Work gets in the way....sorta

So I missed a weekly post again but this time I have a good reason...I've been traveling for work.  Well that's kind of an exaggeration since it was really a vacation trip but I did have to attend a few work meetings while I was there.  Amy and I went to Hawaii (Maui to be exact) for a work related trip this past week.  It was a fun trip and I posted a few pics below.

On the RV-10 I finished up the horizontal stabilizer.  Next up is the elevators and I may make a modification to the trim tabs but we shall see how that goes.

The engine arrived this past week as well.  It was very well packaged and other than open up the crate, take a few pictures, and put in some desiccant I just sealed it back up and will attend to it when I find a shop to send the case to for overhaul.

On a less than exciting front I was suppose to be headed to Canada today to pick up the RV-9A from the paint shop.  I had a call with the paint shop owner earlier this week and found out that it will not be ready for another two weeks.  I'm very frustrated with the whole paint progress.  I was so excited about getting my airplane in early so I could use it for an upcoming conference trip but now it's even later than the original delivery date.  So frustrated...I hope the paint job is worth the wait.

And the final topic of the week is I got to fly with Jeff to Montana on Sunday.  We flew over there so I could drive me new truck home.  I bought my dads Toyota Tundra so I would have a truck to haul things around.  I'm getting tired of having to borrow the 4Runner back from Mariah or rely on friends for use of a hauling vehicle.

Here it sits in its plywood crate before I sealed it back up.  O-540 B2B5 which is a 235hp engine that I will be upping to 260-300 horsepower by swapping out the pistons and probably the cylinders.  No accessories so I have to buy a few of those yet and since I plan on using the EFII fuel injection/ignition system I will have to purchase that as well.

The finished horizontal stabilizer ready to go to storage.

The view out of our room at the Hyatt.

Panorama of lunch

Jeep tour of the Hana road

Sunset on our last night in Maui.

Hangar is available again

This week I learned that the weekdays are for the RV-10 and the weekend is for the Airport.  I was able to get some work done on the 10 this week as you will see below.  I am doing all the riveting myself which really slows things down but I am finding that I like the results much better.  I'm sure I have at least 4 more hours of riveting left on the horizontal stabilizer but it's actually very enjoyable and relaxing work.

I spent the weekend at the airport working on painting the walls and just organizing things so that I can put the 9A in there when it gets home in a couple of weeks (hopefully!).  I have been getting so much help from Harry that today I finally got a chance to give back a little.  Harry has been wanting to weigh both of his airplanes for a while now and today we got a chance to make that happen.  No pictures but I learned a little about how the chapter scales work.

One more time...this is what it looked like when I started this project.

Here is what it looked like on Saturday evening.  Look at all the garbage on the floor to the left of the picture.

And here is what it looks like as of tonight.  Still lots of organizing to do but at least I will be able to get the airplane back in here.  Harry let me borrow him and his truck to take the pile of garbage to the dump.

skins are back in the cradle and I am ready to start riveting the nose ribs in place.

Nose ribs are riveted in and the process of riveting the skins to the remaining ribs and spars has begun.  This is how it sits on this gorgeous Sunday evening where the temperature is a nice 75 degrees with a very light breeze to keep it from feeling too warm!

I took this picture because I am very happy with how the nose rib rivets turned out.  there is very little if any distortion of the skin, just smooth flush rivets.

Lack of oxygen

This week I have three big topics for discussion.  First is the Hangar,  the front part is pretty much done except for lots of clean up and rearranging of existing tool/furniture.  Now I can start on the back section.

The RV-10 got a little time this week as well. I was able to prime the parts which means lots of dimpling, deburring and scuffing.  It's time to start the final assembly for riveting.

Finally I flew with Jeff down to Aurora Oregon yesterday.  We met Chad Hankins there and went through the FAA's Oxygen deprivation chamber.  Essentially they put you into a tent that is very low on oxygen and then let you see what flying up very high without oxygen will do to your body.  It was amazing the number of different reactions that we humans have.  In the group before us there was a gentleman who almost seemed to pass out but was still somewhat responsive.  I felt pretty dizzy with odd vision but my oxygen content never dropped below 70% so that was about all I felt.  Jeff looked like he was affected and they had him do a few extra tasks to make sure he was doing well but he was able to do them all.  He didn't remember doing one of them when we got out which was interesting.  All in all the training was well worth the trip.

The flight down to Aurora was awesome to say the least.  Jeff filed IFR and we got some great actual "in the clouds" time and finally feel like all the money we spent on training and equipment to get us ready was worth it.  We would not have been able to make the trip if we didn't go IFR.

Finally the RV-9 is still in the paint shop.  I talked to the owner and they ran into issues with another job so it looks like I won't be getting the airplane back until the end of the month.  Disappointing to be sure....but I guess these things happen and I want to make sure they do a good job on my airplane.

Paint is on the walls.  Not perfect because there was a slight color difference between the two gallons of paint...

West side of the hangar complete...almost

The sea of clouds as we broke out headed South to Aurora for the oxygen deprivation chamber.  If you look close you can see the tops of the olympics in the distance.

The sea of clouds on Jeff's side..oh and Jeff is in there too.  ;-)

Ever seen a round rainbow?  I was trying to get a picture of it but it didn't show up as bright in the camera.

Islands in the sea.

Tried to do a Pano on the return trip.  Prop looks kinda odd.

Oh yes, the RV-10.  Still working on the horizontal stabilizer.  The parts are all primed and almost ready for reassembly.

3 Weeks in a row!

Can you believe it?  This will be my 3rd week in a row that I have posted something on this blog...you would almost believe I was back in build mode.  I guess in a way I am since I still don't have an airplane to fly.  I do however have a hangar to work on and friends with airplanes that need passengers.  :-)

This week I got a lot of time to work on the horizontal stabilizer on the 10.  A few pictures below and its coming along nicely.  Its much easier to do this the second time around...still very time consuming with tons of detail work, but I spend far less time standing around scratching my head wondering what something should look like.

I also got some time in the hangar today.  I managed to get the drywall up on both sides of the hangar and I even put a coat of mud on the seams.  Maybe next week I will be able to start doing some painting.  I have the back half of the hangar to work on yet but this section alone should really help brighten things up.

Oh, one more thing.  I flew with Chad and Harry down to Mulina airport for mexican food yesterday.  I rode down with Chad which was great since I haven't been in his plane before.  I rode back with Harry and realized its been a long time since I have flown in the rocket...nice treat.  :-)  By the way, the mexican restaurant had great steak Quesadilla's.

Ok, on with the show...

Priming the spars and associated spar caps.

More spar parts for the horizontal stabilizer being primed.

Starting to cleco things together after riveting the spars together.

 

A picture of Chad landing at KPLU for our flight to Mulino Oregon.

 

Chad doing his runup as we get ready to leave Mulino

This is an interesting picture of Harry watching Chad as we flew in a very loose formation.

Another picture of Chad...this one didn't focus very well.

Ah.  Here is Greg's airplane with its shiny new paint job!  Beautiful airplane.

The new drywall is up on the East wall of the Hangar...

Drywall and mud up on the West wall.  I did get the East wall taped and mudded but didn't take a picture of that.

And just so we can remember what it looked like just a short couple of weeks ago...

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!