Builders – PH-MNX

Flying an RV-7

ph-mnx — Sat, 03 Feb 2018 20:27:47 +0000

René Bubberman invited me to fly in his RV-7 (CS, tipup, taildragger) from Rotterdam (EHRD) to Seppe (EHSE) and back. It gave me the opportunity to compare the view from a tipup to a slider canopy (PH-RVP). The canopy choice is still on my list, although I do have a slight preference to the slider. Well I got a lot more than I asked for.
Here’s the view from the slider canopy to the tipup.

Also this was my first flight ever in an Van’s RV-7, so I was super exited that René was so kind to take me for a spin. As soon as we started from runway 24, I knew I made an excellent choice in the plane I’m building. The RV-7 is truly a magnificent piece of hardware. Too bad it will take me another 4 years to finish it, however me motivation to build it has doubled (if that is possible).

The flight takes less than 20 minutes on RV-7 cruise-speed (takes 45 minutes by car if there’s no traffic), that’s how fast it is. René was so kind to let me handle the RV-7 in between, to get a feel of the characteristics. Really a great plane!

A nice view over Rotterdam (even with a light drizzle).
Talking about the weather it sucked, however my goal was to check the view from the tipup. And I must say fair and square: “The View is Great”.
In Seppe we visited the plane museum and joined the Seppe flight club drink, where we met fellow RV builders Victor Kruis (PH-OBO) and Rens Verhoeven (PH-RVN, my build mentor from the NVAV).

We left when it was still raining a little, so to prevent pouring water in the panel, we cleaned the tipup canopy before opening it. Some water must have come in, because as soon as we started the engine there was water dripping beneath it.
We took of from Seppe from runway 25 and headed back to Rotterdam.
While approaching the CTR (controlled traffic region) of Rotterdam René tried to contact Rotterdam tower and….
No luck, the radio failed transmitting, it did receive perfectly. Having tried contacting Rotterdam tower for several minutes and circling the CTR, given the commercial traffic we decided to head back to Seppe before sunset and land there (uncontrolled and very quite airfield).

This was the last push for me to know for certain that I will build a slider canopy on my RV-7. Although I probably won’t fly much in this weather, I experienced the problems with water in the instruments. I felt really sorry for René, but he was exceptionally relaxed about it.
Fortunately friends of him (also pilot and living near Breda) would visit him tonight, so we could share a ride in their car back to Rotterdam.

Great adventure and a great lesson in what to do if hardware fails. René is an excellent pilot, he kept his head together and took the right decision not to enter a busy airport without a radio, but take the “inconvenient” route.

Thanks again René, I really enjoyed the flight and gained a ton of experience.

NVAV BBQ

ph-mnx — Sat, 09 Sep 2017 17:00:11 +0000

This weekend I met a lot of other builders on the BBQ of the NVAV at Teuge Aiport (EHTE). The chairman of the association (René) built a beautiful RV-7A (PH-RVP).

The host of of this event (Erik) also built an RV-7A (PH-FLY), so there are several experts I can interview of I’m stuck during building.

PH-OBO

ph-mnx — Wed, 30 Aug 2017 11:00:21 +0000

Today I visited Victor who build the beautiful RV-7A PH-OBO at the Seppe airport (EHSE). My focus was on the workmanship of the empennage. Especially the trim tab finishing had my interest.

PH-MNX

ph-mnx — Tue, 06 Jun 2017 20:03:07 +0000

One of the NVAV members has built a beautiful RV-7a and his call sign is PH-OBO. Since he is a Hobo-player, it looked to me that the call sign could not be a coincidence. After some research (and an email to the department of ILenT), I found you can reserve a registration (call-sign) if the registration is not used and wasn’t used the last 30 years.
You can browse the Dutch Civil Aircraft Register database to look for available call-signs. Here is my list of potential call-signs that were available.

PH-MNX
PH-MJH
PH-ONE
PH-FOE
PH-RAM
PH-BUG
PH-FIX
PH-FOO
PH-ACK
PH-INK

I really had a hard time choosing between the top three. However if you factor in pronunciation and character esthetics’s, PH-MNX is the winner.
So that one is now reserved for one year and needs to be extended yearly until it flies.

NVAV

ph-mnx — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 19:45:13 +0000

Turns out there is a Dutch equivalent of the EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association), the NVAV (Nederlandse Vereniging van Amateur Vliegtuigbouwers). So I registered and found that there are several Van’s RV-7 builders among their members. Sounds like a great source of information and expertise.