Hangar and 10 work

This week I am still without an airplane so I spent more time on the 10 and even more time in the hangar working on spiffing it up for its newly painted occupant.  Looking forward to brightening up the hangar a bit so this weekend with the help of Mariah and Harry I managed to get the new ceiling boards up and taped.  Next up is some drywall for the bare studs and then some nice white paint on the walls...  should really brighten up the hangar a lot.

On the 10 I managed to finish up the rudder, and get a start on the horizontal stabilizer.  There is a lot of deburring, drilling and such before anything starts going together.

On a side note I got a chance to fly with my friend Ben who built an RV-12.  I have never flown in a 12 before and it was both familiar and different.  Since its an RV it has the RV feel to the flight characteristics, but since its a light sport, it has far less power and speed.  It was still a great flight!

Bent the ears over the counterweight.

Rudder complete and ready for storage.

Working on the forward spar on the horizontal stabilizer.  Here I am drilling the "feet" that are used to hold the forward edge down to the fuselage.

Here you can see the "feet" as this is a shot looking up at the bottom of the spar.  The clamps are holding a piece of aluminum angle to the bottom of the feet to keep them parallel with each other.

Here is Harry and his ingenious tape rolling tool.  In this picture we are running the tape over the seems.  If you look at the top of the pole he is holding you will see the roll of tape we are using....ingenious...

This is a "before" picture of the hangar ceiling...

And here it is at the end of our work day.  So much better but still lots of work to do on the walls.

Airplane-less

I don't know if Airplane-less is a word but it certainly fits my situation right now.  I have finally dropped the airplane off for painting!!!!  Jeff and I flew to Chilliwack BC on Friday to deliver the airplane to Upper Valley Aviation.  I will hopefully write up another post later on with more pictures that Jeff took.  I'm hoping to have it back in the next 3-4 weeks!

In the meantime I got a chance to get back to the RV-10 yesterday.  I started working on the trailing edge of the rudder and was able to get it riveted with better than expected results.  I used the 3M double sided tape to hold the AEX wedge in place as recommended by Vans but there was a slight wave in the unfinished product.  I decided to go buy a 1/2" stainless steel bar that was long enough to fit the entire trailing edge.  I then clamped the rudder to that bar (after putting in my rivets and tape) and then proceeded to rivet the edge together.  As you can see in the picture it came out great!

I also started on the leading edge roll process but wasn't able to finish that completely.

You can see the stainless steel bar I used as a bucking bar to rivet the entire trailing edge without moving the rudder.  In this picture I had not quite finished the process...still had to flip the rudder and do some back riveting to flush the shop side of the rivets that you can see slightly poking up.  For the back riveting I used my tungsten bucking bar and moved it from rivet to rivet as needed.

This is as far as I got with the leading edge of the rudder.  Should be able to finish it up this week and move on to the horizontal stabilizer.

1st Annual is in the books

Lots going on with N1605A in the past few weeks.  First the airplane should be headed to the paint shop this month.  Not sure exactly when because it depends on the shops schedule but I am anticipating 1 to 2 weeks from today.  I'm excited about getting some color on my baby!

Second, I have been making several modification to the airplane to help resolve the high oil temps that I have been seeing.  Even during the winter flying season I can get oil temps above 220 degrees if I'm not careful.  So in an effort to resolve this issue I have done a few things including removing the screen on the inlet of the cooling air hose at the baffles.  I also installed a angled oil adapter.  This had nothing to do with the cooling but I did remove the oil filter mount and the vernatherm to test the vernatherm for proper operation.  Turns out there was an issue with the gasket that caused my oil temperature problems.  Look at the pictures below and you will see why I was having problems....

Now a short story about my attempts at a post annual condition inspection flight.  I made several changes during this period and I wanted to go fly the airplane before I put it back in general service.  The new battery worked great on the first start, the airplane taxied out for run up and while I waited for the oil temperature to come up I decided to update the EFIS database. Well that took longer than anticipated so I shut the engine down while it finished.  Five minutes later I went to start the engine and guess what....yep the prop only turned about 3".   Well, I was over half a mile from my hangar in an airplane that would not start.  So, I figured I would pull the airplane back the hangar....ok, that was a dumb idea...so I walked to the hangar, got my tow bar, some bungee cords, and some tie-downs and drove back to the airplane.  Hooked it up, and towed it back.  Then I put the airplane away and went home in a less than good mood.

Fast forward a couple of days and last night I stopped by the hangar, pulled the airplane out and fired it up for a nice evening flight.  Got back and again after shutting down the prop would only move about 3".  Sounds bad but its all due to some new electronics I am beta testing.  Bottom line, I am happy with the way it all came out and most importantly the oil temperature problem is gone!!

I made another change to the airplane as well.  During flight at high speed I have to hold pressure down to keep the nose down.  I decided to raise the leading edge of the horizontal stabilizer a small amount to see if I can reduce the pressure needed.  The first attempt was with a shim of about .032".  That made very little if any difference so I upped the adjustment another .064".  That seemed to help  but I won't know until I get my wheel pants back on and try a high speed run.  I did notice that my trim tab servo motor is not strong enough to move the tab very far from center at high speed.  Not sure what to think about that...

One more item for this post.  I installed a new battery and battery box.  I have been using the standard PC680 for the last 8 months or so and have recently ran into a couple of situations where I pulled the airplane out of the hangar to find the battery too weak to crank the engine.  I am guessing I must have discharged it too far at some point in the not too distant past.  The new battery (EarthX ETX900) has circuitry to prevent over discharging and it also has almost twice the cranking power of the PC680. The new battery also gets a new battery box that will fit it and a PC680 if I ever decide to go back.

Nothing to report on the RV-10 build as I have been focusing all my free time on N1605A.  Soon I should be able to get back to some RV-10 work.

Note the small opening available for oil to flow through this gasket.  This is the oil filter mount sitting on my bench with the gasket sitting on the sealing face.

Here is the gasket with me holding it against the accessory case.  See the half blocked hole on the left? Thats the inlet to the oil cooler...

This is my high tech Vernatherm test jig.  Tin cup full of oil with a heat gun to apply heat.  The Vernatherm is sitting on the bottom of the cup so that I can measure how much it rises as it reaches 180 degrees.  It worked out perfectly and the Vernatherm was functioning properly.

THis is the new battery and battery box I purchased from EarthX.  This battery is suppose to have almost twice the cranking power of the PC680 and from what I have seen it does.  We will see how long this one lasts but for the price it better last a VERY long time.

The yellow lines I drew on this picture are the location where the exhaust is occasionally touching the cowling.  I will be sending this section of exhaust back to Clint at Vetterman Exhaust soon for some adjustment.

The next two pictures are side views of the engine after the first year of flight time.  Still looking pretty good!

Not every day you see an airplane in the rear view mirror!

KPLU to KPWT...the long route

Today was the first time in a long time that Harry, Jeff and I got a chance to do some flying together.  The original plan was to head south to Oregon but the weather down there wasn't really conducive to that so we planned for Yakima.  After takeoff Jeff was monitoring weather over in the Yakima valley and guess what?  Yep the weather went marginal over there.  We decided to head south and just fly around a bit and eventually wander over to Bremerton for some lunch.

We had a bit of excitement trying to land at Bremerton as there was a Cessna that wasn't really interested in playing along with the rest of us in the pattern, nor did he seem interested in talking on the radio.  So after a couple of 360 degree turns, lots of chatter about where he was, and even a go around we managed to get all three of us down on the runway.

After a good lunch we decided to follow Harry around the north end of Seattle, over the Snoqualmie Falls, and then back down to Puyallup where it seems everybody with an airplane had decided it was time to fly as well.  Fun!

Upon landing Jeff hopped into my airplane and we did an IFR approach into Tacoma Narrows, then the GPS back into KPLU.  We put away my airplane and then hopped in his airplane to do the same circuit with him at the controls.  We both agreed that we need to do this type of thing at least once a month to keep proficient!

Not many pictures of the day but I did get some video...haven't had much luck posting videos here so I have posted a link on Dropbox for those who want to see the flight.

Jeff, Harry and me sitting on the tarmac at Bremerton.

More rudder work and a wing kit

Wow, only two weeks since my last post...I must be getting better...not.

For the last two weeks I haven't done too much work on the 10 but I did re-do some work.  I had started putting the rudder together and after getting the ribs riveted together I tried to get the forward spar to fit.  Well guess what?  I had installed all of the ribs on the wrong skins!  That required some amount of cussing and then a long process of drilling out all of the rivets, and then re-riveting the entire structure back together again.  I'm almost back to the point where I started the week.

On a more positive note, yesterday Harry and I drove up to a house north of here and took a look at a 10 wing kit that someone was selling.  The work looked pretty good and most importantly there wasn't a ton of riveting done.  I really want to do the majority of the work on the kit myself but I couldn't say no to the huge savings I would get if I purchased this wing kit.  After looking at the work on both the wing, and the completed empennage I decided to purchase it.  Now I have a backup empennage kit that I can sell (assuming I don't mess up the one I am working on now).  Harry was nice enough to offer to come help me pick up the kit today!

Finally on my list of news I got to do some flying this week but I will save that for another post.

OH yea, I also installed a step up converter on the 9 landing light mount.  Now I can install the 24v LED landing lights that Harry gave me!

Look at all those pretty rivets!  Yep, I had to drill them all out and the ones on the other skin not shown in this picture.

Ok, this looks a little odd, but its actually me riveting the two skins together.  The upper skin is lifted up so I can work on the ribs one at a time and then lower the skin to the next rib.  Yes this was taken before I figured out I had put the ribs on the wrong skins....

Some progress

Another long hiatus from posting but I think I am slowly getting back into the build again.  I've spent a few days this past week working on the rudder of the 10 and I have a picture of two below to show the progress but I think more importantly you have to see what has been taking up all my garage time.

One of the downfalls of building an airplane in your garage is the dust and aluminum shavings that seem to get on everything.  Well for the 10 I decided to limit that as much as possible so I have partitioned off the smaller bay of the garage with a temporary insulated wall.  On that wall I have built a small "paint station" that I can use to spray primer on the parts that need it.  The neat part of the new paint station is that I have added a ducted fan to the base of it and am venting the exhaust outside.  Hopefully this will keep the overspray dust down a bit better than what I did with the 9.

Anyway, on with some pictures...

This is the new temporary wall from the larger part of the garage.

This little hole in the wall is where the ducted fan exhaust goes through the new temporary wall.  I took this picture before I actually built the rest of the paint station.

My little vent elbow that I will use to duct the overspray vent outdoors.

A little hard to see in this picture but this is my new priming station.  I have the plans sitting on the screen top in this picture and I have not put up the sloping lower front panel but the entire top part can be collapsed against the wall if I need the extra space in the room.

A look from the garage door end of the room.  You can see the door to the new work space here.  

another shot of the temporary wall and you can see the paint station in the back corner of the room.

The rudder just after I finished final drilling all the necessary holes.  I had started to remove the cleco's and realized I haven't been taking may pictures so I stopped to "capture the moment"

After final drilling of the rudder it was time to disassemble and debur.

Countersinking the AEX wedge that connects the two trailing edges of the rudder.  I'm using my drill press to make sure the countersinks are perpendicular.

Here you can see my "jig" that I created to ensure the wedge was held at the correct angle while I did the countersinking.

Another view of the widge jig.  The holes are there to give the countersink bit guide pin a place to go below the wedge during the countersinking process.

Back to the DRDT2 dimpling tool.  Here I'm dimpling the rudder skins.  This tool is so much faster and easier than the way I did it on the 9 not to mention the dimples are higher quality and more consistent.  Well worth the money I paid for it.

Its been a while

Wow, it's been a long while since I posted anything to this blog so I thought I was about time.  I just got back from a awesome flight to Mulino Oregon with my friend Harry.  Jeff had planned the flight but on his way to the airport he got a call that prevented him from flying.  I hope things are well for him.

The weather has really sucked lately for flying.  As you all know I've been working on my IFR certification for about 6 months now.  Well I finally got the weather I needed to get my checkride completed and I am now fully certified to fly in the clouds!  Thats a big deal for me living here in the Pacific NW.  Well that was just the beginning of an excellent week!

Today started out with a nice flight to Mulino.  The weather was "clear and a million" which means great flying weather.  Harry and I left Puyallup at about 10:30am and made a slow leisurely trip down to Mulino while we waited for Chad and Michael to catch up.  Chad ended up aborting early due to some oil temperature issues he was having but Michael caught up with us at the Mexican restaurant near the airport.  After a good meal and the required perusal of each other's aircraft we launched for the return trip to Puyallup.  Since the trip down was slow we decided to push it up a bit for the return trip.  We climbed up to 5500' and then put it to the firewall.  It unfortunately only took about 20 minutes for my oil temperature to creep up to where I had to go lean of peak to reduce temps.  I'm going to have to find something to reduce those oil temps....  However we did make the return trip at about 160 knots which is about 10 knots faster than I usually cruise.  My autopilot was doing some odd things at one point because I swear the airplane went up-side-down for a few seconds....

Anyway...I haven't worked on the 10 lately.  I have been walling in the small bay of the garage so I can work in there and not have to heat the entire garage each day.  The wall is up but I still need to put the insulation board on.  Hopefully I will be able to get back to work on the 10 soon.