On her feet!

Today was the last day of my summer vacation from the paying job and I was thrilled to see that we would again be enjoying cloud free skies and calm air. Before heading back to the Corporate America grind, there were a couple of things that I wanted to do.

First in line was a flight down to the mountainous deep south of Ohio to visit the Jackson Two. There were two reasons for this trip: first, I wanted to pick up some of their surplus fiberglass cloth for doing the fairing work around the canopy, and second I wanted to deliver Torsten's fuel line leak check kit to them so they could check their lines. (Surprise, Torsten! I meant to talk to you about this, but the opportunity to get two tasks done and get to fly too was too good to miss)

I wanted to get an early start since I was pretty sure that the afternoon would be another of the 90+ degree boilers that we've had all week. By flying in the morning hours I was able to enjoy a smooth ride even down at the 2,500' level. As the verdant fields of the early summer rolled by under my wings, I could see that they were doomed to lose their fight against the mid-July haze. By afternoon it would be a bumpy ride with low visibility in the muggy haze. I'd be home by then, though, so it was easy to savor the pleasant moments cruising over the flat lands of Central Ohio.

Of course, once I got far enough to the southeast to see the hills beneath me reaching ever higher, my relaxing flight was somewhat tenser as each little burble from the engine reminded me that the topology beneath me was nowhere near as forgiving as that I had enjoyed for the first half of the flight. My perusal of the scenery now had more of a purpose as I continuously scanned the hills looking for an open field to head towards if the engine were to roll over and die. I have a young, strong, and reliable engine, though, so the "what if" thinking is really more of a habit from my earlier flying days in much less pampered equipment. Still, it's a good habit to keep. One never knows.

The afternoon was set aside for the second task which was to get the RV-12 standing on its own feet. This seemed attainable since the main gear legs were already installed, leaving only the nose gear to be bolted into place. And, of course, the wheels would need to be mounted to their respective gear legs.

Installing the main wheels was easy enough, but I also decided to install the brake line fitting once the wheels were mounted. This proved to be a little more difficult since the blue fittings where nowhere to be seen. I soon struck me that I had seen those fittings quite recently. In fact, I had seen them as I was installing them into the landing gear mount blocks! Well, that was a silly mistake. The fittings that go into the mount blocks are supposed to be brass. And there they were, two brass fittings right there in the bag where I had expected to find blue ones.

So.... out came the landing gear mount blocks. Again.

With that problem fixed, it was fairly straightforward work to get the nose wheel fork mounted and the wheel in place.

So here she is, her first time standing on her own feet:

This was certainly a moment worth celebrating!

Too bad it isn't a tail dragger...

... because if it was, the landing gear installation would be done. As it is, the training wheel still has yet to be installed.

I was the first to arrive at the shop this morning (which is kind of expected, what with me being the guy with the key) and whipped through the final tightening of the wheel bolts and the addition of 28 PSIs of air, each.

Harley showed up next and we made the critical move of the fuselage to a regular top-on-the-top orientation. This is more than likely the way the fuselage will be oriented from here on out.

I spent a lot of time last night reading up on all of the tribulations others have had when it comes to installing the main landing gear legs, my hopes being that I could apply the tips and tricks they had come up with to our installation, thus avoiding hours of tedious and sweaty labor. The most common suggestion was to go to the hardware store and get some off-the-shelf bolts that are a bit longer than the actual AN bolts that will hold the brackets that hold the gear in place. The idea was that having the bracket dangling lower would made it easier to get the tongue of the gear leg slid into place. So that's what I did.

(Note that you can see two blue brake line fittings on the powder-coated part. This is wrong! The one further inside the airplane should be brass!)

I also double checked that all of the bolts would fit easily through the powder-coated steel blocks; that has been an issue in the past. Not to worry: all of the bolts slid through their assigned holes with no obstructions felt at all. There are also some bare steel "wear plates" that needed to be prepared by smearing grease on them to keep them from rusting. That was the usually messy job that results from anything involving grease. I hate the stuff.

Cadillac Pete showed up at about this time and we got serious about getting the left leg bolted in. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite that easy. First of all, I couldn't get the outboard bracket to fit into the channel because a couple of rivet ends were in the way. They were blind rivets, so they weren't able to see me coming at them with a drill and it was easy to just drill them out. The perfect ambush!

That wasn't the end of the problems, though. Try as we might, we just couldn't get three of the bolts to go all the way down through there respective holes. Eventually we managed to get them into a sort of bolt purgatory where they would go no further in despite our most strenuous efforts, but nor could we get them back out. As I looked at the problem from underneath, it appeared that I had allowed the greasy steel wear plate to get tilted, thus binding the whole operation up. I thought if we could just get the bolts back out and get that plate leveled, it might all proceed much more smoothly.

This ordeal had been going on for a couple of rather hot hours at that point, so I somewhat desperately went to the toolbox for a sharp, pointy tool that I could use to push the bolts back out from the bottom side. I knew everyone was getting a little tired when I said, "I'm going to give this my awl!" and didn't even get a chuckle. But the awl worked even if the pun fell short; the bolts were soon out.

It's all kind of a blur now, but somewhere in all of that turmoil I somehow noticed that the bolts wouldn't fit through the holes in the second wear plate over on the bench. I had been so conscientious about testing the fit of the powder-coated parts that I had completely neglected to test the bare metal parts. The bolts were simply stuck at the point of trying to get through the plate.

The problem was quickly rectified with the judicious application of some good ole drillin' and I was soon able to theatrically drop a bolt through the holes that had caused so much grief. As it dropped through with complete ease, Pete couldn't help laughing. He was summarily brusquely chastised for laughing about my wear plate fiasco, but having completely deadpanned my awl quip. He was already on thin ice anyway after having committed the unpardonable sin of having photographed my bald(ing) spot, which you surely will have noticed above. I would have fired the last guy that did that if it hadn't been, well... me. It just figures that it was that picture that he managed to get into focus!

With all of the bolts in place after what had to be two or three hours of frustration, we had a leg installed.

As it turned out, the secret to installing these gear legs isn't hardware store bolts and dangling brackets. Rather, the secret is to do it with three people. The division of duties is this:

- one guy on top holding the wrench on nuts or bolts, depending on which are in work, and helping position things.
- one guy below doing the same, but in a much more awkward position.
- one guy leaning on the side of the plane performing high-level management functions.

Guess which position I favored!

Having learned that we didn't need to do all of the temporary bolt dangling stuff and that the gear would slide easily into place if there were enough hands involved and all of the holes were drilled to the right size beforehand, we got the second leg fully installed in fifteen or twenty minutes. I didn't even need to drill out any rivets.

As I started to clean up tools, I discovered why the second leg seemed to fit so much more easily: I had forgotten to install one of the wear plates.

This is not a happy face. The leg had to come back out.

Still, it was much easier to get the leg back in now that we had it down to a science, although one rivet did still need to be drilled out. Here's the crew just before heading to the Galloway Tavern for a well-deserved pizza: