RV-7 Wing/Emp Shed

With the fuselage kit still in its box and the mostly-finished wings taking up 1/2 my garage, it was finally time to move those puppies out of the way. After reading some ideas here, and considering things like strapping them to the garage ceiling, I ended up deciding to build a shed for them in the backyard, and it turned out great. It is 6 feet wide by 12 feet long, and fits both wings in their cradle, the horizontal stabilizer, both elevators, the vertical stabilizer, rudder, and all the various fiberglass ends that I haven't yet installed.

I had a pretty narrow backyard, so I had to plan a bit. The foundation would be two pressure treated skids on top of gravel:



Child labor and animal labor always helps:



Floor framing done:



3/4" thick tongue and groove for the floor should support the weight:



Raising the first wall:



Walls framed and sheathed, and roof is done:



Found shingles that matched the ones on my house!



Hinges screwed into the siding. I plan to remove them later when I trim around the door and screw the hinges through the trim too. Later...

Now to get everything in there. Horizontal stabilizer is secured to two 2x4s between the long wall frame via nylon straps:



Vertical stabilizer mounted to the rear framing. It rests on this piece of 2x4 secured to the framing with two 1/2" dowels (glued) a bit of steel angle, and the nylon strap. At this point the nylon does not actually hold the spar, it just prevents it from falling off:



The top of the VS hangs on another dowel, and then the whole thing is bungee corded in place for good measure:



By some miracle (measuring many, many times) everything just barely fits!



I now have a fully empty garage available to start working on the canoe. Build on...

very tidy