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Big People and RV's

M

mtclay

Active Member
My wife and I would love to purchase an RV-7 or 7A.

However, when I look at Van's specifications I see: 1800 lbs. GW - 1130 lbs. EW - 252 lbs. fuel wt. = 418 lbs. available for passengers and baggage.

I am 6'4" and 220 lbs. and my wife is 5'9" and 205 lbs. That 425 lbs. puts us 7 lbs. over gross with no baggage. Neither of us is obese -- just two big people.

I fully understand that technically we are too heavy to legally fly the RV in the above example.

Recently we have attended two RV Fly-ins. At those fly-ins we observed several RV's arrive which had pilot and passenger whose combined weight clearly would have exceeded our own.

What is going on here? Are the RVer's mentioned above simply disregarding the weight limitations? Is it possible that some RV's have a higher certified max gross weight?

I'm ready to shift my attentions to production aircraft to get around the gross weight limitations.
 
Max weight & experimentals

MT, there is no such thing as a "certified" weight with an experimental aircraft. Just the max weight you put on the form. Many RV-7s come in well under 1100lb. The example quoted was probably equipped with a heavy c/s prop and a 200hp engine. If you are careful, and use a 160hp engine and a lighter prop, perhaps an empty weight of 1050lb, or lighter, is achieveable. How badly do you want to fly an RV?

There's nothing stopping you declaring your max weight as 1900lb (or some other number). 1800lb is just Van's recommendation based on criteria applied to certified aircraft - if you understand what those are, there may be many occasions when you can fly safely at weights over 1800lb.

Pete
 
You might also keep in mind that the gross weight defined is for a particular stress condition. I'm not familiar with the -7, but I suspect that 1800#'s is at least in the Utility (+4.4 G's) category. So unless you plan on doing limited aerobatic manuevers with your wife in the plane, you may find that a reasonable gross weight in the Normal category (+3.3G's) is easily 100 - 200 #'s heavier. However, if you really do want to do the aerobatic thing with your wife, leave off 10 gallons of fuel. One of you is bound to get tired of it after a couple of hours anyway! :D
 
I think you'd be okay weight wise by building light and watching the fuel/baggage load. I'm 250 and regularly carried folks in the 200 range without problems. A higher gross weight is okay provided you avoid aerobatics at that weight and/or watch your maneuvering speed.

However, you might find the shoulder area to be tight. You might try and sit in one with your wife first before deciding. If it's too tight, you might just go for a -10 or possibly a -8.
 
I am 6' 1" and 225. My wife is 5' 6" and about the same weight, (ok, she is the same weight, but don't tell anyone)

We have a -6 with an empty of 1031 lbs, a gross of 1750 lbs. We have been coast to coast without any problems and each takeoff, we carry full fuel (38 gals) and 40lbs of baggage.

We are at gross weight at takeoff, our roll is about 1200 ft and our climb rate is between 800 and 1000 fpm with an airspeed of 120 kts. We are flying on a O320 160 hp with a fixed pitch prop.

For the height issue in my case, I trimmed about an inch of the back rest support for the seat back to recline the seat a little so I had more head room. I flight it is real comfortable and on the ground, I can just see over the nose.

Also, we put steps on our taildragger. Mostly because the wife is short legged. (She says she is average height)

So go ahead and get the -7. You won't be sorry.
 
RV useful load

Your numbers: BOEW=1130 is on the high end of BEW range. Unless you opt for a IO-360 200hp engine you should be able get the weight under 1100lbs without sacraficing much if anything. "The survay says....RV-7/A's weighs" :

Looking at about 30 finished RV7's
MIN MAX
RV-7 1011 1141
RV-7A 1020 1134

The average of about 100 RV's RV-6,-7,-8 (TG and "A's") and a few RV-4's was about 1075 lbs. At 1075 BEW you two could fill it up and take approx 50lbs of bags without exceeding the stock 1800 lbs gross.

Cheers, George
 
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