This is something like Sauerkraut and Lederhose, typical German, so lay back and enjoy.......

Every Experimental Aircraft in Germany has to perform a structure test before you are allowed to operate it. Nearly every time you have to load the wings with the maximum load to make shure the whole thing is rigid enough and will not selfdisassamble during flight.

The RV makes a big exception, because the authorities are satisfied with the structural integrity of the wing, so no test is neccessary here. A big honour :o)

But you have to test the fuselage and tailfeathers. The scetches below show how to do it. (Taken from Thomas' homepage www.rv-4.de, take a look)

 Lift the wings up until they are free, load the horizontal stabilizer with 880 lbs and pray. If the aircraft was built properly, the tailcone, stabilizer and engine mount should take the load without permanent deformation. If not, you better break it down here than up above. If it makes sense or not, you have to do it, so let's go!

Front view

Side view

This construction, together with 2 cars will keep the aircraft level during the load-test.

Thomas had built it for the testing of his RV4 D-EXTL and now it goes from one to another. Thanks a lot, Thomas!!!

Cars in position.

Wheels up!

And load sandbags, a lot of sandbags, 16 sandbags, each 25 kg or 55 lbs, you really can HEAR the aircraft screaming, bulging and it makes you MAD.

One more!

And another one.

RV-buddy Josef, RV4-builder as well lend a helping hand. He performed the same test some weeks before and knew how I suffered.

Maximum load!

You can't see it really good, but the tail bulges somewhat, but after the load was off the tail,  everything dissappeared as I was sooo glad that it was over!

Two happy guys and one happy, strong aircraft!