Monday, June 8, 2015

A few items off of the list

This past week I sat down and did something I shouldn't have...I calculated how much money I have spent on fuel since my first flight....108 hours ago.....

Ok, so now that I am back from my Emergency Room visit (just kidding) I have decided to spend a little more time working on the airplane and a little less time flying.  Not much less but a little.  So in order to keep up with things I thought I would do a little show and tell about what has changed recently and a couple of items that are still on the "list".

It seems I am never happy with the layout of my instrument panel.  So hopefully this latest revision will be the last major change.  I moved the GRT Mini-X over to the left side of the panel.  I found that doing partial panel flight during my IFR training was a bit challenging with the backup instrument so far away from my normal line of site.  Now not only is it in a better location but I also have room to put a "glove box" in on the right side of the panel.  Thats one item on the list.

Not the best picture.  One of these days I am going to figure out how to take a good picture of the panel but at least you can see where the Mini is now and also the hole where it used to be.  As part of this project I had to re-cut the left side instrument panel to move the G3X Touch screen over to the right.  This also necessitated the repositioning of the ELT indicator and the CO Monitor to the right side panel.
I addition I have been working on a bunch of smaller projects.  For example I installed a spring on my canopy latch that makes closing much easier.  Not a big thing but very handy.

Speaking of canopies, I also installed a thumb screw that I can use to lock the canopy partially open for taxiing.  I will get a picture of that up here soon but it's really a simple change.

I also found that my Kroger sun shade was rubbing up against the center slide and occasionally causing the canopy to slide harder than it should.  I fixed that issue with a new low height screw.  No more binding.

And today I am working on the aux fuel pump cover.  I will get some pictures of that up as soon as it is fitted.

Oh, one more task that I finished yesterday was the tie-wrapping of the Aileron pushrod boots under the seat pans.  I told myself I was going to wait on this one because I didn't want to pull the seat pans but I finally gave in and pulled them to not only install the tie-wraps but to inspect the control linkages.  Everything looks good down there so I did a quick clean up with the vacuum, installed the tie-wraps and then buttoned it all back up.

Finally on my list for this weeks post is the real fun stuff.  I got to take a good friend up for a ride in the airplane this past friday.  Since Fridays are my IFR training days we decided to meet up a couple of hours before the lesson was scheduled.  This was Kerry's first ride in the airplane and I am pretty sure she liked it!