Weekend of Flying!

This weekend I was "jones'n" to do some flying and when Jeff mentioned flying to lunch on Saturday I was all in.  I had a meeting at Fall City airport that was a lot of fun but after a brutal drive to Puyallup (don't go down the Orting valley highway during pumpkin season!) I got the airplane out and pre-flighted.  Jumped in to take it over for fuel and found that my battery was completely dead...I had left the electric boost pump on.  I guess there is no need to put that on my battery bus so that's going to change soon.

Anyway Harry saved the day with a battery out of his lawn tractor and we eventually launched for Skagit valley airport for some lunch.  On the return trip we stopped by Tacoma Narrows to visit Martin and his new RV-4, and then back to PLU.  I stuck around for about an hour before a fellow RV-9A builder showed up so we could take a ride in my 9.  All in all a great day of flying.

Sunday Harry rode with me to Boise to meet another RV-9A builder who is nearing completion and wanted to ask a few questions and see in person some of the pieces he is working on.  We flew about 5 and a half hours on Sunday!

Taxiing in for the run-up

Run-up before the flight to Skagit

Some formation flight on the way back from lunch to TIW

Martin in his new RV-4

Run-up for the return from TIW to PLU.

Back to work on the 10

Well Fall has come and its time to start working on the 10 again.  Funny but it was kind of hard to get started because I had a lot of deburring and aluminum cleanup that needed to be done.  I finally knocked that out and am moving right along with the elevators again.

Amy and I stopped by the Snoqualmie Falls last weekend. :-)

Right elevator assembled for final drilling.  Still have to do some dimpling and riveting.

Left elevator assembled for final drilling.

Oh yea, I did get to fly IFR to Spokane a few weeks ago.  This was a work trip and a co-worker went along with me.  This was on the return trip as we passed Mt Rainier.

Another picture of the flight to Spokane.  It is so pretty above the clouds.

I had to take some pictures of the interior of the airplane for the guys that I bought from.  This was one of the pictures.

See that pretty little white RV-4 in the background?  Thats my buddy Martin's new steed.  If you have a really sharp eye you will also notice there is an RV-10 fuselage sitting back there....drool.

I got to fly to Bremerton with Harry for breakfast.  He wasn't feeling all that fast and the Cessna was begging for a little air time so here we go...  It was fun flying slow with him.  The RV-9 is plenty stable that those lower speeds which made the flight quite enjoyable.

So Cal SF trip

Amy and I took a trip to San Francisco to visit one of the communities for the company I work for as well as to attend a conference for one of our vendors.  After the conference we flew on down to Santa Maria CA to visit yet another community on Friday, then we flew back home today (Saturday).  The return flight was pretty long at about 6 hours combined between two flights.  The last flight was one of my favorite IFR flights since the weather was smooth, the temperatures were above freezing and there were lots of clouds!

I can't tell you how happy I am with the way the airplane if flying right now.  I can't image having a nicer flying airplane.

Amy and I in one of the towers downtown San Francisco.

A Pano that I took from the top of the tower.  It actually looks very cool if you view it full size.

The coastline near Santa Maria as we approach.

The view outside our hotel room in Santa Maria...can't beat that view!

The return trip home as we got closer to the PNW.  Clouds start to build and the showers start.

Visiting my sister's family in North Dakota

This past weekend I took advantage of the long weekend to fly to my sisters place in Dickinson ND.  The trip started out early Friday afternoon with a stop in Coeur d'Alene to pick up my brother.  We then launched for Dickinson and made the majority of the trip VFR with flight following.  About mid Montana the visibility started to drop considerably so I asked for and received an IFR clearance into Dickinson ND.  It was a long 4 hour flight, the longest I have taken so far but with the new injector flow balancing that I have been working on the fuel flow was the lowest I have seen it and we landed with about 10 gallons of fuel left!

Lots of clouds made for some beautiful flying as you will see below.

Look at that, 4.5 gph at 17000' doing 150+ knots.  Somebody needs to clean that screen too....

Yep we are in eastern Montana....nothing but flat land...almost as flat as North Dakota

My niece too this picture of their homestead during a short ride on Saturday.

And we were all very thirsty after all that flying time.  Everybody took a ride, Samone, Chad, Chelsea and Danny.

No trip to Samone's is complete without lots of good food including this yummy oyster stew!

On the way back we filed IFR and this is what we saw for a good hour or more.  The layer was relatively thin but solid

We did a few turns around St. Regis Montana on the return flight so I took a couple of pictures.

Cascades as I start my descent into Seattle on the return home.

Can you believe I've put 363 hours on this airplane and it's not even 2 years old????

Wings over Republic fly in

This weekend Harry, Jeff, Paul (Harry's friend), and I flew to Republic WA for their annual fly-in.  It was a fun flight as usual but the fly in itself was a bit of a bust.  The parking crew had us taxi on a field that felt like it was plowed by gophers.  Harry actually almost had a prop strike due to one of his main wheels falling in a hole of some sort.  His tail came up but fortunately didn't go all the way forward.

Hard to see in this picture but there are two small specs in the sky behind me.  This is Harry and his friend Paul.

There were some amazing cloud formations visible.  These particular clouds indicate some nasty bumpy weather up there.

Our parking location in Republic.

Paul's RV-6 as we do our run up after fueling up on the return trip home.

Look at the top of the cloud in the middle of the picture.  It looks like I jiggled the camera but its actually a layer of cloud on top.  This particular cloud spells turbulence with a capital T to me.

RV-10 Engine teardown

This past weekend I began the process of tearing the O-540 engine I bought down.  From my inexperienced perspective it looks like this engine is in great shape.

left side of the engine.  I am going to have to replace at least one of these drain back tubes.

right side of engine.  Another drainback tube is going to have to be replaced on this side

A quick pic of the accessory case before I started pulling it all apart

Cylinders removed.  Pistons look pretty normal to me.  No hotspots on the valves in the cylinders either.  Visually it looks like this engine could have gone another 2000 hours!

A few of the piston pins had some buildup on them that required me to use the piston pin removal tool.  You can see it attached to #5.

Another view of the piston  pin removal tool.

A few shots of the cam, cam followers and crankshaft follow....

Camshaft has no spalling I can see and the case looks great from my inexperience perspective.

Crankshaft looks good in there!

Not sure what it takes to get this darn oil pressure adjustment cover off but it takes more than I have currently.

Huge pile of parts.  Oh, and one coffee cup.  :-)

Piston on the left is after cleaning it up, the one on the right still has all the crusting on it.

I can't believe how big these piston pins are!  They weigh a pound or two and are solid steel.  I took this picture to try and give some perspective.

All thats left is the block with its internals (Crankshaft, Camshaft, cam followers, lifters).  I put the desiccant material under the plastic bag and then wrapped it up to prevent any dust and debris from getting inside while I wait to send it out for inspection.