J

John Courte

Well Known Member
Hi all,

Getting ready to dive into my RV-7 QB fuse, and I'm going to forego the rotating stand in favor of a couple of sawhorses with foam on them. When you work on the QB fuse, do you spend more time sitting in it or standing beside it? I'm about 6' tall, and I'm trying to avoid bending over a lot to work inside the fuse and also having it be too tall to reach the middle easily. I'm interested in how you went about this, or if it was even an issue. I guess what I'm looking for is kind of like, if the QB fuse is elevated on sawhorses, should the longeron come up chest high? Waist high? knee high?

thanks,
-John
 
Last edited:
Here's what I did. Longerons at waist. It makes it easy to chage work height if so desired. For me,(6' & large gut) it seems about right. easy to get climb into, easy to bend over, tail is a perfect working height.

RV7171.jpg
 
I agree with Hydroguy's work height. That's about where I did mine. If you are doing a taildragger, you can always raise the tail for the time you will need to access that part, if necessary. Raising it any higher makes it difficult to lean over into the cabin for the large amount of work in there. I supported mine on two cement blocks with a 2X6 and a carpet accross them and a short padded sawhorse under the tail. I placed the blocks under the spar box area.
 
agreed

We changed the height several times and the best i have found is as above, adn then we keep 2 good solid plastic milk crates underneath the plane. Anytime you need to bend over and inside, that extra foot or so makes all the differenc and is much better than chairs or step ladders that could tip over and add air induction to the fues. Just my 2 cents.
 
I also agree with Brian. Waste high, to allow you to bend and reach the bottom.
Though I prefer to screw/bolt short legs to the side of the fuselage.
When you start getting a little tired and lean against the side of the fuselage, you can move it slightly and make it fall off of stands (it's not very heavy when you first start working on it)
 
Waist high. I can honestly say that I've sat in (includes crawling around) my fuse for no more than 8 hours total for the entire build to this point.

It's on the gear, with engine, panel and conopy installed. Everything aft of the panel is done. I do expect some quality time getting to know the bottom of the cockpit in several months when I finish up by riveting the top front skin.

The more time you spend inside working, the more you will bend and ding things up. It is not a great working environment.

Jekyll
7A/QB slider
 
Jekyll said:
Waist high. I can honestly say that I've sat in (includes crawling around) my fuse for no more than 8 hours total for the entire build to this point.
Click to expand...

Mine was on plastic milk crates, so only about a foot off the floor. This was tough for me to bend down into it. Of course, I'm one of the 'larger' builders, so it's not so easy to bend down anyway.:confused: I've spent a total of about 10 minutes sitting inside my fuselage since I started it. I expect to spend many hours sitting in it before I finalize my panel layout, though.

I've recently acquired a table cart from Harbor Freight Aviation Tool Supply. This allows me to raise it to whatever height I want to. Of course, it'll be on it's gear soon, so it won't matter.
 
Wow, thanks for all the info! This is exactly what I needed. I didn't even consider the jack-stand on the QB wing-stub approach, which is brilliant. Originally, I was going to just saw the legs off the sawhorses to hit the right height, which appears to be waist high.

Thanks everyone!

-John
 
You must log in or register to reply here.