Patrick's RV-7 Endeavor: RV Assembly Workshop Weekend

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

RV Assembly Workshop Weekend

Hi Gang! So I'm back from D.C. I had a great weekend in Virginia visiting my brother and his family. We carved pumpkins and such. A nice time was had by all.

I attended the EAA SportAir, Van's Assembly Workshop in Frederick, MD, which is about an hour from my brother's place so it worked out pretty well to visit and attend the workshop. It was held at the Frederick airport (FDK), in the EAA Chapter 524 Aviation Education Center hanger.

Our Host Location for the Weekend - EAA Chapter 524

Yep, I've never driven a rivet or even pulled a pop rivet, aka, blind rivet in my life. Yeah, I've done minor sheet metal and aluminum repair around the house here and there but never had or required the need to rivet anything.

Rivets Guys & Gals! It's Just the Beginning

This workshop comes highly recommended by many in the airplane kit building community. The Van's Assembly one is more focused on the Van's line of aircraft. This course was taught by Jack Dueck. What a fantastic instructor. He is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to Van's airplanes and sheet metal in general. He owns his own business and knows this stuff up, down, left & right!

Jack Dueck - Van's Assembly Instructor

All aspects of building a Van's plane are covered from the introduction of RV Aircraft building, learning the required information and steps involved, gaining the necessary hands-on skills with the tools and materials and building one's confidence level for a Van's project. Everything is discussed and nothing is missed. A Powerpoint show is presented to familiarize you with what to expect during the course.

Let's Get to Work!

You then start work on a personal project to get you acquainted with the tools, drilling, deburring, riveting and even drilling out those bad rivets and fixing the errors. After a little work on that, you'll be teamed up with a partner and work on a wing section project. This is pretty exticing, building an actual representation of what you'll be building when you order your first kit, the empennage. I had a great partner and we did really well overall. Our project got an EXCELLENT signoff by Jack. What a great feeling. Yeah, we could've done a little better but for first-timers, WAHOO!! I only injured myself a little bit. Well, some might say it was major but it did not require any stitches. I accidentally missed the wood backing block when drilling through the aluminum and went straight into my left index finger. No pictures here kids. Not for the squeamish. OUCH! I bled like a stuck pig! Fortunately, one of the attendees (John) was previously a medic so he assisted with the cleanup on aisle 5, LOL! Quick clean, gauze and a little duct tape go along way! Back to the project.

Simple Yes, But I Can't Wait to Get Started

My building partner, Tony, owns his own RV-7A but is very interested in building his own. He bought his -7A back in April and has about 300 hours in it but he really wants to build. He'll sell his -7A after he finishes his build. His bird is really put together well, very clean.

Build Partner Tony Climbing in his RV-7A

All in all, I had a fantastic experience with the workshop. I plan to take the Electronics & Avaionics workshop in November out here in Riverside. I won't fly across the country ,if I can help it, to attend a seminar/workshop again. As others do, I highly recommend this course if you are interested in building your own kit airplane. Here are a few more pics from the weekend.