Thanksgiving weekend

Turkey Day!  Yep, lets start this out right...

Dishin' up some dinner. 

Jeff and I flew to Hoquiam and this is us passing over Tacoma Narrows airport.

You have to love the pacific northwest some times....

The little town of hoquiam.  Airport is on that little strip of land in the far left side of the picture.

Base to final.

Looking back at Jeff as we headed home.

Somewhere down there is Martin's hangar at KTIW.  I was hoping to get a picture of him taxiing but it doesn't look like hes out yet.

Yes, I even spent some time working on the 9A. In this picture I am working on reorienting the exhaust pipes to give them a little more clearance to the firewall.

A little better picture of the final position.  Not tightened down yet and still a little adjusting to do on the left side.

The 9A is running again

Not much 10 work to report this week since I think I spent most of the time working on getting the 9A back in running condition...that and I was traveling for the first 3 days of the week.  However, I did get my fuel servo back from AirFlow Performance this week and unfortunately he told me that it was running on the lean side of the calibration curve.  Well that leaves only the air inlet as a potential source of over rich fuel.  The theory that was presented is that my intake is causing some turbulent air flow at the inlet of my fuel servo which is causing it to indicate a much richer mixture is needed.  So I am going to be doing a few things to my inlet to see if I can eliminate that issue but first I am going to fly it with a few simple mods to see if it really is an issue with the air inlet.  Hence this weeks pictures.

I also took the time while the 9A was down to do a bunch of little things to the airplane.  I had a flat tire on the pilot side so while I had that wheel off to replace the tube I decided it was time to replace the brake pads on both sides.  I also spent a lot of time sealing up some of the small holes I found in my baffles that were hard to see with all the inlet ducting installed.  As an oddity I also took a file to the cooling fins between the valve guides...its one area where the casting process can leave a lot of "slag" and that also can affect cooling.

First up I decided to take a picture of the air inlet to my oil cooler.  I am going to have to do some work on this some day as well as I think I can make the airflow much smoother into the cooler with should help with cooling.

Next up you can barely see it here but on the left side of the picture you can see my new inlet ducting with the alternate air filer installed.  Look at the next picture and it might make more sense.

Here is a better view of the new inlet ducting.  This is the first configuration I tried and when I attempted to install the lower cowling I found that there is no way to make the alternate air duct fit inside on this side.  However, Jeff or Harry suggested I might be able to make it work if I removed my alternator and installed one on the vacuum pad on the aft end of the engine.

In this picture you can see the narrow channel that the air ducting has to fit in.

So here it is with the alternator removed and the new inlet ducting installed.  Works perfectly!!  However, now I have to buy a new alternator.  I guess that's ok because I need one for the 10 anyway.  One thing to note on this view is the huge gap between the new inlet duct and the cowling inlet bung.  I am going to have to fabricate a reducer that is about 3" long to bridge that gap.

Project weekend

I took this friday off and Amy is gone doing one of the "girl" things for the weekend so I got a chance to work on a few different projects.  A little work on the Rv-10 elevators, and a little work on the 9A.

My new priming "booth"...well at least the priming table.  I decided to start using the downstairs area to do priming since it smells so strong.  I have lots of room down there but not much light so I purchased 3 new 48" LED lights, a few air fittings, and some new air hose and spent the day Friday putting this together.  I was hoping to do one batch of priming before I quit but by the time I had all of this done I was beat...

Rudder horn riveted on.

Spar doublers and nutplates for the elevator attach bolts riveted on

Counterbalance arms riveted together

Priming session #1 with the new setup complete.  worked nicely!

What the heck is that?  You've seen it before, this is my induction filter housing assembly.  As I mentioned last week I sent my fuel servo off to AirFlowPerformance to get tested, well I got a call from Don and it turns out my servo is flowing on the lean side of the curve.  Exactly opposite of what I expected to hear.  After a brief discussion we came to the conclusion that there must be some air inlet issues if the fuel is correct.  Next step is to see about reworking the inlet and this is the picture I sent to Don showing the current configuration.

As I was riveting the ribs on the elevator skins I had an unusual "blowout".  The rivet must have tipped over and split the dimpled hole.  Oh well, I ordered a new rib from Vans...no biggie.

All but that final rib ready for the next step.

One last flight...for a while

This weekend I got to fly with Travis on Saturday.  We actually headed toward Friday Harbor but the weather wasn't so good so we flew on around Seattle and landed at Bremerton to have some dinner.  I guess I should say Travis flew us around.  He did his first take-off, flew the entire trip, and then did his first landing!!

We got back to Puyallup just before legal dark so I fueled up the airplane, did 3 takeoffs and landings at night, and then Travis jumped back in so we could do some night flying.  It was a gorgeous night for flying!

Today I took one more flight with Harry and Jeff up to Arlington for breakfast.  I say one more flight because when I got back to Puyallup I took the fuel servo, flow divider, and prop off of the airplane.  The fuel servo and flow divider are getting shipped to AirFlow Performance for overhaul and inspection.  The prop came home with me so I can do some cleanup and painting of the back side.  I also brought home the plenum so I could finish the painting that I didn't do last spring.

I did get some work done on the 10 as well.  No pictures because it was just deburring, scuffing, cleaning and priming.  I should be able to start assembling the elevators this week.

Took this picture after Travis and I put the airplane away for the night on Saturday.

Nice fog in the valley.

Neat silhouette of Jeff against the rising sun.

Turning final for Arlington.  If you look close you will see Jeff just crossing the threshold.

Took this picture for reference but this is where the flow divider is suppose to sit.

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.