Dan Langhout
Well Known Member
Saturday was a big day - time to move the plane to the airport for final assembly!
The first problem was getting the fuselage out of the garage. Turns out that the horizontal stabilizer on an RV-7 won't fit straight through a 9 foot garage door. Quite a bit of fiddling around to get the tail to go through at an angle was required to finally get it out on the driveway.
The wrecker driver showed up right on time at 8:00. Fellow builder and neighbor David Edgemon did the honors getting the plane strapped down on the truck. This is the third one David has moved, so he has it down to a science.
Its off to the Courtland airport (9A4).
Once at the airport, we ran into the first of two problems. The normal access gate was broken so another, normally closed gate had been opened. Problem was that the opening was just barely wide enough for the truck to fit through! The driver had to pull his mirrors in to get clearance and the horizontal stabilizer only had a few inches on each side (it overhung the width of the truck bed a bit).
Once at the hangar, the unloading began.
About this time the second problem became apparent. The electrical power was off for the whole airport! (probably why the normal, power operated gate didn't work). But it also meant that my power operated bi-fold hangar door didn't work either. Fortunately, it is possible to open one of these doors with a manual chain mechanism built into the operator. It only required about 1.5 million cycles of pulling on the chain to get the door open enough to get the plane inside. We took turns at the chain to get this done. Got our workout for the day.
After a bit of a rest, it was time to put the wings on. I was lucky enough to have three folks present to help, so with four of us the wings went on easily with no drama. The frozen and anti-seize lubricated close tolerance bolts went in with just a bit of persuasion from a large dead blow hammer.
My thanks to David Edgemon, Brian Smith, and Eric Bale for helping me out with this task. Just a few more assembly tasks and rigging and it will be time for first engine start and the AW inspection!
The first problem was getting the fuselage out of the garage. Turns out that the horizontal stabilizer on an RV-7 won't fit straight through a 9 foot garage door. Quite a bit of fiddling around to get the tail to go through at an angle was required to finally get it out on the driveway.
The wrecker driver showed up right on time at 8:00. Fellow builder and neighbor David Edgemon did the honors getting the plane strapped down on the truck. This is the third one David has moved, so he has it down to a science.
Its off to the Courtland airport (9A4).
Once at the airport, we ran into the first of two problems. The normal access gate was broken so another, normally closed gate had been opened. Problem was that the opening was just barely wide enough for the truck to fit through! The driver had to pull his mirrors in to get clearance and the horizontal stabilizer only had a few inches on each side (it overhung the width of the truck bed a bit).
Once at the hangar, the unloading began.
About this time the second problem became apparent. The electrical power was off for the whole airport! (probably why the normal, power operated gate didn't work). But it also meant that my power operated bi-fold hangar door didn't work either. Fortunately, it is possible to open one of these doors with a manual chain mechanism built into the operator. It only required about 1.5 million cycles of pulling on the chain to get the door open enough to get the plane inside. We took turns at the chain to get this done. Got our workout for the day.
After a bit of a rest, it was time to put the wings on. I was lucky enough to have three folks present to help, so with four of us the wings went on easily with no drama. The frozen and anti-seize lubricated close tolerance bolts went in with just a bit of persuasion from a large dead blow hammer.
My thanks to David Edgemon, Brian Smith, and Eric Bale for helping me out with this task. Just a few more assembly tasks and rigging and it will be time for first engine start and the AW inspection!
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