hopefully I can start with that this weekend).

Finished the second table this evening. This one will be used to built the empennage. So that's it for the preparation and tools page for now. The story continues on Empennage! Of course if I purchase new tools I'll make sure to mention it on this page so that other builders can also benefit from that information.

Finished my first table today and mounted the drill press on top of it. Will mount the belt sander and buffer next and then start building the second table for my day to day construction work.

Went to Lowes today to get the material to build two workbenches. Picked up a belt/disc sander on the way (might be useful too!) They had all the wood I needed (2 by 4's and plywood), but no wood screws in enough quantities. Lucky for me we have a hardware store just around the corner that had the hardware in stock. Picked up some bolts and nuts too to mount the drill press, belt sander and buffer on one of the workbenches.

Oh my building buddy Mike came by with his fiancee to check out my workshop and give me some tips on how to setup and use the compressor (I never owned one before). It seems I need to pick up some teflon tape tomorrow. Last but not least, I have made a reservation request for N-number 133MT at the FAA. 133MT stands for my birthday and the initials of my wife Michela, who will have to put up with me being in the workshop for most of my free time during the next two years :-)

I have unpacked all the empennage parts and inventoried them. Luckily nothing was missing. Tomorrow I'll have the bags of hardware to unpack and label the drawers that it will go into. I also went to Sears and bought myself a buffer :-)

I've picked up the two boxes with the empennage parts at Fedex today. Here are some pics of what came out of these boxes:

The Grizzly compressor and drill press also arrived. Packing out the compressor was pretty easy, but the drill press (unexpectedly) comes in pieces and has to be assembled!

I guess that will be a job for the weekend when the workbenches have been assembled. I'm planning to make two of the EAA Chapter 1000 tables, but 8 feet instead of the 5 feet the article mentions. I need all the space I can get!

Most of the tools from Brown have arrived today. Among them an air drill:

and a pneumatic squeezer:

Waiting for the drill press and compressor that should arrive tomorrow.

Today my wallet feels a little emptier, but my workshop will look a lot fuller at the end of the week: I've ordered tools from Brown, Cleaveland and a Grizzly compressor and drill press! Hopefully all this gear will be delivered by the end of the week, so that I can start doing something next weekend. I'll give you some more details on all of these tools a bit later in the blog.

Van's emailed me that my empennage kit has shipped with an expected delivery time of Wednesday Oct 24. This is going to be a long wait!

Hello there. Lots of things have changed in the last couple of months. I had the opportunity to go and check out Jeff Vaughan's RV-7A and found another EAA Chapter 240 member, Mike Brown, who has also just started to build his RV-7 empennage. Both live pretty close to me and they have managed to convince me to start building a RV-7A instead of the 9A. Why? Many reasons I guess: it's max speed is almost 20 mph higher than the 9A and it can actually do a bit of aerobatics. Not that I am looking forward to do aerobatics at this point in my life, but I guess you never know: I might start liking doing the occasional slow roll :-) So today the big moment took place: I send a fax to Van's with my order for an empennage kit with electric trim. In the meantime I have bought a Sears toolchest for my tools and I've cleaned up the workshop a bit (incl. new carpet):

In the next week I will start ordering some tools, so that I can start building as soon as the shipment arrive! I feel good, tadadada, I know what I'm doing now, tadadada :-)

It has been a while, but here we are all moved to Newark, DE. We already love it here, because it is green, lush and it rains a lot (yeah, yeah, some people dispise rain, but we don't because we haven't seen a lot of it in El Paso). And the best of all is that the house we have bought has a beautiful large workshop to start building my RV in! Also, there is a small airport (N57) nearby and they have a Chapter of the EAA on the field; of course I have already become a member :-) Anyway, that's it for now. I'll be back with more news later.

I did it! I managed to get my instrument rating today. The whole thing went much smoother than I thought it would go: the questions were not that hard and the flight part went well: I had to fly a VOR circling approach to Biggs, the ILS runway 22 into El Paso Int. and the Localizer approach to the same runway, but this time without DME. Unfortunately I was stuck with the same controller that made so many errors yesterday, but he was replaced after half an hour in the class C :-) In the end all went well and we flew back to Santa Teresa at 5500 feet over downtown. Bill (the examiner) pulled the throttle out when we were in the pattern and I had to do an emergency landing on runway 10, but also that one went without any problems.

My instrument flight check will be on saturday, February 10 at 8 am in the morning. I have been studying pretty hard this week and are fairly confident that I will pass it. Hopefully the weather will be decent that day (that will definitely help). Wish me luck! When I've got that rating in my pocket I plan to get more serious with the building plans.

The last day of 2006 has almost arrived. During the week of we got from the university I have been reading an awful lot: went through my preview plans, read the books Choosing your homebuilt - the one you will finish and fly, Kit airplane construction and Firewall forward, all lots and lots of interesting reads. Because I am finishing up my instrument training at the moment (passed my written exam on December 23!) I don't have the time to order tools, empennage and start building, but hopefully when I pass the oral and flight test in January, I can start focusing on my new pet project :-)

I just ordered the preview plans for the RV-9A from Aircraft Technical Books. They are authorized to resell the plans and the advantage is that you can order 24 years of RV-Ator with them. I'm sure that these plans will give me a lot more insight on whether I will be able and should take on this building project.

Today I have spent some time on the tools needed to contruct the airplane. Several vendors sell complete toolkits that contain all the tools needed to put an RV-9A together in a flyable condition. Van's itself has a list of recommended tools. Today in Trade-A-Plane I found an ad from US Tools where they advertise an RV toolset for 1400 dollars. The exact contents of the toolkit can be found on page 13 of their catalog. Aircraft Spruce has a nice toolkit for around 2400 dollars. Avery has a RV toolkit for a bit less than 2200 dollars. Brown Aviation Tools has a rather limited sheet metal toolkit for 800 dollars. Cleaveland has a toolkit special for a little less than 2000 dollars. Isham's toolkit costs 2400 dollars (lifetime warranty). Wicks Aircraft Supply sells an RV toolkit for 625 dollars.

I have to start thinking about the shop I will need to setup for the construction. The garage would probably do (I'll have to leave my car outside even in the hot El Paso summers), but it would be nicer to have a shed in the backyard. What size would do? 10x16, 12x16 or even 12x20 or so? Don't know and have to find out at some point.

Welcome to the web site that will document the process of ordering and building my Van's RV-9A. Here is a picture of the plane: