My buddy Greg and I flew up to Portland, OR early this morning and made it over to Vernonia, OR a little after 10 am to start our transition training with Mike Seager.  Here’s a little intro video about Mike:

We spent about an hour and a half going through ground instruction which covered the various V speeds for the airplane and then talked about the speeds and configs for the various parts of the traffic pattern. Many of the speeds are similar to the Bonanzas we fly, so that will make it a little easier to transition between them.Afterward, we grabbed lunch in town and then came back out to start flying.

Despite the rain and low clouds, we each got 1.8 hours of flight time in the plane. The flight started with a takeoff from his soggy grass strip and then a flight out to the practice area underneath the overcast. I got a chance to play with the controls and learn how sensitive they are. The plane is far more responsive than anything I’ve ever flown, but it’s not twitchy. You do have to be careful because it’s really easy to over control the plane.Once we got to the practice area, we slowed the plane down and did some slow flight at 80 and 70 MPH. Although the controls were mushy, there is still far more control authority even at this speed than most planes have in any configuration.

Once we finished slow flight, we moved on to power off and power on stalls. The power off stall break is rather abrupt with little warning but has little tendency to drop a wing as long as the ball is relatively close to center. The power on stalls were even more docile, but they were at a ridiculously high pitch attitude. Even at only 23 squared, the break happened at over 30º nose up. A full power stall would be at a truly extreme angle even in his 160 hp RV-7. In our nearly 200 hp RVs, the angle will be even higher.

After we wrapped up the air work, we headed over to the Scappoose airport for some pattern work. We did half a dozen stop and go landings, and I was starting to get a pretty good feel for the handling and site picture near the end. This is the first taildragger I’ve flown where I can’t see the far end of the runway over the nose in the flare. His technique is to look down the side of the cowl and sight the far left corner of the runway. I still need to practice his technique to make it more automatic. Assuming the weather holds, we’ll get a few more flights in over the next couple of days, so I should be feeling pretty solid by Friday.

I picked about $10 worth of electrical conduit and fittings and welded up a tow bar down at the TechShop.  The crosspiece that you see in the center can slide up and down the tubes to apply the clamping force that will keep the tow bar attached to the tailwheel bolt.  This should be super simple to attach and remove.  Basically, you just line up the fittings with the bolt and squeeze the tubes together.  The crosspiece will automatically slide down the tubes and lock the tow bar in place.  To release, just pull back on the cross piece and the fittings will pop off.  I made the tow bar 5′ long because a shorter tow bar tends to hit the bottom of the rudder.  Hopefully 5′ will be long enough to avoid that.

The DAR called me this morning to delay the visit due to illness.  I still have plenty of work to do, so it’s not a big deal.  We’re now scheduled for this Saturday afternoon.

I got started tonight by taking a couple of more weight and balance measurements.  I had forgotten to include the plenum, but I decided to also throw the wheel pants and gear leg fairings on at their approximate position.  All of that helped move the CG forward 0.22″, but increased my empty weight to 1110.  After that, I took a measurement with me in the plane to find out exactly where my CG is.  Unfortunately, I’m 0.24″ aft of where Van’s says the pilot’s CG should be.  This had the effect of moving the plane’s CG back by 0.05″.  The net result is that the CG will be roughly 0.17″ forward of where I calculated on Sunday.  That still puts me 2.48″ aft of the forward CG limit, so I’ll still have to add some weight up front.

Afterward, I pulled everything off or out of the plane to get it ready for inspection.  I’ve still got a fair number of items to knock off the list before that happens though.

I spent a little time tonight wrapping up the paperwork for the DAR who will be inspecting my airplane.  From the upper left, we have the registration, 8130-6, notarized 8130-12, program letter, weight & balance, three-view and condition inspection.  I emailed everything to him tonight and am planning on meeting with him this Sunday.

I had my airplane inspection party today.  I invited RV builders from all over the region to come give my plane a good once over before scheduling time with the DAR.  I had a great turnout; roughly 40-50 pilots and builders stopped by over the course of the day.  Overall, the inspection went very well.  Nothing major was found, but there were a number of small items people caught (some of which I knew about and some I didn’t).  I just want to give a huge thank you to everyone who stopped by.

The day started with my transponder certification and pitot/static check.  The transponder check passed with flying colors, but I had a leak in my pitot system.

Unfortunately, the leak turned out to be in the wing root fittings where I didn’t quite get one of the pieces of tubing fully seated.  In the process of trying to seat it, the tubing popped out and I had essentially no access to get it back in.  This was really the wrong place to put these, so I’m probably going to have to pull new lines through the wings and make the connections under the pilot’s seat.  Do yourself a favor and avoid all wiring and tubing connections between the fuselage and wing on the RV-7; there is simply no room to work in there.

Now, on to the things that were caught during the inspection.  Let’s start with a few things that were squawked, but are not actually issues.  A couple of people questioned the mounting of my fuel flow transducer which is simply suspended from the fuel lines.  Apparently, there are two versions of the red cube.  The earlier one didn’t tolerate being rigidly mounted to the engine, but the later one could be mounted like this or to the sump.  When I purchased this, I called the manufacturer and they recommended this mounting approach.

Another builder squawked that there was not enough rubber material on the exhaust hangers which would not allow sufficient movement in the exhaust pipe.  Larry Vetterman specifies that the stainless steel tubes only be separated by 1/4″ inside the rubber tubing, so this is installed as the manufacturer recommends.

Next, let’s move on to some things that are actually issues, but I knew about.  Someone mentioned that the screws weren’t fully installed in the fuel senders.  This is because I haven’t had a chance to calibrate the fuel tanks.  I have to remove this cover plate to do the calibration, so I left the screws loose until this is taken care of.

Another builder noticed that the jam nuts on the empennage bearings weren’t torque sealed.  Although I modified a tool to fit in here, I wanted to modify it further before torquing these down for good.

Several builders noticed that my brakes weren’t safety wired.  I had intentionally put this off since I thought I might need to pull the wheels off again, but I don’t think I have any need now before first flight.

A builder noticed the torque seal was broken on the inlet to the spider.  I had pulled this off before first engine start because I wanted to run some fuel through the line to flush any debris out so that it wouldn’t clog the injectors.  We hooked the line back up before the engine run, but I didn’t put a torque wrench on this then.

When I was doing the final adjustment of the control sticks, I noticed that the torque tube that connects the control stick was slightly rubbing on the seat ribs.  The builder that also spotted this said it is worse when people are sitting in the seats, so you really want some clearance here.  Fortunately, I made this section removable on all four of these ribs.  I’ll pull these off and remove some material to get a good 1/8″ or so between the ribs and the tube.

Finally, let’s move on to the things I hadn’t caught.  I couldn’t get a great picture of it, but a couple of people noticed that the alternator pulley wasn’t perfectly aligned with the flywheel.  This will not only make the belt wear faster, it also is apparently hard on the alternator bearings.

There are four thread showing on the outer aileron bolt.  I’ll probably have to add another washer here.

There are also four threads showing on the bolt attaching the pushrod to the elevators horns.

The torque seal was also broken on the manifold pressure hose.  I don’t recall why I removed this, but I’ll need to retorque and seal this.

The cushion clamp anchoring the cable sheathing on the oil cooler butterfly valve wasn’t gripping the sheathing well enough and was allowing the cable to move.  I’ll need to swap out this for a non-cushion type clamp.  There was also not enough thread showing on the bolt holding these adel clamps together.

The crankcase breather hose was rubbing on the adel clamps securing wires to the upper engine mount tubing.  I’ll probably add another adel clamp to this group to keep this from chafing.

Apparently, the top of the gear leg will rust if left unfinished like this.  I’ll clean it and paint it with the touch-up paint that Van’s sells to match the powder coat on the engine mount.