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.

Sturgis - Motorcycle Rally

Granted it was on the bottom of the list but I checked another item off the bucket list.  Jeff and I flew to Sturgis SD for a couple of days during the motor cycle rally.  We took off Thursday evening and had a nice evening flight to Helena Montana where we stayed for the night.  Got up early Friday morning, had a good breakfast, and launched for South Dakota.  Sturgis doesn't have a weather station (ATIS) so we had to use Rapid City weather which is a little further east and they were reporting overcast at 300' due to some fog.  As we approached we could see that it was breaking up over Sturgis but that Rapid was still socked in.  No biggie as we had just enough ceiling at that point to land and set up camp.  

Jeff has been here before and knew of the best camping spot on the field.  We were protected from much of the weather if any showed up and more importantly we were out of the morning sun!  Great spot!

After setting up camp we hitched a ride into town with a friendly local who dropped us off at the end of a long city street filled with motor cycles.  Lots to see in the pictures below but let me give you my impressions of Sturgis.  That place was nuts!  Some of it was not so good (everybody smoked it seemed), but overall the people were friendly, happy, and proud to be American which was very obvious everywhere you looked.

Anyway, here are a few of the pictures we took.

All loaded up and ready for departure from Puyallup.

Parked for the night in Helena.  We had to skirt the edge of some pretty nasty looking weather but we had no issues.

Devils tower in South Dakota.  It is requested that pilots keep at least 3 miles away so we didn't get the best of pictures.

Jeff formed up so we could get a couple of pics with Devil's tower in the shot.

Sturgis from the air.

Downtown area.  Not a very big town but with about a half a million people over the next week or so it will be well used!

One of many camp grounds that is only barely filling up as we arrive on Friday.

No, I don't think this is a camp ground...I think its a junk car lot!

A local drag strip...I swear some of those motor cycles were using this (or not) all night long!

We arrived!

Planes tied down...

Tents set up...

Off to town!  This is the "entry" to the main drag street.

A "light" day on the street.

Crazy?!?  This guy paid this bartender to beat a welt onto his back!  Seriously!

No caption needed...some very nice bikes here!

The ramp for a motor cycle jump scheduled for later in the day.

No helmets required in Sturgis....

The motorcycle jumper just as he launched off the ramp.  Yes, he made....barely.

The street starts to fill up a bit.

Cruizin the 'ave'...  

 Bartenders....

One of the local transportation options.  Notice the signatures all over the bus... walls, ceiling, floor, seats, "hostess", nothing was off limits...well almost nothing.

Metal sculpture at The Full Throttle Saloon

Another pretty cool metal sculpture.

Friday evening, back in camp after partying until the late hour of 9pm!!  We were living large!

This is a panoramic of the typical venue here.  Notice the open sides with balconies and a stage in the center.  The open sides makes it legal to smoke inside (ugh).  This happened to be one of many in the area and we stopped at this one because of all the screaming and hollering.  Turns out there was a Frozen T shirt contest going on.  In this contest the women were given Tshirts that had been frozen into a knot and they had to find a way to warm up the shirt enough to put it on.  The first one to put the shirt on won.

A had to get a picture of this sign posted in the mens room.

Stopping for fuel at Townsend MT on our way home.

Section 29....still

I think I'm beginning to understand why people don't like section 29.  I've been almost done for two weeks now!  Well actually I've been on vacation for the past two weeks with not much time to work on the airplane but still...shouldn't it work on itself while I'm gone?

Travis came over and helped me with the last of the skin riveting before we left for vacation.  That was a huge help to me.   I almost hope he decides to build an airplane some day because he has an amazing ability to visualize parts as well as read the plans.  Anyway in addition to the skins I was able to finish up the rear vents (which I don't really like but...) and I've finished riveting the front floor skins in.  Actually I'm not 100% done with the front floor skins because I still have a few side rivets to put in that will have to wait until I am done with the fuel pump mount that goes in the tunnel.

The only steps left for this section is to rivet in two side ribs (which should go pretty quickly) and to install the main landing gear weldments.  That last step will probably be a bugger since it involves many bolts and holes that all have to line up properly...and never do...depending on the temperature in the garage, the phase of the moon and how I position my head while banging it on the wall.  :-)

I'm probably going to step forward to the next section before I try to install the gear weldments.  I have a couple of shims that I need to prime before I install the weldments and the steps (next section) are made of steel and need priming also.  If I'm going to mix up a batch of primer I might as well try to use all of it.

Did I mention we went on vacation?

Yep, definitely vacation...

meanwhile back at home.... and this was only the first night...there was even more snow fall after we left for the Dominican Republic...24" in fact!

Floors riveted in place.

Outside of rear side vents installed.

Inside of rear side vents installed.

And a really hard to see picture of the fuselage with the side skins riveted on...no cleco's except those that wont be removed until I do the firewall steps later on.