“To invent an airplane is nothing. To build one is something. To fly is everything.”
- Otto Lilienthal

Welcome to our RV-7 construction website! This site documents the process of building a Van's Aircraft RV-7 homebuilt aircraft in the basement of our house in suburban Boston.

Why the 'Mighty RV' in the title? Until recently we were co-owners of a Piper Archer II, which over the years we came to know as the Mighty Archer. So...what else could this project be but the Mighty RV?

What's an RV-7?

If you're an aircraft homebuilder, you know what an RV-7 is. But if you stumbled onto this page from the real world, here's a little info on the airplane.

The RV series of kitbuilt sport aircraft are produced by Van's Aircraft of Aurora, Oregon. It's a two-place aircraft, built primarily of riveted aluminum. Most RVs are powered by 120-200 horsepower Lycoming engines, like thousands of Pipers, Cessnas and other factory-built aircraft.

The current RV kits are a great improvement over past versions which required the builder to spend many hours fabricating jigs and carefully aligning parts before drilling rivet holes. Practically all of the parts in Van's newer kits are pre-cut and pre-drilled by computer-controlled machines. This saves a lot of building time.

About this website

This website serves as both a means to share everything we're doing with other builders or anyone else who's interested, and also as the FAA-required builder's log. The FAA requires homebuilders to prove that they actually built 51 percent of their airplanes, in order to be eligible for a repairman's certificate for their aircraft. Well, this site will be our proof.

And just to be clear, this site isn't intended to provide technical or engineering guidance - that's what Van's is for.

By the way, the spiffy little Windows-like menu system on the left side of each page is called Tree. It's free, and can be downloaded here.