Preparing the workshop
Building an airplane is not a small undertaking, and I mean that very literally. For those builders who are building in a hangar or have a large garage at home, space may not be as much of an issue as it is for me.
There is a tradeoff when you are building an aircraft. Do you build at an airfield in a hangar? Then there’s a cost involved right at the start and if it’s not a dedicated hanger, you may also have to plan not to have your stuff lying around when others come and go in the hangar. This may actually hinder progress in the long term.
On the other hand… if you build at home you can do some work in between, don’t lose time commuting to the airfield and save some money on hangar rental but obviously… you need to have the space!
The hangar rent is not realistic for me as most hangar in Belgium are shared and I can also see the benefit of doing small jobs in the evening. On the other hand as many people in Belgium I do not have a double car garage which means the build will have to be “space efficient”
As most RV’s are built in sections (tailplane, wings, fuselage, engine+prop+instruments) it means that I can leave the plane disassembled till the very last moment till I need to move to the Airfield and put the wings on when already at the airfield. While not perfect I believe this should work.
My workshop actually consists of two parts. I have the garage itself, a simple one-car garage which will house most of the large parts and then a smaller workshop where I can do small jobs. I have asked my old friend Peter (a professional welder and welding instructor) to make me two work benches so that I have a workbench in the workshop and another workbench in the garage. The latter one is on wheels so I can roll it around.
The workshop has been a long time coming as I’ve had the tail kit for quite some time now but it isn’t great to start in poor conditions so I first replaced the electrical system in the whole basement and generally added electrical plugs wherever I could. While not the ideal place to build an aircraft I’m certainly happy with the result. Next step….. Tools !
