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Quick day in the shop today. I wanted to rivet in the side panels. They get three pop rivets to the baggage rib and 3 solid rivets to the F-706 bulkhead (with a flush head forward). Before I put the panel on permanently, I knew that the rudder cable would have to be threaded through the proper holes. Since I didn't want to bother having the rudder cables in quite yet, I ran some wire through so I can yank the cable through later.  And here is the panel on. For some reason I made arrows to where the runner wire is.  I ran into work today to use the hydraulic shear to cut the access panels for the baggage floor out of the .032" I got this week.  I made the cutouts 1.5" larger than the hole was. Seemed like a good number.  Although that was it for building today, this afternoon I had a ride booked in Bill Rogers new RV-7. Bill is building perhaps the closest match to my plane in the area - tailwheel, tip-up, lots of glass on the panel, etc.. I visited his project in February when it was in his garage. Anyways, he offered to fly from York (THV) to Westminster (DMW) to pick me up. I really didn't know what to expect...I don't turn down rides in RVs! Anyways, he met me at DMW and he told me once he tookoff, the plane was mine! What a nice surprise! It was amazing how fast this thing climbs. We headed towards a practice area to do some maneuvers. I really appreciated his GTX-330 transponder as it displayed a number of nearby aircraft. Once we got to the practice area I did some steep turns. It was amazing how little backpressure was needed to maintain a constant altitude. My biggest issue with flying this plane was interpreting the EFIS. I have always flown in planes with a 6 pack (or a 3 pack in the case of the Citabria). It was difficult to transition to reading the basic information off of an EFIS such as airspeed and altitude. I think it will be easy to get adjusted to after a little exposure. After the steep turns, we did some slow flight with turns and then some power-off stalls. Bill demonstrated how strange the RV-7 recovers if you pull back too fast during the stall recovery. Next Bill took back the controls and demonstrated some aerobatics. I think we did a roll, hammerhead and a 4 point roll. I know basically nothing about aerobatics, but I do know how fun they are! We then headed over to THV for Bill to demonstrate how to set up the RV for a landing. After we landed, he gave me back the controls and had me taxi back to the runway and perform a takeoff! The RV really wants to get off the ground! I then attempted to do a landing, which we won't talk too much about ;-) After another takeoff we headed back to DMW where I performed a little better landing. I totally was not expecting to get this much stick time today! Thanks a lot Bill for my first PIC time in an RV!!!! Gotta get bangin' 'em rivets!
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Last Modified: October 5, 2024 |