may be true...
 

It about 1,75in long. And you are probably right, may be a bit large. It feels good in the hand. I will probably wait until I have a panel to decide on the final dimension.

I wonder if anyone has taken the method used for some car window motors. On Toyota's the window motor shuts off when the running amperage goes up,IE when the window gets to the end of it's travel, in that instant the amperage jumps. The switch has a sensor that sees that increase and cuts the power.

Not sure this would this would work as good here. The drag and therefore the work the motor has to do increases with the angle of flaps deployed. In any case this would only be useful for full up and full down.

In this case the motor has an internal stop so it doesn't use any power once it hits that stop.

#65
 

OMG! It has been forever since I updated this thread. When I started reading about people building airplanes the phrase "life got in the way" came up frequently. I often wondered what could be so important that building one of these birds would take 10 years. I have to admit it just happens, even to me. I put my own bird on hold. Gave away parts that I had to rebuild later. And 1 year later I caught up to the point where I left of.

So here is the second RV7 rudder of my building career. Man I have kicked my self over and over again because like any good builder I saw this as an opportunity to do better than the first time around. Guess what? I failed at that. Number one was much better and I have been really hating that fact. the leading edge bend just didn't turn out as nicely as I had envisioned. I will have to live with that.



I also have to get creative since I am running low on space in the barn...

I set out to work on the small stuff first. Flaps and Ailerons!

#66
 

On a more positive note after I finished agonizing about the rudder I moved on to the ailerons.

Yeah! they are really easy to build and came out super straight with not twist! Very happy with that.

#67
 

I just unpacked the Left Wing Spar for the first time. WOW they are beautiful just sitting there in gold!

I have to move a lot of things around to make this fit. Looks like my priming booth is going to have go elsewhere.

#68
 

Following up on post from last year. I finished the Flap / Wig Wag Controller.

It is much nicer now. It took forever but I feel like it is ready to test in the real thing. So far it has been my daily passenger in the car. Pretty good way to check GPS speeds and such. YES, YES, I know I wish my car had wings too.

Since I wasn't sure what switch I like best I designed it in a way that it can connect to both a rotary switch or a Momentary UP/DWN switch. Works great.

I also have integrated panel position lights. That will give me an visible position of the Flap position selected. That is especially useful for the Mom Sw.

I wish my airplane was flying so I could try this out today... Guess I'll have to find a curious fellow RV flyer.

What does it do?
-Reads GPS grounds Speed.
-Over set speed the landing lights will WIG WAG
-Under set speed the landing lights will go steady ON
-Over max flap speed the deploying flaps will not work, but the will come up if you choose so
-Under max flap speed deploying flaps will work normally
-If GPS signal is faulty, unstable or not available the systems deactivates and Landing lights go steady on and flap deployment is available at all speeds
-It will read the flap position and give it out in a format that the G3X system will read, eliminating the need for another pos sensor.
(I assume it works on Dynon as well but I have only had a G3X to test)

Specs:
-System uses 0,09A at 13.5V = 1.2W
-System weighs 0.25lbs / 113g
-2x DSBUB 25 Pin (I used 2 pins per wire for the high Power items)
-There is a hookup for an external GPS antenna in case I want to mount this under the floor board next to the flap motor. So that should not be an issue.
-I will need a box but my "el cheapo" china 3d printer doesn't print any nice quality stuff. It's really just good for prototyping. ideas?

Nicely done. I love this stuff. Building airplanes is just an excuse for developing new avionics widgets.

V

I get that some people in this community want to roll their own which is great. If you don't want to roll your own, all the features you've listed and more are available in the VP-X. :)

Thank you
 

Thanks Vern. It was a lot of fun and I learned a ton!

Check out Fusion 360 by Autocad. They have some tutorials on how to make an enclosure around small electronic devices, like raspberry pi. I have an Ultimaker 2+ and a Form2. If you have an enclosure, I'd be happy to print it for you.

Jeff

Thanks for the offer :)
 

Hey Jeff. Thank you! I will look into that. I have an Anet A8 but you get what you pay for... and 80$ including shipping...Well I am happy that it prints at all.

Is there a free version of the fusion? I have been using Vectorworks at the my university computer lab to do stuff but I can only do pretty basic stuff. Then I throw it into cura and print with the Anet. But I could try to design a case and print a rough version and if it fits I can get back to you for a clean print.

Yes. Free for up to a year for qualified folks. Essentially, not using it for commercial porpuses. It's very granular but has extensive tutorials, which are great. Lots of You-tube help, too. I would check out their website.

I have a free one-year educational subscription. If you like learning this nerdy stuff, which I think you do, I think you will really like it.

https://www.autodesk.com/campaigns/f...-for-hobbyists

Fusion 360 is awesome! I started with Solidworks, but prefer Fusion 360 for my small DIY projects.

Btw.: If your're an EAA member, you can get Solidworks for free.
https://www.eaa.org/eaa/eaa-membersh...esource-center

I use a qidi tech 1, essentially a dual extruder makerbot II clone. I've upgraded to a borosilicate glass bed and all metal extruders (around $100 total) its really nice. I produce some replacement porsche parts and tooling with it. mostly print abs and tpu.

I use openscad because I like parametric designs, simplify3d to slice.

I really dislike blocking flap deployment on groundspeed. That could cause delayed flap access for a significant amount of airspeed. It would be better to take a serial a/s reading. I know that's possible to pull from grt avionics, pretty much any AHRS should allow that and some "all in one" units should as well.

Yes, you are right. Another member was kind enough to point that out via PM already.

I looked into hooking up to the static and getting actual airspeed. Decided I did not want enter the static system.

I have open connection ready for the Avionic direct hook up if I can manage to read it with the Arduino. Based on a few post by other on the topic that is possible. I just haven't messed with it because I don't have a G3x that is flying to play with. I am aware that the GPS may not be ideal. That's what I will have to test to see how good it works.

I have not seen any available options that will work with a rotary swtich. So even if I never use the GPS block it still worth the effort. For the wigwag it really doesn't matter if a head or tailwind may change the speed a bit. IMHO

#69
 

Not much building done lately. But this hobby comes with an addiction to buying tools...Sometimes just because I feel like I "need" them.

This Bosch Blue Saw is the latest n greates in my tool box... Well I kind of wanted to see what she can do. A delight to work with. I am now wondering if I can and should get an aluminum cutting disk for it. Sure would make cutting stock parts a breeze. Did I mention the laser? YAY!

Anyway. Here she is:



and here is the first thing that got build out of scrap pieced of wood. This is my version of the rib straightener that I found in the forums. It is supposed to make this work much more "enjoyable". Looks like 11? is pretty darn close. I may try 12? to see if that's better or too much. With the saw I can actually just set it to the desired degree and 2 seconds later ...How cool is that ? DONE!

#70
 

Ok. Back to building. To be honest I have been ready to start for a bit but the perfect expensive goldish looking spar is kind of intimidating. And the plans are really not holding my hand any more at this point.

So took me a while to actually start. First Cut is the deepest.... So today I spend 4 hours drilling #40 and CSinking the all the wholes of the nutplates that attach the Tanks and acces panels. Hope I didn't already make any mistakes.

I also spend some time taping everything up. Read that on another build log and it seemed like a good idea. Kind of a waste of perfectly good tape but o well.

That tape is a very good idea indeed! I was glad I taped right there too.
Amazing how chips can work their way into little crevasses when exposed. Keep on keeping on!

#71
 

Although Not building related but it reminded me what a capable plane I am building. Went up in the other -7A yesterday and did a 4 leg box speed run at 5000ft at full everything. I am a bit disappointed it didn't match the VANS numbers but maybe I need to do it again at 8000ft. 8500? at what alt are the vans numbers done?

Vans Lyc 180HP M1B
Vans Hartzell 72" C/S.
2 People.
5000ft density alt
14?C
2700RPM

I've always run the 4 headings with no wind correction and used ground speed seen on each heading after it stabilized. Add the 4 GS numbers together and divide by 4.

It is my understanding Vans does their speed numbers at 8000 density altitude.
My RV7 almost exactly matches Vans numbers.

PS it is faster when it is solo with half fuel...

The NTPS spreadsheet (post 71) is believed to be a highly accurate method.

whenever I google how to do this accurately I keep getting back to the NTPS method so who am I do disagree...? It is very easy to use and does all the magic math on its own... I like it!

In this case both the "divide by 4" method and the NTPS method will give the same number. I suppose that is to be expected with a standard deviation of 0,1
I think the nice thing here is that it will tell you the standard deviation and thus tell you if that data sample you collected is good or bad. Also it is nice to know the wind.

#72
 

Seems like no progress but I continued to Countersink all the wholes. They are done now. I had some issues with knife edging and the cage wandering on me with the first 2 #8 screws. I then opted to fabricate a piece of scrap metal and hold it underneath so it would keep the pilot on the countersink from wondering off. First used aluminum like on this picture... then changed to steel. Worked great.

UPDATE: The Plans tell you to rivet the nutplate FIRST and actually use the NUTPLATE as a guide for the #30 pilot countersink.

#73
 

Another night session... 4 hours of plate nuts. I think I am slow.
Process was to dab the countsinked wholes with primer via Q-Tip. Then wet rivet the plate nuts in place... I had about 30 min of looking for the #6 plate nuts for the inspection plates. I could only find a few but I had them at inventory... YUP It came to me that I used them for the Empennage Fairings. Luckily I had bought a couple extra from spruce. Just needed to find those little bags....

Pretty Straight Forward. Just one plate nut at the time... I actually managed to screw this up on 2 because I didn't look and actually riveted without the plate nut in the right position... it moved sideways on me go figure. Well. I still know how to drill rivets, thank god!



Both spars done!

This seems to crop up pretty regularly.
If you follow the instructions and rivet the nutplates on first, the countersinking for the #8 screws is trivial.
I?m not picking on you :p it just seems like so many people try to cook up a solution to a problem that doesn?t exist. Some are quite elaborate and time consuming! They then post it and everyone thinks that?s how you do it and it becomes self fulfilling.

Thank you, and yes you are right.
Maybe I should not be posting this as others may think this is the way to do it. It just is what I ended up doing. I will edit the text above to let future builders know what the VANS way is.

Video
 

I made a little 2 min video yesterday... I am not on Youtube so this is just for us here on VAF...

Click here for the Video