Wednesday, August 11, 2021

Phase 1 is complete!

Amy finally got her ride in the 10 this past weekend.  It was her birthday and she wanted to go to the San Juan islands for the day so I had a goal to meet in getting phase 1 complete in time.  I met it but only just...if you look at the picture below Amy is actually sitting in the passenger seat (in the reflection) when I took the picture of the Hobbs meter.  :-)


Lots of work on the 10 in the past several weeks.  I've been working on a few squaks such as the Comm2 antenna relocation, rear seat belt installation, wheel fairing finishing and installation, and of course flying when I can to finish up the testing.

One of the biggest projects I ended up with was moving the backup battery off of the firewall and back to the tail cone to sit beside the main battery.  It was just too hot under the cowl for that battery.  It has a temperature sensor that was alerting during flights longer than about 15-20 minutes.  So I decided to move the battery aft.  That took a lot of time but it was worth it.  It also helped my CG just a little.

One of the drawbacks to flying out of Fall City airport is that I have to tug my airplane to the road.  The gravel driveway with a slight incline has too much resistance for me to pull the airplane alone.  This is Ben's tug that he is letting me use until I can get one of my own.

Speaking of making my own tug, Harry gave me this old electric wheel chair base so I could use the motors to make an electric tug.  I started down that path but found that the motors run a little too fast.  I will have to gear them down or find a way to adjust the controller to slow the motors.

One of my first flights away from the airport with Jeff.  Jeffco for some food!

Working on fitting the nose wheel pant.

Jeff, Harry and I having dinner at Arlington.

This is a bit of a story in and of itself but I had the idea to use a snow blower as a tug.  I removed the snow throwing attachment and welded up some arms that I was able to bolt to the frame.  It worked pretty good but the clutch on the motor was not strong enough to overcome larger humps.  Still have some work to do to make this work well.  

This is the back side of my oil door.  As you can see I've reinforced it with carbon fiber but I still see the corners of the door fluttering up slightly in flight.  I think I am going to have to purchase another Hartwell latch and put one on each side. 


Amy and I in our "Scoot coupe" at Friday Harbor on her birthday.  It was a great way to see the island and we had a great time up there!

No trip to the San Juan's is complete without food on the waterfront.  This is the restaurant on the north end of the island in Roche Harbor.