[pilotshive]

Can anyone suggest several good, in depth, build logs for a RV-8? I'm looking for journals with good explanations and pictures... Feel free to recommend your own as well.

 

[ventus2c]

Many excellent options

I have recently been researching the same subject, and have found many comprehensive sites, not specifically for the -8 but much of the information we need is relatively generic to all. Here are a few to get started with:
JT's RV-8: http://www.jtsrv8project.blogspot.com/
Dan Checkoway's RV-7 project: http://www.rvproject.com/
Mike Bullock's RV-7: http://www.rvplane.com

 

[Danny7]

kevin hortons

http://www.kilohotel.com/rv8/index.php?topic=Tail

 

[N941WR]

Shive,

What you will quickly find is what Nigel was pointing out, the airplanes are all very similar in construction.

Any of the very excellent builder websites out there will be helpful.

One word of caution, some of the web sites you will look at have errors or the builders did things that had to be fixed later on. Some may or may not have gone back and noted those issues in their web sites next to where they made a particular recommendation.

Best of luck to both of you with your builds!

 

[Bob Axsom]

Old School

Yeah I'm old but I have a Master of Science in Computer Science so I'm not completely scared of computers. In my humble opinion there is nothing like buying a bond journal entering your start time at the beginning of each work session and what you intend to do then your stop time and what you actually did and the number of photos you took followed by your signature and a line across the page below it. Keep a separate album (physical - off line - not requiring a computer to look at the photos) record the date of each photo on the back. The way I go back into my records to see how I did something or evaluate the possibility of a modification is to go to the album first find the related work in the photo record look at the date on the back and refer to the log for a description of the work. In the left margin of the log (journal) I enter the work date, the quantity of photos take and cumulative hours worked. Years later (13 now for me) long after power fails, computers crash, computers are replaced, software changes, recording media evolves to a new better form all I have to do is go to my bookshelf pull out the log and album for whatever purpose I have at the moment. It is an investment in a treasured memory as well as a functional record. My log is now two volumes and the photo album is 10" thick and growing with each mod.

Bob Axsom

 

[pilotshive]

old school... right on!

Definitely going to keep my build log/journal offline... I'm pretty savvy at web design but I'd rather spend the time building, etc...

I'm just trying to get ideas of how people did things... obviously everything will viewed with a grain of salt...

 

[Sam Buchanan]

Yeah I'm old but I have a Master of Science in Computer Science so I'm not completely scared of computers. In my humble opinion there is nothing like buying a bond journal entering your start time at the beginning of each work session and what you intend to do then your stop time and what you actually did and the number of photos you took followed by your signature and a line across the page below it. Keep a separate album (physical - off line - not requiring a computer to look at the photos) record the date of each photo on the back. The way I go back into my records to see how I did something or evaluate the possibility of a modification is to go to the album first find the related work in the photo record look at the date on the back and refer to the log for a description of the work. In the left margin of the log (journal) I enter the work date, the quantity of photos take and cumulative hours worked. Years later (13 now for me) long after power fails, computers crash, computers are replaced, software changes, recording media evolves to a new better form all I have to do is go to my bookshelf pull out the log and album for whatever purpose I have at the moment. It is an investment in a treasured memory as well as a functional record. My log is now two volumes and the photo album is 10" thick and growing with each mod.

Bob Axsom

I was one of the very early adopters of web-based construction logs. In order to avoid the "crash" issues mentioned above, I periodically printed the web site and put the hard copies in a 3-ring binder. The site was also backed up to a CD. Twelve years later the web site has survived just fine (having the log on a web server is a form of backup) but I also have the binder with the complete site in paper form and the CD. The binder was perfect for showing the log to the DAR at inspection time (this was the first web-based log he had seen....September, 1999).

 

[airguy]

Same here - I use the Expercraft online log, and update it each day immediately after finishing a work session. My "real job" allows me great flexibility and each day one of the first things I do will be to print full page color photos from my last work session as well as the updated log, and keep those in a binder. My binders are never more than 2 days out of synch with the web log, and I currently have about 5 inches of paper there, with the wings almost complete.

One thing I do with my 3" binders, as I finish physically filling that binder, it has the "to-date" log and photos in chronological order for the work done in that binder, with a CD containing that same info in the binder pocket. The 2nd binder picks up where the first left off, in the middle of the log, with chronological photos for portion of the build log it contains. That will make it easy to find photos of any particular item by matching the log and the photo pages by build date.

I also back up my entire photo collection and digital log on another computer every few weeks, hedging my bets against a drive crash - but then again, I have lots of free time at work!