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The Next Build ...

bkervaski

Hellloooooooo!
Testing
Of those of you that are serial builders how much easier was your second build with the skills and knowledge you obtained from the first?
 
Third and fourth are going swell !

The first one is a long series of bewildering tests, skill jumps, practise, cussing, pain etc.

As we started the 8 after building the 7, things were familiar from the get go. Your skill sets for deburring, priming (sorry, I said it) riveting and assembling were already there, but still there were changes and different sequences which still challenged.

The 12's.......

Meccano becomes Airfix :D

Gone are the 3 view plans, the standard engineers prints and in comes isometric drawings which were a revelation. The instructions still need reading and reading and then in some rare cases amending, but it was a quantum leap forward.

The 14 is similar and as the 12's leave our shop later this year, my buddy will slide the 14 fuselage in for us to finish while he does the wings.

It gets easier. You get more proficient and comfortable with your unfupping skills when things don't quite go right :rolleyes: Your tolerances stay the same, but hopefully your pragmatic approach gets better.

If you are getting close to the end of your 14, remember - if you go backwards, the prints will regress and need interpretation. If you choose to go back to an 8 or similar, the build sequence will not be so proscribed as it is with the 12's, 14 and presumably the 10.

Whatever you choose, it will be easier, more difficult, less frustrating, more challenging but above all - cheaper than therapy :D
 
And no... I don't know what will be after the 14...

I am torn between:-

RV10

Aeronca Champ with a Rotec radial

Cessna - strip and rebuild of one of these, C180/182/185

Stearman - 300hp of course with cs prop - showman plane

Pitts S1 rebuild

Christen Eagle again - did one, sold it to finance the 7 and miss it :cool:

;)
 
The second one is much easier. You've already done your rationalizations about wiring concepts, primer, and the like, so you don't waste a bunch of time going through that again. Also, your skills come back pretty fast after a bit of a layoff.

The challenge for me (going from a non prepunched RV-6 to a prepunched, highly prefab kit like the RV-10) is that the more work the factory does for you, the more opportunity the factory has to mess things up. On the -6, if something was screwed up, I was always to blame. On the -10 (with a QB fuse), I guarantee I've spent a month of weekends and evenings reworking things the factory didn't get right.

One thing I miss about the older kits is a set of dimensioned plans. There are times where it would be much easier to scale things from blueprints than to climb into the belly of the beast to take measurements.
 
.......
One thing I miss about the older kits is a set of dimensioned plans. There are times where it would be much easier to scale things from blueprints than to climb into the belly of the beast to take measurements.

Not only that, but I miss the large plans that show the bigger picture of how multiple parts fit into place.

That seems to be not there in my -10 plans when it's detailed a single step at a time.
 
Looking for a challenge? Build a slow build 3B

Bob Grigsby. 3B getting close. Fling a Cub. Fun
 
Not only that, but I miss the large plans that show the bigger picture of how multiple parts fit into place.

That seems to be not there in my -10 plans when it's detailed a single step at a time.

Same on the 12 plans. There are times when the iso diagram hides substructure to make things clearer but actually confuses you because it then makes no sense in the build sequence. Or there is no explanation as to why you are doing something. Just spent 2 days disassembling 2 brand new Rotax motors to make the necessary changes. Fuel system says take apart the banjo fitting, remove this part, remove that part and re assemble. 2 pages later it says - oh - add this fuel return/pressure hose :confused:

I think the new style plans need comment boxes in the corner where pithy comments can be left by the Engineers to explain certain bits. Would really, really help.

We get there........:rolleyes:
 
Not only that, but I miss the large plans that show the bigger picture of how multiple parts fit into place.

That seems to be not there in my -10 plans when it's detailed a single step at a time.

I like large format as well. I ordered "D" size plans and hung them on the wall.
 
Same on the 12 plans. There are times when the iso diagram hides substructure to make things clearer but actually confuses you because it then makes no sense in the build sequence. Or there is no explanation as to why you are doing something. Just spent 2 days disassembling 2 brand new Rotax motors to make the necessary changes. Fuel system says take apart the banjo fitting, remove this part, remove that part and re assemble. 2 pages later it says - oh - add this fuel return/pressure hose :confused:

I think the new style plans need comment boxes in the corner where pithy comments can be left by the Engineers to explain certain bits. Would really, really help.

We get there........:rolleyes:

In most situations, when something is hidden for clarity, the page has a comment mentioning that is the case.

If the plans explained the why of every step, the plans set would be twice as thick as it is now.
As it is now, it is obvious that many builders get drawn into building just by looking at the diagrams (Not a good thing and it will always result in mistakes that will have to be fixed).
Imagine what it would be like if there was twice as much text to read.......:rolleyes:
 
Plans comments

I just wish they would fix errors when you tell them. I wrote feedback saying their should be a reminder about filing down the leading edge ribs on the vertical stab of the rv-10 otherwise they make "outie" dents on the skin. They replied its in section 5. Ok fair enough, but this happens to enough folks that 10 words here would be enough to fix the issue for us newbies.

Then there's a single (but important) rivet thats wrong in the diagram for the lower aft skin of the tailcone. Van's reply was they mostly fix safety issues.

Now I'm onto the spars, the sentence that describes countersinking the fuel tank attach nutplate rivet holes PLUS a few extras is terrible (page 13-3 I think). Took me a LONG time to verify what I think they meant was correct. Didn't bother writing them about that one, I know what the answer will be.

Van's makes great sales for a number of reasons, but a big one is their plans. I don't understand why they resist making changes that would be so easy/cheap.
 
Try building a 6! Sure I've been exasperated at times, but in the end it makes it that much more of a challenge, and I feel much more like I'm actually building something when I have to figure things out myself. Plus Van's has amazing tech support if there is any questions!

Alex
 
Not meant as an excuse....... just a (hopefully) understandable explanation.

Technical writing is a complex avocation.
Why?
Because no two people think exactly alike.

That means the best job that any technical writer can do is write with detail and understanding to cover the majority of the people that will read the document.

There will always be some that would have understood better if it was worded in a different way. That doesn't make them inferior in their thinking.... just different.

So if someone is willing to except that, then it is understandable that if only a few people out of possibly thousands say that something in the plans should be changed, that they might not see that happen.

Evidence has shown that the more wordy that instructions get, often times, the less people tend to fully read and follow what is being said.

That is the primary reason for Section 5. To have a single place to provide "detail" and minimize getting any more wordy than necessary in the main build sections.

That is not meant as an excuse for not correcting errors. Large improvements have been made on that front over the years, but there is still room for more improvement.

But, Van's is a relatively small company that operates as lean of peak as possible, so it is hopefully understandable when every improvement to the plans or error correction that gets mentioned isn't immediately implemented.

When there is on the order of 10,000 active builders around the world, if that was done for every case, it would literally be a full time position with the person doing nothing else.
 
plans

All good comments. I've done some technical writing myself. More of an art form than a science for sure.

Just seems that they could fix the places where the builder is actually led astray. That would not be a huge undertaking and would really improve the product where it counts.

Here's the rv-10 spar example I was talking about:

bZ9mche.png


I've seen blogs where this step is messed up. The problem is there are two rows of holes and nutplates on the spar flanges. This step wants you to countersink those that are inline with the fuel tank attach nutplates, not the access panel nutplates. Just adding the words "fuel tank" to describe which nutplates they are talking about here would make this so much less easy to screw up. Maybe even "seven per flange" for extra clarity.
 
All good comments. I've done some technical writing myself. More of an art form than a science for sure.

Just seems that they could fix the places where the builder is actually led astray. That would not be a huge undertaking and would really improve the product where it counts.

Here's the rv-10 spar example I was talking about:

bZ9mche.png


I've seen blogs where this step is messed up. The problem is there are two rows of holes and nutplates on the spar flanges. This step wants you to countersink those that are inline with the fuel tank attach nutplates, not the access panel nutplates. Just adding the words "fuel tank" to describe which nutplates they are talking about here would make this so much less easy to screw up. Maybe even "seven per flange" for extra clarity.

I could be wrong, but I think you are not understanding which holes it is talking about, therefore you think it is written incorrectly.

This is two different sentences with two separate work steps.
The two sentences are not related in any way, so I think it is actually correct the way it is written.
 
yikes

eek! Well I guess this enforces my point??

Sorry for the thread drift OP.

gXt3JW2.png


There are 7 holes in each flange that are in the same row as the fuel tank nutplates. They aren't for the fuel tank screws, and not for the rivets that attach the nutplates, they kind of stand by themselves.

Aren't those the ones its talking about? If I countersunk those ones too shallow, no big deal. However which ones did i countersink too deeply in Step 3?
 
Another way

There was a previously mentioned reference to plans that one could scale dimensions from. I'm building a ten and apart from the 2D three views on the thumb drive of all the plane offering in the CAD .dxf format, I have not found any plans that I can get dimensions from. I would come close to killing to get this feature. If you have the software (easily affordable and usually free) it would be a God send.

Bashing a company that has sold over ten thousand planes says something about the basher, that being said, I would like to make a suggestion, one that I have previously suggested to the mother ship. There are many free viewers available for all the popular CAD formats like .step, .igs or .dwg and .dxf. Solid works is now available to anyone that spends forty bucks (?) to join EAA, and it's in the gold standard of CAD software.

I understand Van?s reluctance to make their CAD files available because it makes it easy for anyone to duplicate their products. However, I think they could message their drawings to stretch/compress their images enough to make accurate copying nearly impossible. However, this would still make the files extremely valuable for use in the for mentioned viewing software.

With Van?s stretched/compressed image files loaded into any of the viewers you could rotate the image of the particular part you are working on in any direction and view it from any angle. This makes determining what you are supposed to do in any assembly or preparation sequence much easier. You also have the ability to zoom in to really got a good look at any particular section of the image. All this technology has been around for years, usually the problem is getting the end user to take advantage of it. In the case of the typical RV builder this will not be a problem.

Hopefully my next seven Vans orders will not get lost in translation [FONT=&quot]😊[/FONT]
 
eek! Well I guess this enforces my point??

Sorry for the thread drift OP.

gXt3JW2.png


There are 7 holes in each flange that are in the same row as the fuel tank nutplates. They aren't for the fuel tank screws, and not for the rivets that attach the nutplates, they kind of stand by themselves.

Aren't those the ones its talking about? If I countersunk those ones too shallow, no big deal. However which ones did i countersink too deeply in Step 3?

Yes, those seven holes are the ones being talked about in the second sentence of Step 2.
I agree that it doesn't say aligned with the fuel tank attach nutplates, and that probably would make it a bit more clear, but I am not clear how misunderstanding which holes are meant would cause you to countersink some of the other holes too deep.

These seven holes are meant to be countersunk for a rivet head (just like the nutplate attach rivets in the same step). All of the other countersinking done is for a dimple (.007" deeper as recommended in Sect 5), so I don't understand how misidentifying these holes as the ones on the aft row on the flange would make you go too deep in Step 3.... all the rest of the holes (all the holes except the nut plate rivets, and these 7 rivets, are supposed to be countersunk .007" deeper for dimples.
 
Mild thread drift...



Scott,

I think we all appreciate the huge amount of work that goes into producing instructions and as Vans are constantly improving, it is inevitable that things get overlooked or misinterpreted - that is what the updates are for.

I too used to be involved with technical writing before I started flying for a living - it is difficult.

Perhaps a cartoon character in the corner who provides pertinent information would be a useful tool. Areas where actions will become clearer in a page or two - actions that have yet unseen consequences - torque values for engine mounting bolts on the RV12's - ya know, that sort of thing :D

There must be loads of young undergraduates who would jump at the chance of an internship at Vans to review, adapt and update the instructions - just a thought.
 
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