Thursday, January 21, 2010

RV-9 Part I

Yesterday was a big day for me(DJ). My wing and fuselage kit for my airplane arrived!

Here is the truck it came in:


And here I am standing next to the boxes. The wing kit is the one on the left and the fuselage kit is in the two boxes on the right,


Okay, now for those who didn't know I was building an airplane, I'll explain a little, well maybe a lot. I have always liked flying with Dad and decided I wanted to build an RV-9. Now, Dad has an airplane (actually two), but I still wanted to build an airplane that was faster and more economical. So a few years ago I bought a tail kit for an RV-9, a fast two-place all aluminum low wing airplane made by Van's Aircraft. You can find more about the RV-9 here. There are four different kits, the empennage(tail), wing, fuselage, and finishing (canopy, landing gear, etc). I started working on it last winter and finished the horizontal and vertical stabilizer. I am working on the rudder now and was hoping to have it finished by now, but with the warm weather, we had to do more outside than normal. I still have to finish the elevators as well. A few months ago I ordered the wing and fuselage and they got here yesterday, as you already saw. I got the quick build kit for the wing which means the wing has been nearly finished. The fuselage is a standard build, which means when I open the box it will just be a bunch of aluminum parts with prepunched holes in them. Well I think I've described enough so on to some more pictures. If you want to find out more(like you would) you can look at the link I supplied.

Here is a picture of the horizontal stabilizer:


Here is a picture of the vertical stabilizer:


Here is a picture of what it will look like when I finish it:


I haven't opened the boxes yet, but when I do, I'll post some more pictures. Stay tuned for RV-9 Part II!