Sunday, April 17, 2016

Hangar is available again

This week I learned that the weekdays are for the RV-10 and the weekend is for the Airport.  I was able to get some work done on the 10 this week as you will see below.  I am doing all the riveting myself which really slows things down but I am finding that I like the results much better.  I'm sure I have at least 4 more hours of riveting left on the horizontal stabilizer but it's actually very enjoyable and relaxing work.

I spent the weekend at the airport working on painting the walls and just organizing things so that I can put the 9A in there when it gets home in a couple of weeks (hopefully!).  I have been getting so much help from Harry that today I finally got a chance to give back a little.  Harry has been wanting to weigh both of his airplanes for a while now and today we got a chance to make that happen.  No pictures but I learned a little about how the chapter scales work.

One more time...this is what it looked like when I started this project.

Here is what it looked like on Saturday evening.  Look at all the garbage on the floor to the left of the picture.

And here is what it looks like as of tonight.  Still lots of organizing to do but at least I will be able to get the airplane back in here.  Harry let me borrow him and his truck to take the pile of garbage to the dump.
skins are back in the cradle and I am ready to start riveting the nose ribs in place.

Nose ribs are riveted in and the process of riveting the skins to the remaining ribs and spars has begun.  This is how it sits on this gorgeous Sunday evening where the temperature is a nice 75 degrees with a very light breeze to keep it from feeling too warm!

I took this picture because I am very happy with how the nose rib rivets turned out.  there is very little if any distortion of the skin, just smooth flush rivets.

Monday, April 11, 2016

Lack of oxygen

This week I have three big topics for discussion.  First is the Hangar,  the front part is pretty much done except for lots of clean up and rearranging of existing tool/furniture.  Now I can start on the back section.

The RV-10 got a little time this week as well. I was able to prime the parts which means lots of dimpling, deburring and scuffing.  It's time to start the final assembly for riveting.

Finally I flew with Jeff down to Aurora Oregon yesterday.  We met Chad Hankins there and went through the FAA's Oxygen deprivation chamber.  Essentially they put you into a tent that is very low on oxygen and then let you see what flying up very high without oxygen will do to your body.  It was amazing the number of different reactions that we humans have.  In the group before us there was a gentleman who almost seemed to pass out but was still somewhat responsive.  I felt pretty dizzy with odd vision but my oxygen content never dropped below 70% so that was about all I felt.  Jeff looked like he was affected and they had him do a few extra tasks to make sure he was doing well but he was able to do them all.  He didn't remember doing one of them when we got out which was interesting.  All in all the training was well worth the trip.

The flight down to Aurora was awesome to say the least.  Jeff filed IFR and we got some great actual "in the clouds" time and finally feel like all the money we spent on training and equipment to get us ready was worth it.  We would not have been able to make the trip if we didn't go IFR.

Finally the RV-9 is still in the paint shop.  I talked to the owner and they ran into issues with another job so it looks like I won't be getting the airplane back until the end of the month.  Disappointing to be sure....but I guess these things happen and I want to make sure they do a good job on my airplane.

Paint is on the walls.  Not perfect because there was a slight color difference between the two gallons of paint...

West side of the hangar complete...almost

The sea of clouds as we broke out headed South to Aurora for the oxygen deprivation chamber.  If you look close you can see the tops of the olympics in the distance.

The sea of clouds on Jeff's side..oh and Jeff is in there too.  ;-)

Ever seen a round rainbow?  I was trying to get a picture of it but it didn't show up as bright in the camera.

Islands in the sea.

Tried to do a Pano on the return trip.  Prop looks kinda odd.

Oh yes, the RV-10.  Still working on the horizontal stabilizer.  The parts are all primed and almost ready for reassembly.

Sunday, April 3, 2016

3 Weeks in a row!

Can you believe it?  This will be my 3rd week in a row that I have posted something on this blog...you would almost believe I was back in build mode.  I guess in a way I am since I still don't have an airplane to fly.  I do however have a hangar to work on and friends with airplanes that need passengers.  :-)

This week I got a lot of time to work on the horizontal stabilizer on the 10.  A few pictures below and its coming along nicely.  Its much easier to do this the second time around...still very time consuming with tons of detail work, but I spend far less time standing around scratching my head wondering what something should look like.

I also got some time in the hangar today.  I managed to get the drywall up on both sides of the hangar and I even put a coat of mud on the seams.  Maybe next week I will be able to start doing some painting.  I have the back half of the hangar to work on yet but this section alone should really help brighten things up.

Oh, one more thing.  I flew with Chad and Harry down to Mulina airport for mexican food yesterday.  I rode down with Chad which was great since I haven't been in his plane before.  I rode back with Harry and realized its been a long time since I have flown in the rocket...nice treat.  :-)  By the way, the mexican restaurant had great steak Quesadilla's.

Ok, on with the show...

Priming the spars and associated spar caps.

More spar parts for the horizontal stabilizer being primed.


Starting to cleco things together after riveting the spars together.
 
A picture of Chad landing at KPLU for our flight to Mulino Oregon.
 
Chad doing his runup as we get ready to leave Mulino

This is an interesting picture of Harry watching Chad as we flew in a very loose formation.

Another picture of Chad...this one didn't focus very well.

Ah.  Here is Greg's airplane with its shiny new paint job!  Beautiful airplane.

The new drywall is up on the East wall of the Hangar...

Drywall and mud up on the West wall.  I did get the East wall taped and mudded but didn't take a picture of that.
And just so we can remember what it looked like just a short couple of weeks ago...