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Minimum sizes RV-14 workshop

mjanduda

Well Known Member
Hi Builders,

I'm planning to build an RV-14 (tail wheel) and am wondering what should be the minimum ceiling height of my workshop so you can work comfortably. Also I need to know how big the door has to be to get the fuselage and empennage in and out.
Do you have to fix the gear to the fuselage early in the process? This would result in a higher door. I guess installing the engine and doing firewall forward stuff without gear and attached empennage is quite awful?

What area should the workshop have so you can build comfortably and how much storage space do I need?

Thanks!

Best,
Malte

EDIT: Probably I'm looking for recommended sizes and not minimum sizes! Maybe a minimum size for the door. But the rest should be recommended sizes - I don't want to setup a Hobbit workshop ;)
 
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The horizontal stab will not fit out of a standard garage door, however, you can leave it off until final assembly.

A two-person garage is best, but plenty are and have built in a much smaller space.

We built ours very comfortably in a two car basement garage that we finished into a shop.
 
Fellow European building in a 1.5x car garage. It?s tight and I have the tailcone and QB wings in the garage as well. All other finished parts are in the hangar ( eldest son?s vacated bedroom). I test fitted the fin when finishing the tailcone on trestles with no problems.
 
The basic two car garage in the US is 20' X 20'. 400 square feet. Standard size garage doors in the US are 12' X 7', 14' X 7', 16' X 7' and the largest door is usually 18' X 7'. These are "standard" door sizes.
You will need to convert to meters.
 
I'm building in a 19 ft. X 20 ft. garage in my condo. I have to use half of the garage to park my car, but I can move it out to use the entire garage on occasion (e.g. when I have to set up my spray booth to prime parts).

Before I ordered my empennage kit, I spent about 18 months on and off planning the logistics of the build. I figured I can build the entire fuselage, wings and tail feathers, hang the engine and prop, do all the firewall forward work and electrical wiring while in the garage. There's enough space to make it work.

Of course, the vertical and horizontal stabs doesn't get installed, nor the wings. I'll defer that until I move it to my EAA chapter hanger to do the final assembly.

I modified the build sequence a bit to accommodate my available space. For example, I'm not going to assemble the tail cone until after I finish the main fuselage. I can't afford to have the tail cone taking up space I need to build the wings.

As for storage, I installed overhead racks and the wings will eventually reside up there (without surfaces installed because they won't fit with them in place). You can hang the empennage components on the wall or maybe bring them in the house. You can see the setup in my build log (link in my signature below).
 
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What size does the aft fuselage from the empennage kit has without HS and VS? The plans unfortunately have no good view where I can measure the sizes.
Have to check if it fits through my door in the basement or if I have to move to the bigger workshop even for the first kit.

I want to get going!!!

Thanks!
 
I didn't record the length. But I measured a height of 36" with the side skins (cleco'd) on. (the width exceeds the height, so turning it over on its side can help you fit through a door).




However, in that state, I could not extract it out my 35" front door with the side skins in place (I could not reasonably compress the work the 1" necessary to squeeze through). So I kept the side skins off to fit through the door and waited to rivet the them until the tail cone could be accommodated in a larger area.

 
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