Three Little Kittens Lost Their Glittens...

Wait. Glittens?

Well, yes.

In another of those instances where I have an idea for something that needs to be invented, only to find that it already has been, I ran across a pair of glittens at Walmart this morning.

The idea came to me a few days ago when I was out in the hangar riveting on the final bottom skin on the left wing. I was fairly comfortable in the 28F degree weather with the notable exception of my fingers, where I had cut the tips off of my gloves to provide better dexterity when working with little things like rivets. I figured that I needed to invent a pair of gloves with removable finger tips so I could have the best of both worlds.

As it turns out, it has already been done. Someone has combined the mitten with the glove, to create what I am calling the "glitten." It's a wild and crazy idea, almost as crazy as, say, combining an apple with a grape.

The wing had been flipped over on Friday night and was thus ready to have the leading edge of the skins folded back onto the top of the wing and riveted. I initially was under the impression that I would be riveting the skins in their entirety, but I quickly noticed that the notch in the ribs that will fit with the stiffened edge molded into the top skins would be covered if I did so.

The sent me scurrying back to the plans in an irrational panic that I had somehow managed to get the bottom skins installed so incorrectly that they were reaching too far over the top of the wing, an idea that I understood was clearly preposterous after just a couple of seconds of contemplation. A closer look at the plans showed where I had gone wrong: only the first few rows of rivets were to be installed.

But before I could do that, I had to get the skins wrapped around to the top of the wing and clecoed down. That was a bit of a battle, but persistent and tenacious pushing, shoving, and clecoing got it locked into place. I then grabbed the Sharpie(tm) and marked the areas to be riveted. Incorrectly, as it transpired. The big left parenthesis looking mark should start one more hole to the right.

Some of the clecos went in with more than a little difficulty, lubricated only by copious application of low-order (high-order words like F-bombs and the similar being reserved for really serious situations such as mis-cutting something or creasing a wing skin while trying to get it into the car) swear words. Given the difficulty of some of them, I thought it prudent to take a look under the hood to make sure that all of the clecos had caught rib flange rather than simply pushing the flange out of the way. That happened once before when I was putting the skins on the horizontal stabilator.

In all of the excitement, and likely distracted and intimidated by my vociferous application of off-color language, my photographer apparently forgot my standing order to never photograph my bald(ing) spot. There'll be hell to pay for that!

Once the skins were in place, the riveting was easy. Then those flaperon hinge thingys that I put together a couple of weeks ago needed to be retrieved from wherever it was that I had put them so I couldn't lose them and installed.

First, the little triangular bracket gets riveted to the bottom skin.

Then the actual assembly gets slid up through a slot in the wing to fit between the bracket and the wing rib. It's a very tight fit and the first one did not go easily at all. In fact, it took a lot more pushing, shoving, and swearing to get it in there. The second was a lot easier because I smeared a little Boelube on the part first, rather than depending on shouted invectives to provide lubrication.

It's hard to see, but the hinge mount thingy is sandwiched in there. It's still clecoed because I found it hard to believe that the normal LP4-3 blind rivets would be used to attach a part that thick; it seems to me that a longer rivet would be more appropriate. I decided to wait until after I had gotten home and researched it a little bit before using the shorter rivets. I have been unable to find anything that says that the shorter rivets aren't used there, so next time I'm out there I'll finish the job.

For now, here's the wing just about ready for the final sealing that will come when I add the top skins.

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!

Preventing Dave from Freezing

I didn't leave the house for two days. Just between you and me, nothing says "MOVE TO FLORIDA" like the single-digit temperatures and gloomy Ohio winter weather. I'll work in the hangar just fine when temps are in the 20's, I'll bring the propane heater when they're in the teens, but single digits keep me at home.

I'm not necessarily sold on Florida, but it has obvious benefits. Not all are weather related, either. There's more than one climate that I have to consider when pondering a move. One that may not be as obvious as the weather is the tax climate.

While Ohio's weather can be distinctly unfriendly to pilots and airplane builders, its tax climate is fairly benign, at least when it comes to owning an airplane. In Ohio, my annual airplane registration costs substantially less than the annual renewal of the license tags on my car. Florida is the same way. Not all states are, though. Many states charge an annual property tax on things like airplanes. These taxes, even at percentages as small as 3%, are prohibitive. Florida specifically exempts airplanes from those taxes but many of its neighbors do not. Georgia and the Carolinas do not. My choices seem to be Florida or Tennessee. It's not easy to make a determination because states don't consider it to be a relevant enough factor to mention on their taxation web sites.

When the weather gets bad enough to keep me at home, I spend a lot of time on the computer using Google maps to look at prospective retirement locations. Sure, retirement is a couple of decades away, but it's nice to have a plan, right? Besides, it kills time.

This weekend I found another way to kill time: I had the introduction, tail kit, and fuselage kit portions of this blog archived into a PDF file. PDF? Preventing Dave from Freezing?? No, it means Portable Document Format. Which in human-speak means you can read it on just about any computing device. The nice part about it is that people can download it and have it right on their computer/iPad/Kindle and not have to be teathered to the internet to read it. Does anyone care? I don't know, but I wanted to have a backup of it for myself and figured it would cost me nothing to share it with the world. Just in case.

Here's the link:

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B4DKCfPk8DZwZDJhNTAzMjgtYTBiMy00MWFkLTk5YjMtMzBmMDIzNDUxOTJj&hl=en

De-acclimatization

It takes a long time to get acclimatized to unpleasant things, but as it turns out it takes no time at all for the opposite to occur. For example, I've been working nine or more hours per day over on the other side of town for more than fifteen years. In that time I've gotten used to the thirty-five minute (nominal - far longer in bad weather, rush hour, or when a truck flips over on the highway, an event that happens with uncanny frequency) commute each way and the long work day. After seventeen days off, though, today felt like it lasted a week. The drive seemed to take forever and even though I was insanely busy all day trying to crawl back down into the day-to-day rut, the clock seemed to crawl.

I had also gotten used to working in the hangar with temperatures down in the low- to mid-20's, but the last few days have reached unbelievably warm temperatures in the 40's and 50's. Today was no exception, although it had dipped down into the high 30's by the time I got out to the hangar.

I was freezing out there! I have to start over from scratch on getting used to the colder weather.

Fortunately I was only out there for a little less than an hour and a half. My goal is to rivet on one wing skin a day until the wings are completely covered. It's actually fairly boring work, so I'm not sure there will be much to write about until it's done. I was pretty cold for the last third of the rivets and couldn't wait to get back to the warm house.

Plus I wanted to get home and get ready to watch THE Ohio $tate University try yet again to defeat an SEC team in their annual BcS bowl.

Go Buck$!!

Avionics

First, let's visit the letter bag:

J.R. Willett said...
Hi Dave,

I work for Dynon, and while I obviously can't comment on what Vans is planning, I can assure you that you will be well-supported no matter which Dynon product you end up with. We work hard to make sure that users of even our oldest products are fanatically happy. As you can probably imagine, our word-of-mouth reputation among our existing users is critically important to our future success.

Skyview has many improvements over the D180 generation of products (and many more Skyview software features are on the way), but if you are happy with what the D180 offers, you don't need to worry about the availability of support and repair.

Dynon is thriving, and we'll be there for you!

This is in response to something I said in my posting about biting the bullet and going ahead with placing my order for the finishing kit despite a small degree of market uncertainty regarding the emergence of the Dynon SkyView as an option for the RV-12.

To wit:

The SkyView has a number of advantages and it is arguably a better piece of equipment, but I remain unconvinced on the merits that the additional capabilities are really necessary in a plane as simple as the RV-12. What is inescapable, though, is that it will be well supported by Dynon for a much longer time horizon than the soon-to-be considered obsolete D-180.

This is great reassurance that I can safely choose to stick with the D-180 and be able to count on continued support from the manufacturer. I find this kind of service/support of aging products to be the exception rather than the rule in my line of work and it's gratifying that Dynon has a more customer friendly outlook. I have to say that I'm impressed with J.R. taking the time to pass along these assurances; customer service is a big deal to me and I love to see it done well. Thanks, J.R.!

Speaking of world-class customer service, I just spent more than an hour on the phone with a Van's Aircraft employee trying to figure out why Capt. Rush's autopilot won't work with his Dynon D-180. This is more of a Van's issue than it is a Dynon issue because the problem is clearly in the wiring. We worked on it for four hours straight and were completely at a loss as to what was wrong, but Ryan J. at Van's patiently stayed on the phone with us and talked us through some trouble shooting steps. It looks like the problem has been narrowed down to the connector that carries the wires from the back of the switch panel out to the autopilot disconnect switch. We both thought that there was something wrong with the switch, but Ryan was able to help us prove that the switch was working okay. The wiring inside of the switch box was also verified as functional. That leaves the connector. When I left, Capt. Rush was struggling to get the wires out of the connector to see if he could isolate the problem.

Once the autopilot problem is solved (assuming!!), we'll move on to trying to figure out why the GPS is also refusing to communicate with the Dynon. Ryan was able to give use some tips for working on that problem as well. All of this work on Capt. Rush's plane kept me from getting out to the hangar to rivet wing skins onto my own wings, but it will be worth it when it comes time to install my own avionics. I have a much better feel now for how all of the wiring and components interact and that can only benefit me when it comes time to install my own stuff, whether it be a SkyView or a D-180.

On the topic of my own wiring, I decided to test the continuity between the stall warning switch and the terminals on the wing root, figuring it better to find a problem now than later. Checks good!

I also ran a length of fishing line from the terminal panel out to the wing tip in case I decide to add the lighting kit later. The fishing line will assist in pulling the required electrical wire through the wing. The RV-12 doesn't have inspection ports or easily removable wingtips, so it seems prudent (and the plans suggest it) to make preparations now rather than suffer later.

Progress Stalled

Progress on the airplane has been stalled for a couple of days due to the nagging lower back injury sustained earlier this week. I've been to the chiropractor a couple of times and he, normally a veritable miracle worker, has only been able to move the pain point around to new locations. It started in my lower back, he moved it to a shooting pain down the length of my right leg, and finally got it cornered in an area I can live with. Not to put too fine a line on the final location, but let's just say that I had to cancel family plans to go to a two and a half hour movie because I didn't think I'd be able to sit through it. Emphasis on "sit."

That's all just fine with me since I can now stand and walk around almost as if nothing had happened to my back. The timing was perfect for getting back to work on the plane as we have been the appreciative recipients of a wonderful warm air mass sent up to us from the deep south. Can you imagine a temperature of 67F on New Years Eve? Well, of course you can; you live in Australia. But to us winter sufferers in Central Ohio this is a heat wave! I'm never one to waste good weather, so I ended up spending most of the day and evening out at the hangar.

I was working on the stall warning switch, so in effect my stalled progress became progress on the stall warning. What nice linguistic symmetry, albeit somewhat forced.

It started easily enough. Nearly all of the parts were located in a single brown bag.

The stall warning switch is essentially a micro switch sandwiched between two mounting plates. A metal vane is installed - this vane will protrude out through a slot cut into the leading edge of the left wing. When the angle of attack on that wing gets high enough to indicate that the wing will soon stall, the airflow that normally presses down on the vane will instead force it upward. This will cause the arm of the vane to activate the stall warning switch, thus closing an electrical circuit that will sound a warning horn in the cockpit.

The two mounting plates need to be final drilled to the sizes required for the two screws that will hold them together and for the screw that the vane will pivot around.

I just noticed that my Harbor Freight vise is "Made in Ching." I always knew that tool sizes at Harbor Freight were only approximations; now I know that spelling is too! (Cruel Karmic irony - I'm in here fixing the spelling of "vane" - I had used "vain" instead.)

This was still fairly early in the morning. We had yet to attain our eventual high of 67F, so a Thermos of coffee was still welcome.

Plus, I needed a little caffeine fortification before tackling the job of sorting out the washers that would be used as spacers when building up the switch mechanism. There were five different sizes all tossed into the same bag. There were three actual screw diameter sizes, with two of those three sets each having two separate widths. I separated them into piles by using visual inspection.

Then I ran into a problem with the plans. I know it might seem as if I'm being churlish when I call Van's to task on these minor problems with the normally industry-leading, excellent plans, but it is inarguably the case that these plans need to be as close to perfect as they can be made. The reason for that is the way the kit is certified in the eyes of the FAA. As an E-LSA, I am actually building this airplane on behalf of Van's. When it's done, I will certify that I followed the plans to the letter, and Van's will then inherit the liability for the safety and certification compliance of the completed aircraft. With that in mind, one would think that Van's would want to ensure that the thing is being built 100% correctly.

So here's why I bring this up. Do you see the washers labeled NAS1149FN432P, NAS1149FN416P, and NAS1149FN832P on the drawing? Well, you won't find any washers labeled that way in the kit inventory. What you will find instead are washers labeled AN960-4, AN960-4L, and AN960-8. Through a little intuition and detective work I was able to cross-identify those specs, but it would seem that Van's could correct that mismatch pretty easily and avoid any potential problems. On the other hand, the inventory had notes that pointed out the the AN960-4 is .032" thick, while the AN460-4L is .016" thick. My intuitive leap was that the #4 size rivet that was .032" think was probably the NAS1149FN432P. And so on. So the information is there, you just have to work for it.

Once I had that straightened out, it was a simple job to build the stack of parts into the final assembly.

With that done, a drilling template gets prepared. This template will be used to locate the holes that will be drilled in a rectangular piece of plastic. That piece of plastic will get mounted in the wing root where it will mate with a similar piece of plastic embedded in the side of the fuselage. The point of this exercise is to create a set of electrical terminals that will make contact when the wing is installed onto the airplane. This will allow the electrical current to flow out to the stall warning switch. The reason for this relatively complex way of making the electrical connection is that the wings are intended to be removable. You wouldn't want to have to connect and disconnect wires every time you wanted to remove or replace the wings. There would be too much risk of forgetting to do it, and there would be a lot of recurring stress on the connectors that would eventually lead to their failure.

There are two halves to the drilling template, so I marked the cut line with a Sharpie and separated the halves with the band saw.

The template gets clamped to the piece of plastic, the holes are drilled with #40 pilot holes, and are then final drilled to #19 or #30, depending on location.

The plastic terminal block then gets riveted to the mounting bracket that will hold it in place on the wing. A washer gets put on the shop head of the rivets, presumably to spread the pulling load of the rivet to keep it from simply pulling through the soft plastic.

Then it's time to start on the actual wiring. The first piece of wire is a short connector that will attach to the wing rib and provide a ground connection to the switch.

After fabricating that wire, the switch assembly gets mounted to the wing. The plans described what was going to happen. One screw would go through the hole at the bottom of the switch assembly and provide both a post for the ground wire and a pivot point for the switch assembly. The top screw would go into a slot; this would allow the switch assembly to pivot to so it could be precisely adjusted to just the right position. This triggered a recollection of a similar arrangement on the airsickness detectors (air vents) on the fuselage. Those too work by means of a screw running through a slot, and I remembered that the slot needed quite a bit of filing to make it work smoothly. I tested the switch assembly with a screw and sure enough, it needed some work with the file.

Quite proud of myself for proactively preventing the need to remove the switch after the hassle of installing it, I confidently proceeded with the installation.

Inexplicably forgetting that pride invariably goeth before the falleth, I blithely struggled with fitting the wing skin in place to ensure that the vane moved freely in the slot, assured in my knowledge that all would work well and there would be no reason to undo all of this effort. What could go wrong? After all, I had surmounted the difficulty in breaking the washer identification code, I had detected the slot trap and rectified the misfit problem, and really, it's just a simple switch, right?

And verily came the inevitable falleth. The vane was hard against the edge of the slot and would not move at all.

I removed the top clecoes on the wing skin and was able to remove the switch without having to completely remove the skin. Visual inspection of the switch assembly showed two things: the screw that was acting as a pivot for the vane was slanted, and the vane could do with moving inboard by one washer width. Both problems were addressed by loosening the two main screws, removing the pivot screw, changing the order of the washers from "two washers - vane - one washer" to "one washer - vane - two washers," and making sure the pivot screw didn't pick up any slant while re-tightening the main screws. In truth, I probably would have gotten away with just taking the slant out of the vane pivot screw.

Screwed back in place, the short ground wire is attached and a second wire, this one 68" long, is attached to the switch and run back to the wing root through the bushings in the ribs.

At the wing root terminal block, the 68" wire is bolted into place and another short ground wire is fabricated and attached to the terminal block.

The terminal block and second ground wire are mounted to the wing. Now we know why we needed nutplates on that rib.

The stall warning switch was the last thing from keeping me from installing the wing skins. It was getting dark and I wouldn't be able to work much longer, but there were a few folks hanging around the airport enjoying the temperate clime and I was going to need help flipping the wing in order to start skinning the bottom. I grabbed the help while it was available and couldn't resist the urge to get the first piece of skin clecoed on.

Being as it was New Years Eve, an impromptu party broke out in one of the neighboring hangars. There was champagne, munchie/snacks, and eventually two large pizzas acquired from the local biker's bar. As it got chilly, "Tool Junky" Al (his words!) pulled out a heater that delivers something like 12,500,000 BTUs and we all sat around trading friendly insults. Even Puppy Cabot joined in!

One thing you simply can't get away from on New Years Eve is the declaration of resolutions. My experience has taught me that the easiest resolutions to keep are the self-destructive ones, so my resolution for 2011 is to further my goal of becoming an International Man of Mystery and Intrigue by acquiring a taste for single malt Scotch whiskey. Dr. Doctor D, himself owning a gorgeous and impeccably maintained Piper Warrior in a hangar across from mine, was able to provide some fine practice materials.

I'm not sure that I will be able to keep my resolution (to me, Scotch still tastes like something I should be using to wipe on my arm before getting a shot), but I am 100% sure that I have never had a more enjoyable or more satisfying New Years Eve.