Shop Setup

After ordering my empennage kit, I took to setting up my shop. Fortunately, I have a very big garage. Being only 50 yards from Tampa Bay, my house is a Key West style house, meaning it is built on stilts. So, I have plenty of space to work with as the entire bottom floor of the house is enclosed garage space and totals about 1,500 sq. ft. I intend to use the left side of this space to build my RV-7A.

Storage Space

My first step was to build some shelves to hold all the aircraft parts. These were made out of 2x4x8' studs and MDF and were screwed together with deck screws. I like the deck screws because the heads handle a lot of torque. The heads of normal wood screws tend to strip easily.

Work Benches

Next, I built some workbenches. These are modifications of the EAA Chapter 1000 workbenches. The modifications include adding caster wheels to each workbench and increasing the work height slightly since I am taller. These tables are each 2' x 5', but can be clamped together to work on the longer assemblies (ie: wings). Update 4/29/2006: I should have modified the plans to include a 2-3" overhang on the top all around for clamping to. Additionally, making each workbench 3 feet wide would have been better.

Tools

I bought a 26 gallon compressor from Home Depot. It came with a bonus accessories kit that included a spray gun that I intend to use for priming. I also ordered the RV empennage tool kit from Cleaveland Aviation Tools. This kit doesn't come with a pneumatic drill and because this tool is going to be used a lot, I went top dollar and bought the Sioux 1/4" Palm Drill from Avery Tools for $220. After reading many RV-7 construction websites, I notice that most builders picked up a pneumatic squeezer. Luckily, I found a new one on eBay and paid $280 for it. It included the yoke and all the heads I might need. These normally cost $400-$600, so this was a very good deal.

Books

I had helped my brother out a little bit on building the Zenith CH701, but that aircraft design & construction is much simpler than the RV design & construction. And, that is fine since the -701 is designed for STOL and flying low and slow. But, I started off a little intimidated by the RV construction process, so I bought some books to study up. I also bought an RV-7 empennage construction video. All were purchased from www.buildersbooks.com