Roee Kalinsky's RV-7A Project

2006.09.15: (10.0) [this entry spans the past two weeks] Since I brought home the fuselage from Van's I've had it sitting on the garage floor.  A furniture blanket under the forward fuselage protected the bottom skin from getting scratched, and some oversized pillows held up the tail.  This arrangement worked out very well for the past 16 months, giving easy access for working in the cabin area and with no possibility of a disastrous fall.  But now it's finally time to raise the fuselage off the floor so I can work on things like the landing gear mounts, cabin steps, and closing out the tail cone.  I decided to raise the fuselage about 19 inches off the floor, which will be a comfortable height to work with my feet on the floor, and will give me sufficient ground clearance underneath to work for the next few months, until I decide to mount the gear legs.  (Then I'll have to raise the fuse another few inches, which I will do in a more temporary manner).

I decided to build two saw horses to support the fuselage: one under the main bulkhead (where the wing spars attach) to support most of the weight, and one under an aft bulkhead to support the tail.  The main support needed to be about 19" tall with a flat top sufrace of 46" wide by 6" long (fore-aft).  The tail support needed to be about 30" tall with a conforming top that can support the tail cone without damaging it.

Rather than build my own from scratch, I bought two steel saw horses at Home Depot and modified them to my specifications.  They were already extremely strong, claiming to support over 1000 lb, but I wasn't totally happy with their stability and rigidity to side loads.  So I added trusses made of 1/8" thick 1" leg aluminum angle, attached using 1/4" steel bolts.  This easily stiffened up the horses to my satisfaction.  Furthermore, I cut the angles connecting the bottoms of the legs to each other longer than the span of the legs, which effectively widened the footprint of the horses making them more stable.

As for the top surfaces, I took two different approaches.  For them main horse, I bolted on a plank of 1"x6"x46" pine and rounded over its edges using a router.  I then cut a piece of furniture blanket to upholster it like a chair.  The furniture blanket provides just a slight amount of cushioning to spread the weight evenly, and should protect the bottom skin from scratches if the fuselage shifts slightly.  For the tail horse, I just took some foam I had laying around and duct-taped it to the top beam of the horse.  The foam should be conforming enough to support the tail without indenting it.

2006.09.17: (0.25) With saw horses all ready to go, I summoned my loyal laborers, eh, I mean friends, and we had the fuse off the ground and onto the sawhorses in no time.  The operation went flawlessly.  Thanks Jimmy, Vay, and John, for doing the heavy lifting!  And thanks Stacey, for coordinating the operation and capturing this momentous occasion on film (or flash card as the case may be)!  It's funny how it's sometimes the small steps that really provide motivation, and this is definitely one of them.  Up at roughly "on the gear" height, it suddenly looks so much more like an airplane!