Workin' on the plenum....again

If you have followed my adventures at all you know that the cooling plenum that I purchased from Sam James is not my favorite purchase.  I won't rehash that tired story but it is relevant because I spent the last couple of weeks working on the plenum again.  The short story is that my oil temps are still higher than I want them to be.  When we flew on a warm day I had a hard time keeping the oil under 220 degrees.  I've done several things to try to decrease the oil temperature on the aft side of the engine so this time I decided to try to do something on the forward side.  The inlets that allow cool air to enter the plenum area are about 5 inches in diameter.   The plenum necks that down to a much smaller size and then sits pretty tightly on top of the engine.  My idea was that if I removed some of those restrictions the amount of air available to cool the oil would increase.  So I did the left side of the engine a couple of weeks ago and it seemed to help (but still haven't flown extended periods in hot weather).  I spent the past few days doing the same thing to the right side.  This time I decided to take a few pictures to help describe the process.

On a related note we had our annual Young Eagles event last Saturday.  That's when we volunteer our time, airplanes, and fuel to fly young kids from 8 to 16 years old.  I flew 14 kids on Saturday and had a blast doing it.  Those kids are so much fun!

First things first, here is the 9A sitting with other airplanes at the Young Eagles event on Saturday.  The airplane before it should look familiar as I posted several pictures of it recently.  It is Greg's and was in the same paint shop as mine.

Ok, so in this picture you can see the restriction in the right side.  Its hard to see the top part but believe me its restricted.

Here I put a few lumps of clay on top of the plenum and then put the top cowling back on to measure how much room I have between the two. 

Then I mix up some pourable foam and make a mess...

Another view of the mess

Starting to trim down the mess to a shape I can work with.

This is the foam product that I used.

Ok, foam is now sanded to the shape I want.

Now I lay up 4 layers of fiberglass over the foam.  You will notice I used a lot of packing tape as a sort of mold release for both the foam and the fiberglass.

In this picture I have trimmed up the cured fiberglass, removed the foam, cut the plenum under the fiberglass away, and "glued" the new fiberglass piece in.  I used an epoxy/flox mixture to glue the two pieces together.

Another view of the two pieces but this is after they had set up and I had done a little sanding on the final assembly.

This is the section of the old plenum top that I cut out.  You can see the circles where I marked the clay locations and heights.

In this picture you can see where I cut the old top out and glued in the new.  All that's left now is a little sanding and maybe a layer of micro or two to clean it all up.

Flight to Gilroy California (South of SF)

Amy and I got a chance to fly to Gilroy CA last week.  It was the first time I have had a chance to use my airplane to go on a work related trip and it was a lot of fun.  We left early Thursday morning on an IFR flight plan that had us in the clouds for only a few minutes the entire trip.  We stopped in Red Bluff for fuel and then again flew IFR the remaining 90 minutes.  The plan was to fly over Oakland and get to see both big cities but ATC routed us around to the east so we didn't get to see much.  I took a few pictures and Amy took a few (that I don't have yet).

All tied down for the overnight stay at South County airport (Gilroy)

climbing out of the San Francisco area.

Somewhere in northern California.  Spent a lot of time and effort dodging clouds on the return trip.

SuperTracks

So I think I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had purchased a new modification for the 9A that allows me to slide the canopy back another 8-10".  Well I got a chance to install that modification this week.  It really works well!  I have the "Almost a 14" modification in my airplane as well which allows the seats to recline another 4" or so but it also reorganizes some of the parts that this slider extension modification needs to work with.  Fortunately everything went together well as you can see in the pictures below.

Travis and I flew over to Montana to have lunch with Dad this week and since I was not thinking I didn't get any pictures.  We flew over IFR and ran into some electrical problems with the airplane (nothing that affected the safety of the flight) so I have some work ahead of me troubleshooting the issue.

As you might have guessed, now that the 9A is back and flying season is ramping up quickly I'm not expecting to make much progress on the 10.  I suppose this is exactly what I figured would be the case and I'm perfectly fine with it.  :-)

Paint...the full story

This week has been torturous for me!  I finally got to see the final paint job completed and get my airplane back.  The entire trip was somewhat challenging due to weather.  Jeff was unable to fly up with me due to some previous engagements so Mariah was nice enough to drive me up there on her way to visit her boyfriend.  She even hung around and helped reassemble the airplane.

We arrived about 6pm on Friday evening and found that Mike from Upper Valley Aviation had already reassembled the control surfaces on the airplane!  That saved me a couple of hours at least.  Mike, Mariah and I spend about 3 hours on friday evening finishing up most of the reassembly.  Saturday morning the weather in the Puget Sound was pretty ugly but not up in Canada so after filing my eAPIS to Tacoma Narrows I chased my tail trying to figure out how to modify it to allow me to land at Friday Harbor which I eventually did.  After passing through customs I sat for about a half hour trying to get some idea of whether or not I could get back into KPLU.  Since it was really iffy I decided to see if I could get a little closer to home just in case I had to have Amy come pick me up or spend another night in a hotel.  Bremerton was IFR as was pretty much everything so I turned around and headed back North.  I noticed that Paine airport was VFR and I knew that Chad would be out working on his airplane so I landed there to spend some time waiting out the weather.  I had lunch with Chad but the Paine Aviation Day's annual event was going on so I also got to visit with Martin B who was demoing his VR setup.

Finally about 6pm on Saturday night KPLU was showing marginal VFR so I decided to file IFR home and go for it.  The flight was pretty much uneventful and and even got some actual IFR time on approach.  I landed, tucked the airplane into her newly remodeled home and went home myself...content.

The original concept...except with yellow instead of red

One of the design options proposed by PlaneSchemer.

An iteration of the design as it nears its final look.

And the final design with paint colors and all views.

Leaving for Canada with no paint.  Picture courtesy of Jeff as usual (as are the next few)

Disassembling the airplane for paint.

A pile of parts that need paint.

Final walk-around before we leave it behind.

Progress at last!!  It took about 6 weeks from delivery date to get to this point.

Masking for the colors

Red color applied.

Control surfaces and other parts with red color applied.

Blue applied

blue on many of the "pieces" we removed for paint

The lower cowling...the blue looks amazing!

After landing and passing through customs at Friday Harbor. Finally back in the US!

And here she sits safe and sound in her own home!

The "Glamour Shot" taken by a photographer just before I departed Chilliwack BC.

Taking shape...

Once again I was out of town for the majority of the week so not much work got done on the 10.  I managed to get the engine out of the crate and up on the engine stand so I can begin the disassembly process.  I also got some time to work on the hangar finishing up the drywall hanging.

I do have some exciting news though..the 9 is almost ready.  Yes I know I said I was going to pick it up this friday but as I suspected would happen it got delayed.....again.  However, they have been sending me pictures so I know it's being worked on.

Masking for the red and blue....the design is starting to show.

More masking...without the actual design its hard to see where this is going... ;-)

Ok, a little more detail but the color can be deceiving... that's all I'm going to say.    

Lets play name that part....

Finally out of the crate and ready to put on the yellow engine stand.

I got the engine up on the stand and found that there was still a lot of oil in there.  In this picture you can see where I am draining the oil from the prop governor pad cover.  At least its up on the stand now and I can begin the disassembly process.

Drywall is done, now I'm waiting for the mud to dry so I can do another quick pass and then paint it.

Here is my new wallpaper....its the laminated RV-9 plans that I got from Jeff.  I decided they would look great on the wall so I started the hanging process while I was in the hangar today.

First peek....

Not much to display this week.  I did get some time to work on the elevators but that was mostly drilling and deburring which is not much fun to take pictures of.  I did get some work done on the hangar though.  Its not complete but at least its ready for the airplane to come home....hopefully next Saturday.

Speaking of the airplane I got a picture in email this week which means they are working on it!  Next Friday pickup is a very real possibility at this time!

Here she is with her white base coat of paint!  If you look in the paint booth in the background you can see some of the other parts of the airplane (cowling, control surfaces, fairings)

Another view of the first coat of paint

This is what the hangar looked like before I started....

This is what the back section of the hangar looks like after this weekends work.  I still need a few sheets of drywall, some mud work, and some paint but its getting close!  I have a lot of crap stored back there for now just to make room for the return of the RV-9A.