I am pleased to share this letter from our customer in Texas, Richard Herr. He received his Hummingbird kit on Memorial Day 2011 and has breezed through the first 7 sections of the kit. He received his LS7 engine and started installation. He sent us a letter explaining how he did it. This information is great for anyone who wants to know what the process is. He is a great resource to use if you are interested in a customers view. Please contact us if you would like to speak with Richard.
Please enjoy his information below:
In order to describe how I managed to install the LS7 for the first time as a kit builder, I realize I have to start at the beginning: the factory visit. When I was deciding when and how to jump into this project, I took a factory tour. This gave me the scale I needed to figure out how the space I wanted to build in would work. In my case, this was the most important step; seeing it up close. It was probably one of my smartest moves.
The next smartest thing was taking a lot (I mean a lot) of pictures of the factory bird while I was there. I figured two things out there: 1.) my phone has a really good camera in it and 2.) it gave me pictures of completed portions of the project. I also asked my wife and the buddy to do the same which gave me aspects of the aircraft from other folks. Basically, what they thought was important.
I used every one of the pictures. Should I do this again, I would take more snaps of the engine side of the firewall (things attached to the firewall) and some of the under belly. None of us shot pictures from the ground looking up.
My decision to build hinged on a small thing - access. I have talked to many kit builders, from boats to stiff wing builders. All of them agree that building a kit at a satellite location really hampers the effort and dulls the enthusiasm toward completion. Build where your tools are!
In my case, I have a detached two-car garage, one side is for car parking, the other is my shop. I put old carpet down on the floor and rolled my quick build in. The carpet does several things, you will be up and down on the ground a fair amount and the carpet is nice when you drop a washer or nut. It does not bounce and run away. Plus, it’s a nice place nap while you figure out wire and tubing locations.
Back to the engine. The next thing was how in the world am I going to lift this monster up and tilted it 30 degrees? (Not to mention the rotor head and the often-overlooked main gearbox.) In my garage attic, I installed a 1500 pound pull wench. It is the same one that goes on the front of pick-ups. It was $40 on sale from Harbor Freight and has a remote operation switch. I mounted it four feet away from the hole I cut in the sheet rock and ran the cable over a pulley. Now, I have a hoist that can lift everything I need to. It picked the gearbox up no problem and allowed the three axis adjustment to get it in. The rotor head pylon goes on/off like a dream because in the end, I have to take it off after I rig it to get it out of the garage. I have a tree and chain hoist all picked out to put it back on.
The reason I went with this hoist rather than a standard engine crane hoist was because the engine hoist legs would interfere with the landing gear. My hoist method allowed me to pick up the engine and tilt it then move the aircraft to the engine rather than engine to aircraft. The tilt bar is a must! It will get you over to 20 degrees, and then you can lift and sit the upper engine mounts on the mount supports then put the bolts in. You can lower the engine further and it will pivot on the upper mounts and swing into place on the lower mounts.
I have done this twice since there was a slight hiccup with the engine mount assembly. It was easy both times. The engine has multiple threaded bolt holes in it to use for lift points. I used flat metal hanger straps (from Home Depot) for the front of the engine (the lower end) and used 12 inches of chain for the rear of the engine (higher end). The engine tilt mechanism comes with equal length chain legs on it already with L brackets. I used multiple hole angle brackets (from Home Depot) to act as a spreader for the chain and strap legs so no pressure was placed on any engine components.
The engine comes on a very nicely constructed wooden mount from VA. The mount sits on a palletized base; they just slide the base into the shipping container they build. It is very easy to separate the palletized base from the container. I used a two-wheeled hand truck dolly and a four-wheeled furniture dolly to get the engine on the wooden shipping mount under my hoist point.
Before I started with the chains and hoist bar, I put all four engine mounts on the block. They act like little legs at this point and are useful handholds. I had some engine hoist hooks that I bolted (hand tight only) to the block and used threaded clevis hooks to attach the chain to the engine mount hooks. Again, everything only hand tight.
The forward chain (the part nearest the aircraft) was only 12 inches long and the rear flat straps were 24 inches long. The flat strap was necessary because it is ridged and can support its own weight; unlike chain. This allows you to see where the strap may hit any engine components while you are lifting and compensate. I had several small blocks of wood and a few wedges on hand to be used to keep the straps from hitting anything like the injectors or the fuel rail components.
The lift off the wooden pallet with short forward chains allowed me to get the most initial tilt to the engine. I adjusted the tilt bar from level lift to 1/3 tilt on the lift from the pallet. The engine picked up on all four lift points at about 15 degrees tilted, half way to the 30 that you need. I was able to pick the engine up and down on the pallet mount to adjust the blocks of wood and wedges as necessary.
Once I liked how the engine was hung in the hoist chains, it was easy to lift and move the aircraft to the engine and mount. I used a big C-clamp to compress the Lord Mount pucks together so I could get some start twists on the engine bolts nuts, but once the weight of the engine is on the pucks the engine bolts up very easy. This method worked well both times I had to use it.
Richard Herr
