Cowling work plus several odds and ends:

 

With the mottled pattern of the various fillers it was getting difficult to tell how the front of the cowling was progressing so I sprayed it with spraymax 2k primer filler. It actually looks a lot closer than I originally thought.

The inside of the lower cowl is about ready to be coated with clear epoxy and primed / painted.

Skim coating the cowling with rage to fill the innumerable pinholes and defects in the vans' cowling.

Working on filling the rough parts of the inside of the cowling for better paint adhesion / less nooks and crannies to catch oil once the plane is flying.

Planning on filling and priming the gear leg fairings but first I decided to reinforce the hose clamp tabs with a layer of carbon fiber followed by one layer of fiberglass:

Filling and sanding continues...

Inside of the top cowl is cleaned up and mostly ready.

The tail lynx springs turned out nice.

Paul and I updated the software on the G3X and the GTN-650:

Working on the rudder pedal to rudder cable links:

The finished links:

Checking the fit on the endless cowling...

All the empennage fairings are done and installed:

New toy: Wiha Speed e2 electric screwdriver - really a nice tool, perfect for the number six screws for all the fairings.

Finishing up the fairings:

I finished filling and priming the interface between the knockout panel and the riser fairing for the BRS parachute

Getting ready to prime the trailing edge of the rudder:

Mounting the BRS parachute knockout panel with the prescribed RTV:

BRS parachute install and more empennage tips work:

It’s been a while since my last update and I have not done much work on the RV-7. I have a few excuses though! The main one is I switched aircraft at my full time job and I had to get a new type rating. Also there were and still are some big house projects that I can’t put off. I even have an excuse for the future because we will be on a big ski road trip in February / March. However we have gotten a few interesting things done:

• Assembled the BRS parachute rocket hardware and installed the actual parachute assembly
• Made progress on the empennage tips although they are taking much longer and are far more work than I anticipated. 

Here’s my new work ride, the Challenger 650:

The parachute and rocket are now “permanently” installed. The process for all this involved a lot of careful review of instructions and a call or two to BRS for verification. 

Here you can see the final position of the parachute canister and rocket launch tube. The rocket is ready to go but as a precaution we left the firing mechanism safety wired in the disabled position. Once we take the fuselage to the airport we will connect the cable from the parachute deployment  t-handle in the cockpit to the firing mechanism. 

My brother Paul was in town specifically to help on the parachute install.

 

Assembling the rocket and attaching it to the launcher and parachute container was interesting. We were super careful, went very slow and double checked every step. Here we are putting in the ortner key which locks in the bottom part of the rocket . The BRS instructions were very good. 

Earlier in the fall I got the rudder bottom fairing to an acceptable level of finish for the initial flights. I want everything to look good but it’s easy to get carried away.

I also got the wiring done for the aeroled tail strobe / position light:

It’s a super bright light and strobe. 

  

I used some of the glue on nut plates for a reinforcing piece on the rudder bottom fairing:

Seemingly endless amounts of filling and sanding. I don’t think Vans has figured out the fiberglass parts but I bet most builder’s would pay a lot more for decent quality parts that don’t require so much rework. 

More empennage tip work and some BRS parachute updates:

I don't get too many packages with this label!

Inside were all the parts that make up the rocket which pulls the parachute out to deploy as low as approximately 400 feet! (bare minimum demonstrated by a Cirrus)

After doing all the fitting work / supports in the airplane I shipped the parachute container back to BRS and they returned it to me as shown below. Everything is ready to install. The ring is the rocket mount. Looking forward to doing the final install of the system.

I'm not so excited about the quality of Van's fiberglass parts for the RV-7. It's unfortunate because all the structural parts of the airplane are so high quality. The amount of work to make these cosmetic parts look like something you would see on a production plane is disheartening. Hopefully their newer designs like the RV-14 are better. That being said I'm making progress on the vertical stabilizer and rudder tips. However ALL of them require rework.

Here are the tips after getting some primer / filler to see how much more needs to be done.

The foam / fiberglass rib for the vertical stab went faster then the horizontal stab.

The vertical stab fiberglass tip has a "unique" shape that will require some amount of filling and sanding on every axis to look decent. Again it looks like the lowest bidder won the contract.

The rudder bottom fairing had a significant curve to it that required a lot of fun filling and sanding.

I trimmed the lower fairing to give plenty of clearance with the tail wheel nut. Some builders have had issues when landing on grass strips. 

I loaded weight on the horizontal stab to simulate a heavy landing and the clearance was good. 

Of course a lot of trimming etc. This is just getting started:

Installed the adapter for the LED tail light and strobe:

More empennage, including horizontal stabilizer tips:

 

One more coat of epoxy primer on the tips. Even after this I found a few pin holes!

Getting ready to trace the foam rib to close out the horizontal stabilizer tip:

Rib after cutting and sanding a little:

Ready to fiberglass:

I decided to add some aluminum strips to the HS tips due to the edge distance on the screw holes:

Empennage fairing combined with the metal access panel looks great: