Monday, August 4, 2014

I'm baaaack...

Yep, I'm back from Oshkosh and have to say I had a great time.  I saw a lot of airplanes, talked to a lot of vendors, and most importantly I spent time with a lot of great people.  The first two days I was there I spent several hours a day sitting on the side of one of the major runways watching airplanes come and go.  Very busy airport and a lot of fun to watch.  Looking forward to next year already!  I will give you one picture of Oshkosh and since its so large you may have to click on it to see the whole thing.

This is a panorama (180 degree picture) of home-built parking.  There were a lot of RV's in this area.  Lots of drool too...


I did get a little more work done on the airplane yesterday and today.  See a few pictures below.  Oh,  one more thing, Harry, Amy and I flew to breakfast at Skagit county airport today.  Very nice smooth day for flying.  :-)

I got the mounting plates installed under the forward skin.  Here the big white puck is the GPS antenna for the GPS-400 IFR gps.  The other side has the GPS antenna's for the G3X and the GRT Mini-X.

I finally got the aux fuel pump mounts riveted to the floor.  There is a lot more work that you can't see in this picture related to the aux fuel pump and associated panels.

After sitting in the airplane with all the interior in I realized those seats put me a little too close to the panel.  So, I ordered a kit that moves the seat back about 4 inches.  Here I have removed the existing crossbar that the seats normally sit against.  Next I installed the new crossbar.  There is a picture of what it looks like coming up.

I got the side canopy tracks drilled and bolted down.

Here is the new crossbar.  Its much smaller than the original but it took me most of Saturday to get this far.

The heat air distribution panel got painted and installed on Saturday as well.  It will have to come back out at least one more time but its getting close to ready!
And lastly I got the canopy latch mechanism installed.  You would think this would be simple, but noooo, I had to trim the canopy frame tube, the handle rod, and do all that without messing up the paint....too bad anyway.  I had to fine tune it a little but it's in and working now with the exception of trimming the hook.  That comes after everything else canopy is done.