Why I Didn't Work on my Airplane Last Night

It's important to realize, but perhaps not intuitively obvious, that the act of building an airplane typically does not happen in a vacuum. The reality is that the airplane building project, even as meritorious as it is, often has to be set aside in favor of competing demands on my limited amounts of disposable time. Time, I've learned, is often very like money in a couple of respects: first, you seem to never enough of either, and second, you typically have more of one than the other.

So, where has all of my time gone? Well, I have a few things going on that seem to be demanding more than their fair share of my attention. First of all, I've been working on the leaking fuel tank on the RV-6. As you may recall, what started as a minor seepage on the left tank became a full-blown nine gallon leak under the ministrations of my local A&P. To be fair, it was my decision to have him attempt a repair with the tank still on the airplane; in retrospect it would have been best to just bite the bullet and remove the tank. And I would have made that decision, as it turns out, had I known how relatively easy it is to remove a fuel tank from an RV-6. Removing two 'B' nuts for the fuel and vent lines, a screw that holds the fuel indicator sensor line, a big bolt that supports the weight of the tank, and seventy-two screws is all that's required. It takes maybe half an hour.

It would take a couple of days for the Pro-Seal (fuel tank sealant) to set up after being applied Saturday morning, so I decided to merge another little project into the schedule. I've been right up against the limit of available disk space on my computer for quite awhile and it was becoming critical to do something about it. A quick trip to Best Buy for a new hard drive was all it took to come home with a spanking new 2 terabyte drive. I was surprised that a 2TB drive is even available (I remember the days when a hard drive with less than one millionth of that capacity was as big as a beer keg), much less that it was only $89. I'd had to decide between that drive and one half the size priced at $79. The faster drive was smaller, but faster. Since the new drive is intended for storage, I decided that capacity and reliability were more important than speed, especially for just a $10 difference.

I plugged the new drive into the computer without any difficulty whatsoever (which surprised me), but the computer failed to recognize that it was even there (which did not surprise me). Thus began a journey of pain and frustration that is not yet complete nearly a week later. After a few hours of monkeying around down in the BIOS (the very guts of a computer - a mistake here can be fatal) I managed to get the computer to 'see' the new hard drive by changing some settings that have not often even been seen by mere mortals. I took a break to pat myself on the back for having resolved such a thorny and exotic problem. I figured one person in 10,000 could accomplish such a miracle.

The other 9,999 would have been smart enough to just have the drive installed by someone that knew what they were doing.

I rebooted the computer and logged into Windows. Windows still couldn't find the drive, though. Off to Google where I learned that the drive has to be "initialized" first. I did that, and proudly patted myself on the back for a job well done. Welcome, drive F:, you will be a great help.

What's that you say? You need to be formatted first?

Ok, let's try the 'Quick Format' option.

Fail.

Sigh.

Let's try the 'Deep Format' option.

[six hours go by]

Fail.

Sigh.

Try again, thinking that maybe someone had bumped the cancel button.

[six hours go by]

Fail.

Swear. Stupid Windows crap.

[Next day]

I downloaded a different disk format utility to try.

[six hours go by]

Fail.

Consider suicide.

Try again.

[six hours go by]

Fail.

Swear. It's Wednesday by this time. I'm still doing this in parallel with fixing the RV-6 fuel tank. We'll get back to that.

I noticed that the formatting seemed to be failing right around the halfway point.

Google "2TB drive format fails at 1TB"

Google: "There's an easy fix for that. Just download these new disk drivers from nVidia."

Piece of cake, that. Apparently the brilliant folks at nVidia had, like me, never envisioned a day when a consumer could walk into Best Buy and walk out with a 2TB drive and had imposed a 1.1TB limit.

I downloaded the drivers and applied them, all the while patting myself on the back for having fixed another problem. We're well into '1 person in 100,000' territory here.

Rebooted.

Fail.

WHAT????

The computer would not even boot up. It just sat there saying 'Detecting Array' or something helpful like that. That's not good! Having only changed one thing (the disk drivers), there was no doubt at all as to where the problem came from. Bad drivers. Unfortunately, there's no way to fix that if the drives won't even work! There are few feelings of despair deeper than those you get from "bricking" your own computer.

I was completely at a loss. I had no idea what to try next. I don't have a Windows boot CD, so I couldn't sneak my way back into Windows that way, and even if I could, I'd have no hard drives.

As a last, desperate attempt to save the computer, I acted on a gut feeling. You have to realize that part of the "story of my life" is that things that have worked perfectly for years will fail at exactly the same time that I make a risky change to some tangentially related thing. In this case, I had changed the disk drivers. Could it be that there was actually some unexpected and unrelated problem with the drives? I decided that I had nothing to lose; I removed all of the cables to the drives and put them back on.

It worked! I was able to get to the Windows log-in screen! I immediately logged in, patting myself on the back for another miraculous save. One in a million, mister! One. In. A. Million.

"Preparing your desktop..."

Whuuuh? I already have a Windows des....

BAM! BSOD. Blue. Screen. Of. Death.

Swear.

Re-visit the idea of suicide. Also consider blasting PC to smithereens with shotgun.

Or both, noting that the order would need to be reversed.

The BSOD is yet another pit of despair. The emotional roller coaster had just gone down another steep hill.

I diddled around with stuff, hoping against hope that the blind squirrel would find another nut. After half a dozen tries, 'Preparing your desktop...' actually took me into Windows.

"Your profile is corrupt. This is a temporary profile; any changes you make will not be saved. Contact your system administrator."

I'll take that deal. By this time it was late Wednesday night. We had gone from Winter to Spring in one day, and our air conditioner is broken. Windows is going to have to wait.

So, what went on with the leaking fuel tank during the same period? Well, that's another story.

I put it back on the airplane Monday night, then went to find the gas guy to put five gallons of gas in. The idea was to put in five gallons at a time in case it leaked; we'd be able to locate the leaking area, if there is one, more easily that way.

There was good news and bad news. The bad news was that they wanted $6.18/gal for it. The good news? They didn't have any.

Tuesday night I stopped by again. I chased down the gas dude and told him I still needed that five gallons of gas, and that I'd meet him at the hangar. After ten minutes of waiting for him, I figured there had been a miscommunication somewhere. I was just getting ready to go find him when I heard "Chuff..... Bang..... Growl..... Chuff...." somewhere down the taxiway. A few minutes later, the truck emerged around the corner of the hangars, doing about half a mile an hour. I apologized to the fuel dude, "I didn't know I was supposed to help you push it."



An inspection on Wednesday afternoon showed no leakage. I decided to skip the five-gallons-at-a-time test due to the difficulty in getting the fuel truck out there, so I went with ten gallons. As I was patting myself on the back for being such a swell guy and saving the fuel dude the effort and humiliation of driving that busted up truck out to my hangar, I saw the receipt that I was signing:

$6.70/gallon.

Sigh.

Swear.

I'll never get this thing done!

I'm sure I'm not the first and won't be the last to feel like time's a-wasting and I'm not getting any closer to getting my airplane done no matter how much I try. I looked at the in-dash thermometer while driving home from the paying job this afternoon and saw a passably comfortable 28F degrees. It looked like the snow we've had over the last couple days had abated, so I wouldn't have to clear the lengthy driveway of stately Gamble Manor again. Yep, nothing to keep me from just changing my clothes and heading straight to the hangar to finish up the riveting on the bottom of the left wing. It should be easy - the middle skin is already clecoed into place, a task I took care of last time I was out there.

It wasn't to be. Co-pilot Egg, who truth be told really struggled with the "backing up between some traffic cones" portion of her driving test, had had a little incident while backing out of the driveway earlier in the day.

Here's what met me as I turned into the driveway:

It's pretty clear what happened. When I had cleared the driveway last night, her car had been parked over in the corner of the apron and I had to work around it. When she got in it to go to school this morning, she couldn't see the edge between the driveway and the hill sloping down to the creek. She got a front tire off of the edge of the driveway, and because it's a front wheel drive car, the tire just started spinning when it got into the snow/grass of the yard. At that point it was pretty much pre-ordained that the harder she tried to get back on the driveway, the further the car was going to slide down the hill.

So, rather than go to the hangar and pull some rivets, I'm instead going to have to find a way to pull that car back up onto the driveway.

Rats.

And I was in such a good mood, too. I've been chuckling the last couple of days over what has to be the best practical joke ever.

A couple of days ago, I was having lunch in the little kitchen we have at the office. One of the ladies I work with was very excited about her recent discovery of Grapples. What's a "Grapple?" Well, in short it's an apple that tastes like a grape.

Now if you're anything like me, you're wondering why we need apples that taste like grapes. I've always thought that grapes were doing a perfectly fine job of tasting like grapes and no assistance was needed from other fruits to fill that niche in the taste spectrum. It's not as if we need bananas that taste like tuna fish or pears that taste like artichokes, right?

Alas, someone disagreed with me and invented the Grapple. Naturally, the discussion veered around to the question of just how they get an apple to taste like a grape. The co-worker postulated that they must cross the apple seeds with grape seeds. I found that hard to believe, mostly because the Grapple looked exactly like an apple. If it was a true grape/apple hybrid, one could fairly expect it to look like something a little different than an apple.

To prove my case, I returned to my office where I Googled "grapple." That found many instances of the word 'grapple,' so I narrowed my search to "grapple fruit." Ah ha! A hit! And there it was: a "How Are They Made?" tab. Great! And the text is conveniently copyable:

How Is A Grāpple® Brand Apple Made?

Grāpple® brand apples begin either as Washington Extra Fancy Gala or Fuji Apples, depending upon the season. These "premium apples" are the ones that take on the grape flavor best. This Patented Process is complex and the ingredient mix primarily includes concentrated grape flavor and pure water (USPP #7,824,723). All ingredients are USDA and FDA approved and the process has been licensed by the Washington State Department of Agriculture.

There is nothing but flavor being infused into the apple. A relaxing bathing process prepares our apples for you or your kids. The apple takes on no additional sugars or calories. They are not genetically altered in any way. The apple is as healthy as ever but now has the new exciting grape flavor. The process is better explained by the Food Network's "Unwrapped" show entitled "Grapeful". Check your local listings orclick here to find out the next time it is on in your area.

Apples are a fantastic snack. Grapes are a wonderful snack. Try a Grāpple® brand apple today, and enjoy the best of both of them in one!

The fact that the text could be copied started me thinking, and that usually leads to trouble. I thought that maybe I could enhance that text a little bit and have a little fun by emailing it around. Interestingly and provocatively, it turned out that not only could I enhance the text, but I could also paste it back into a screen shot of the web site. A few minutes in Paint and the deed was done:

You'll have to click on the picture to make it big enough to read it. Basically what I added was that formaldehyde and carbon monoxide are used in the processing but that consumers needn't worry about any ill effects unless they are elderly or very young. I printed off the screen shot and took it back down to the kitchen. I honestly thought that it was so outlandish and that these folks knew me so well after a decade of working together that they'd never fall for it. Even so, I went in with a stoic game face and cavalierly handed the screen shot to the lady with the Grapples, acting for all the world like there was nothing at all special about it. As she was reading the first paragraph, I could tell when she had gotten to my additions by the amazing heights her eyebrows were reaching. I struggled to keep my face neutral as she passed the page around to some of the co-workers that had tried slices of the Grapples, apologizing profusely for having fed them formaldehyde.

I wasn't able to keep up the charade any longer and burst into laughter. And I'm still laughing about it today!

Just flailing around for a few days

Right up until I decided that it would be easier to skip over Section 23 and jump ahead to some of the later sections that require easy access to the bottom of the fuselage, I was quite comfortable in following the enforced linear path of "do this, then do this, when you're done with those, do this." Now that I have options, I seem to have lost my sense of steadfast direction. I could work on the rudder pedals, or I could work on the fuel system, or I could starting painting some of the interior parts, or... well, I just can't seem to decide.

Any decision being better than no decision, I had started down the path of doing the fuel system. That was going fine until I tried to bend the first length of tube. As it turns out, there is a difference between the cheapy tube bender from AutoZone and the more sophisticated tools available from airplane shops. The first bend was to be 90 degrees. And it was! Unfortunately, it was a 90 degree bend with a crimp in the tube for the last 30 degrees. The tube bender didn't have any facility for keeping the tube down in the support channel (I don't know, what do you call it?) and the tube lifted out as I was bending the final 30 degrees. Crimpsville, just like that.  Bummer.

Having ruined an entire four or five inches of precious tubing (which in my prescience I have already ordered more of) I decided that it would be more expedient to buy a proper tool rather than throw more tube into the maw of the crappy bender.  I immediately placed an order with Aircraft Spruce, hoping that the tool would arrive quickly in order to maintain what little momentum I had developed on the fuel system work.

It wasn't to be.

Aircraft Spruce called the next day to tell me that my Visa had been declined. Now I don't want to brag, but overdrawing my Visa account simply doesn't happen. Something else was amiss. I called Spruce and verified that I had entered the numbers and expiration date correctly. We verified my billing address. All of that was correct. On to the bonus questions*:

"Where were you born?"

In a hospital.

"No, what city?"

Oh. Cincinnati, Ohio.

"Is your blood type B-positive?"

Yes.

"Were you married on May 23, 1992?"

Hold on, let me check my notes since I always get this one wrong.... yes I was.

"Well, it would appear that you're well and truly screwed. What do you want to do?"

Nothing, really. I'd have to say that I'm pretty happy in the marriage.

"No, I meant about the order."

Oh.

* It should be obvious, but just in case it's not, the bonus question portion of the above is purely fictional. Well, not the part about being flat out of luck with the Visa - it actually was declined.


I went ahead and cancelled the order since  I didn't happen to be carrying my spare Visa card. I then had the CFO contact the kind folks at Visa to see what was going on. The answer? "We stopped approving new charges after a suspicious charge was made on your card."

Really? Suspicious? It was a $1.00 charge at iTunes. In case you're not familiar, let me tell you a little something about iTunes. It is a website that sells songs to be downloaded onto iPods. The cost of the songs? Well, $1.00. So is it truly suspicious to see a purchase of $1.00 from a web site where 99% of the product for sale is priced at $1.00?  As it turns out, yes. It's counterintuitive to me, but Visa says that there is often a "test" charge on a stolen card to see if it works, and charges like they saw at iTunes are very typical ways of testing. Who knew? It seems to me the best test charge would be to actually go out and buy something expensive right away rather than tip off the Visa Police with a measly $1.00 song, but I guess that would come with more risk because you'd be at a physical location where you could be caught. But then again, doesn't the $1.00 test charge carry the same risk, albeit with the addition of a high degree of false confidence? "Yeah, man, I don't know how they caught me. The test charge went fine!"

So now I'm waiting for a tube bender. In the interim I was able to complete the inventory of the wing kit. There was just one little piece missing, and a call to Van's quickly got a replacement on its way to my front porch. They're always pleasant to deal with on these kinds of calls. I always expect an inquisition asking whether I had carefully checked within the folds of the mountain of paper the parts come wrapped in, but they never do. The apologize for the inconvenience, verify my address (and thankfully have no questions about my credit card), and send the part on its way.

I guess I'll start on the rudder pedals now.

But first, a question from the mail bag that I think warrants an answer:

Did you try filling the tube up with fine sand to prevent crimping? Works fantastic for regular copper plumbing pipes.

This is an interesting question because I came across this same suggestion when I was researching tube bending issues. The problem is that I am loath to introduce any more foreign materials than absolutely necessary to the fuel lines. It only takes one grain of sand or other tiny obstruction to block a carburetor jet. It's inevitable that a little aluminum will get in the tubes from the cutting and burnishing, and every effort will be made to clean out the tubes before they are installed on the plane, but I just cringe at the idea of getting a grain of sand in there that steadfastly resists my cleaning efforts but eventually acquiesces to the pernicious demands of flowing gasoline, only to lodge itself in a very inconvenient location further downstream.

That said, if the fancy tube bender also includes more than a modicum of FAIL with its more sophisticated feature set, I will have to look into other means of bending the tubes. I don't think that's going to happen, but if it does I will have to try a more old-fashioned method. What I would try next is tube bending springs. Just like sand, they're dirt cheap (heh! I really crack me up!) and have the benefit of working external to the tubing.

"I hate to be a nag, but..."

I caught Van's five minutes after they opened the doors this morning. The last couple of nights have found me wide awake at 3:00 am, wondering what could possibly be wrong with my fuselage kit order. It's been six weeks since the original estimate date, and they are currently showing only an eleven week lead-time on the fuse kit on the Van's web site. That got me to wondering if somehow my order had been completely forgotten.

"No," she said, "it's still waiting on a center section."

Once I got off the phone, I started wondering just how critical this "center section" is, and why I couldn't get started on the kit while they gather up a center section to ship to me later. Via looking at some builder's blogs I determined that there was no hope of that: "Step one: Prepare F-1204 Center Section."

Well then.

They expect a shipment of center sections later this week. Where they're coming from, I have no idea. I'm think (hope!!) I'm near the front of the line, though.

It would have faster to have needed a kidney.

Still waiting...

No word on the fuselage kit, but that leaves me plenty of time to look at things like this:

Train Busting

These always seem to end the same way:



It was a nice evening formation flight while it lasted, though.

PC flying

With no building to do and a snow, ugly day keeping me inside, there's nothing better than a little flying on the computer:



It didn't end all that well for me, did it? It's been that kind of week...

Disappointing news

Especially disappointing in light of the charge to my Visa for the remaining 75% of the cost.

David
WE have to delay the fuselage shipment a couple more weeks due to a lack of center
sections. Our apologies for this delay.
Vans

The love? Not quite feelin' it.