I was visiting the Woodburn, Oregon area for business this week and visited Van's Aircraft in Aurora which is just up the road a few miles. Ken Scott gave myself and Kevin Schmidt a tour of the facility and answered all of our questions and was willing to give his opinion on any item requested.
The weather was very windy with low ceilings so a demo flight in the RV-7A wasn't in the cards, but I ordered the tail kit anyway as my mind has been made up for about five years on what I wanted to build. The pictures show Van's facility and some of the equipment and parts inventory area inside. The "Trumatic 200" is a computer controlled machine that punches holes in the sheet aluminum that makes the "matched hole" process possible. The matched holes between the internal ribs and bulkheads perfectly match with holes punched in the skin of the aircraft. This system more or less eliminates the need for jigs and greatly reduces the time of construction because laying out thousands of holes in not necessary like it was just a few years ago. The RV-7 has about 14,000 rivets when completed.
Van's Aircraft, Aurora, OR
Computer controlled punch press
Parts Inventory, parts are blue due to thin, colored plastic used to protect the parts from scratches
