7 Days

How many of you remember the TV series titled "7 Days"?  It was about the future where limited time travel (7 days into the past) was possible.  Anyway that has nothing to do with this weeks title...
In 7 days I am moving the airplane to the airport!  One of our EAA chapter 326 members (Randy) has offered to let me use his trailer (and him) next Sunday to do the move.  Jeff will be helping too and who knows there may be others show up as well.  So I have a few tasks to get done this week in preparation for that big day!

Speaking of tasks, I got a few done this week but I swear this airplane is just generating tasks for me to complete prior to taking it to the airport!  Every time I go into the garage to take one item off of my list of things to do another two pop up.  I have a short list of 33, 34, 36 items that have to be completed prior to moving and each day I try to take one or two (or more) off the list.  On some days that is possible but it seems every day I add at least one more thing to the list.  Frustrating at times but exciting none the less because they all have to be done (preferably before I take it to the airport next weekend).  Here are a few of the tasks I removed from the list this week.

Oh, and while I am at it I have to say this....GO SEAHAWKS!  They are on the way to the Superbowl for the second year in a row.  After coming back from a serious deficit and then winning in overtime, they deserved this one.

In this picture you can see that I finally  trimmed the oil cooler air supply hose and got it temporarily mounted.  You can also see the blast tubes I put in for cooling the PMags.

This is the other end of the blast tube.  I had a hard time finding a way to keep them pointed at the base of the PMags so I decided to use a loop of lock wire that wraps around the base of the PMag and then attaches to the nozzle end of the blast tube.

I got the upper plugs wires and the associated grommets installed.

This is the left side of the engine and if you look closely you can see the wire run that holds the end of the blast tube in place.  Its getting a bit crowded back there.

If you remember a few months ago I mentioned that I had purchased and modified the Van's baffle kit.  Well I was going through and plugging up any holes or gaps in the baffles (necessary to keep the cooling air flowing through the cylinder fins) and found a rather large gap on the aft side of #4 cylinder barrel.  I struggled with finding a way to bridge the gap and eventually came up with this idea.  Its hard to see in the picture but basically I took a piece of aluminum sheet and then cut and bent it to both fit the curvature of the cylinder barrel as well as close all gaps.  I am amazed at how well it came out given the location and the fact that I had to estimate measurements because there isn't enough room in there to get a good rule in.

See that little black button in the middle of the picture?  That's the new co-pilot push to talk button.  I spent most of my airplane time on Wednesday in the cockpit finishing up the wiring changes that I needed to make.  This is just one of several.

One of the major wiring changes I made includes removing the co-pilot stick functions.  This is all the wiring I have left below the floor pan now.  Its much tidier and a lot less complex and failure prone.

I had my data plate engraved this week.  Now I have to attach it to the tail under the horizontal stabilizer.

One of the most time consuming tasks for the week involved mounting the wheel pants.  This is a picture of the right side wheel pant.  In this picture you can see the jig that I fabricated to hold everything aligned with the fuselage at the correct height.  If you look at the left side of the wheel pant you can see a line I drew on the floor.  This line is exactly parallel to the fuselage center line.  There is another one on the other side that was used to line up the left wheel pant.

Yep, there is a wheel in there.

A side shot of the wheel pant.  There was a lot of sanding, cutting and measuring involved in getting to this point.

These gear leggings are suppose to be big speed boosters...along the lines of 8-10 mph increase.  Here you can see the installed version just prior to doing the aligning.

And here is the alignment process.  Measure how far away from center-line and how far above the floor and then wrap a string around the gear legging and make sure the trailing edge is centered between the two strings.  Then tighten up the hose clamp on top to hold it in place until I get the intersection fairings installed.

And just to top things off today I started fitting the nose wheel pant.  This little bugger took some serious effort to spread it wide enough to fit over the wheel brackets.  But its there and I am slowly fitting the tire opening and the bracket position.