Author Archives: Michael Carter

About Michael Carter

Programmer, Pilot/Builder and Amateur Radio enthusiast living in the Bay Area of California.

Continuing work on Rudder

Was a gorgeous day today. Cooler than the previous couple days, which made it into the 80’s! Today the temperature leveled out around 70, and so we headed to the hangar to pick up work on the rudder. Today we … Continue reading

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Rudder

Today we started work on the rudder, which is the control surface responsible for motion about the yaw axis. It works primarily by deflecting air to the lef or right, and you use your rudder pedals in the cockpit to … Continue reading

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Vertical stabilizer assembly

This weekend we had a marathon session (5.5 hours) to finish the vertical stabilizer! The work was quick now that we’re getting used to the workflow: fit, match drill, disassemble, deburr, dimple, prime, assemble. It also helped that this is … Continue reading

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Painting, Round #2

Having finished match drilling, deburring, dimpling and prepping the vertical stabilizer pieces, it’s time to prime them. I brought the compressor home and set up in the backyard again as before, laying out the pieces on the chicken wire paint … Continue reading

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Vertical Stabilizer

Next up is the vertical stabilizer. Together with the horizontal stabilizer, this makes the empennage, or tail, of the airplane. We’re working on the stationary parts of the tail. There are also control surfaces that need to be made and … Continue reading

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Horizontal Stabilizer–DONE!

“Congratulations! You’ve finished the first major sub-assembly on your new airplane.” Yep, feels good! Right there in the instruction manual, section 6, rev4, page 6-4, was this simple sentence that brought us our first “RV grin”! So we’re at around … Continue reading

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Our RV-7 has a Name!

I was playing around with the FAA registration web site and decided to try a couple more combinations of what I thought would be a cool tail number for the RV. I had checked before and was a bit disheartened … Continue reading

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Bits and Bobs store

I’ve crafted a couple simple tools to help us with the assembly of the plane as we go along, and I’ve decided to share them with fellow builders, so I am putting up the 3D STL files on my Thingiverse … Continue reading

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Replacing a couple rivets

I’m quite happy that after completing the reveting on the rear spar, there were only 3 rivets that I wanted to replace…2 of them for sure, and 1 that probably could have stayed. I ordered a rivet removal tool, which … Continue reading

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Wing kit ordered!

Now the clock starts! Fulfillment time currently is 14 weeks. I’m hoping that we’ll be done with the empennage just before the wing kit arrives. From the looks of it, 2 large crates comprise the thing, and there are a … Continue reading

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