Thursday, April 10, 2014

Two for One

So far this has been a great week.  I took this week off to spend some time with Amy and the airplane.  I've got to do lots of both.  First let me tell you about our trip to Friday Harbor on Tuesday.  We started out a little concerned about how Amy would handle the flight.  As you may remember her first flight last month did not go so well.  She ended up being sick for a couple of days which we knew was not necessarily related to the flight but it didn't help for sure.  Anyway we arrived at the hangar in Puyallup around 10am, prepped the plane, fueled up and then launched off to the North.  We flew up the Sound west of Seattle at about 2500', up past Bangor and then across the inlet to Friday Harbor.  We circled around to the north and entered the traffic pattern for a landing on runway 35.  After landing and a short taxi run we parked the airplane and walked down to the waterfront to have some lunch.  Amy was doing great, no stomach upsets at all!  Now the real challenge came, in fact there were two.  First we had to see if her stomach could handle some food for the return flight, and second we had to see if the airplane could handle Amy's shopping spree!!  :-)  The answer to both was a resounding YES!  About an hour or so later we once again took off and this time we flew down over the Skaggit valley.  A few flowers were out and we did pass near the land slide that killed several people a couple of weeks ago but Amy didn't see much of it since she was doing what Amy does best while traveling....she was snoozin!  I snuck a picture in below....we will see how long she lets me keep it there (edit...it didn't take long to get in trouble so the picture is gone... ).  Anyway we landed back in Puyallup about 3pm, fueled up the airplane for our next adventure and then put it away and headed home.  What can you do to top a day like that off you ask?  Well let me tell you...Dairy Queen Blizzards!

Ok, so that's was the first of many of those types of trips and it went wonderfully.  Today we are going to try another trip up into the San Juan's and land at one of the other airports.  Amy really likes it up there so we are going to explore a little.

As far as the plane goes, I have a few pictures for you...

Selfie of Amy and I on the flight up to Friday Harbor

Amy taking a picture of the harbor where the ferry lands.

What can I say...isn't she just adorable!

Makes my heart sing!

Ah yes, the crafting station as we call it.  Actually its the dinner table we never use so it often gets converted to a crafting station for Amy when her friends come over.  I took it over to start wiring up some airplane parts.

This is a DB-9 DSub board that I ordered from a PCB company.  I soldered the DB-9 connectors to it and it has room for two more if I ever need it.  This little guy allows me to interconnect wires in a very simple and removable way.  Thanks to Bruce over at http://www.overthehills.com/RV-9A-Project gave me the details and even sold me the DB-9 connectors that he had left over from his project.

This is the roll trim servo with my first DB-9 soldering job.  

Here is the same thing on the pilot stick.  Actually there are two on this one, one goes to the trim/Autopilot control circuit and one goes to the radio control circuit.

I took this picture because I have to plan where exactly I will be mounting those DB-9 boards that I talked about above.

Ah yes!  I got the plenum from Sam James on Tuesday.  Looks great doesn't it?  Now I just need to get my engine assembled so I can see what it really looks like.

I also installed the rudder cable exit fairings and although this picture does not show it I also installed the Adele clamps that hold the rudder cable plastic sleeve in place.  The empty hole you see there is where that bolt goes.

Here is my first attempt at powder coating.  This is the battery hold down bar and it actually came out pretty good!  I need to sand blast the battery box to clean it up a bit before I can do it.

Here is my make shift powder coating station.  I did a lot of learning in the first 5 minutes....hence the big mess.

Finally I installed the hold down brackets for the tail wiring runs in preparation for riveting the top skins on later this week.  Travis is coming over on Friday so we can knock this one out.  After that I only have one skin left to rivet!!  The cable ties are not tight in this picture but I later came along and tightened them down and cut them to length.  I used the cheap Harbor Freight tie wrap gun for the job and it worked nicely.  You will notice I have two wire runs here.  The one up on the fuselage side is the magnetometer wiring and I didn't want it anywhere near the strobe and trim wires.  The Magnetometer is very sensitive to magnetic interference.