Spring(s)

Sunny skies and very nearly 60 degrees?? Wow, spring is a little early this year! Usually the weather this time of year adds ten to fifteen percentage points to my overall stress and anxiety level because of the constant threat of ice, sleet, snow, slush, and countless other forms of solid, commute-destroying precipitation. Knowing that the type of benign weather such as we've had so far this year is building up a huge negative balance in our climate karma, a balance that must surely be reconciled in the near future with apocalyptic storms, I decided that I had to get out to the hangar for at least a token amount of airplane work despite being tired, irritated, frustrated, and generally worn out after my first week back in the uranium mines.

Only to be greeted with this:

That pile of processed dinosaur fluid wasn't there when I left after hanging the engine! Lions and tigers and oil leaks -- OH MY!

So, yeah, a moment of panic. Mostly, as it turns out, because I haven't taken the time to read the Rotax engine manual. This engine is different from those that I'm used to in many ways, including the fact that the oil return fitting is down on the bottom where the sump would be on the type of engines I'm used to. The Rotax is a dry sump engine, which is a bit of a misnomer, in my opinion. There is, in fact, so sump at all, dry or otherwise. There will actually be an oil tank mounted on the firewall. The leaking oil is coming from the hose fitting that will provide a path for the oil to route through the oil cooler and thence back to the tank.

Someday, anyway. For now there's just a not-quite-leak-proof plastic cap on the fitting.

One of the problems left over from the engine mounting was that of the not-quite-right cotter pin fit. Part of the problem there was that the team (note how I deflect/amortize the blame across the entire team rather than focus it where it belongs: directly on me, the manager; if I've learned nothing else from my years in Corporate America.... and watching the antics of our gov't....) missed the call out for a washer between the engine mount and the castellated nut. Two washers were provided with the kit for that purpose, but it actually took both of them to correct one side.

Needing a couple more washers, I had to place an order with Aircraft Spruce. The washers only cost $.03 each, but the shipping was $.75 - a small sum indeed, but it automatically triggered that spot in my brain that insists on adding things to the order to reduce the parts-to-shipping cost ratio. And the thing is, there was something I've needed to order for awhile now and haven't done so because of the same cost ratio problem.

Could I remember what that thing was?

Of course not.

I'd have to wait for the washers to show up to finish that job, but I still had time and energy enough to do a little more work. The next steps are the installation of some of the fuel lines. The first attaches to the input of the fuel pump:

The other end gets attached to the output of the gascolator. I still remember installing the gascolator a couple of years ago and being very happy about it - it was the first real "airplane part" of the entire build. My, we've come a long way, haven't we?

The next hose is, I think, the fuel return hose. This hose will return fuel back to the fuel tank. Again, due to my abject laziness and failure to read the engine manual, I don't know what conditions cause fuel to need to be returned to the tank. I suspect it is at least partially the case that a fuel return line helps avoid vapor lock in a hot engine, but I really don't know.

The hose gets attached to the fuel line traffic circle, yet another part of the engine that is a complete mystery to me. Once attached, I grabbed my little tube of Torque Lock to put the mark on the bolt that tells me that I've tightened it to its final torque. Yes, that would be the nearly empty tube of Torque Lock that I needed to replace with my next Aircraft Spruce order....

The other end of that hose gets attached to the fuel pressure sender (which seems odd, and only confuses me more about what all of these hoses do), but because I don't actually have a fuel pressure sender, that job also had to be deferred.

Because the temperature was a full forty degrees warmer than what we had when I tried and failed to get the big hose springs pushed into the radiator hoses, I decided to test my theory that the difficulties I encountered were due to the bitter cold. Sure enough, the springs went in far more easily in the more reasonable environment. The only problem I ran into was with the 30" hose. The spring has to pushed in one inch past the end of the hose, and I couldn't find a way to do that with pliers. I came up with the brilliant idea of using a socket to pound the spring further down into the hose.

Unfortunately, my brilliant idea failed to consider that I was pounding on a spring, and naturally that spring did what springs do: it sprang. While I did make some progress, I was still short of the required inch:

It took nearly the full length of the socket to get the spring pushed far enough into the hose that its recoil would leave it at the requisite depth, which unsurprisingly made it very difficult to get the socket back out.

That was enough work for the day; I finished up by just spending a few minutes soaking in the sights of an airplane with an engine attached basking in the warm glow of a very nice sunset.

Still, at some level my enjoyment was tempered by the fact that I dread the inevitable weather reckoning.

Moments....

At the end of it all, in reflection the memories of even the longest of lives are comprised mostly of a series of defining, unforgettable moments that are permanently etched in our brains. Sure, things like the years of a lengthy commute to and from work will be remembered as an amorphous blob of irritation and frustration, and thousands of events will be remembered in a general sort of way, but there are only a relative few events that are so etched in our memories that we can remember them as if they happened just minutes ago. These remarkable moments can be happy, sad, or anything in between.

For me, my earliest such memory is from a day when I couldn't have been much older that four. I had wandered over to the neighbors yard somehow and was embroiled in a heated game of Ring Around the Rosie when my very justifiably irate mother found me. It seemed odd to me at the time that a parent could simultaneously be so happy to have found me yet so, so angry. I understand that dichotomy far better today than I ever could have then, of course, what with my now being a parent myself.

Sometimes it isn't even the actual event that I remember with such clarity, but a later point in time when the full import of something that I had done hit me.

I worked my way through the last three scholastic years of my engineering degree using both veterans benefits and whatever money that I could earn through a series of bottom rung jobs. By the time I received my diploma, I was working full time and could only squeeze in one or two classes at a time. All told, it was something like fifteen long years from my first day as a freshman at the University of Cincinnati and my graduation from The Ohio $tate University.

In that time I served five years in the military, had spent three years overseas, gotten married, and established myself in my career. All very important events/accomplishments, but the moment that I remember with the most clarity was when I was driving home from having picked up my diploma from the registrars office and decided on impulse to stop at K-Mart and buy a frame for it. I remember that it was as I was turning left into the K-Mart parking lot that the full realization that I was done, finally done at long, long last, with school hit me. I remember the tears that filled my eyes as the overwhelming sense of accomplishment washed over me.

My most recent accomplishment was nothing like that, but I'm fairly sure it will always be archived somewhere in my memories for easy retrieval. And, when I really think about it, for good reason. A lot of people graduate from college. Even more say "I do," although not all of them really mean it. It is a very small minority indeed, though, that do what I have done.

So, what was it?

I (well, as we'll see, I mean "we") hung the engine onto an airplane that I (okay, in many, many cases, "we") assembled.

That is not something that happens every day, right?

Having fulfilled what I see as my obligation to provide a dramatic lead-in to what are really fairly mundane details, here's how it went.

First, the bottom mount (which doubles as support for the nosewheel) had to be drilled out to 3/8". These are very critical holes since they are going to be used for the large-ish bolts that hold the engine mount. As such, it is desirable to have them straight and tight. To achieve this, Van's wants a small bolt temporarily installed to hold the nosegear mount tightly against the firewall. They suggest pushing a small bolt through the firewall and attaching it with a locknut. Unfortunately, getting a nut on the small bolt would require an uncomfortable reach under the instrument panel, and discomfort is not something I endure willingly. I found it much easier to push the bolt through from under the instrument panel and put the nut on from the firewall side. The mount didn't seem to care one way or the other.

There then transpired a rather difficult drilling operation. Co-pilot Rick had brought along an electric drill that is much beefier than my little Li-Ion Craftsman drill, but the combination of the cold hangar (which had a weakening effect on its battery) and my Harbor Freight (Home of Under Performing Drill Bits) drill bit made for a lengthy operation. Once done, though, the bottom bolts fit in easily.

Having learned the lesson of making sure all holes to be filled with a bolt actually can be, we then went through the process of making sure all of the holes, especially those that are powder-coated, were large enough to allow the bolt to pass. Cadillac Pete also thought it would be a good idea to test the fit of the bushings that go through the rubber mount isolators too, and it's good that he did - they had small burrs that were keeping the bolts from sliding through. A light pass with the 3/8" bit cleared that up.

With all of the holes verified and the bolts/nuts/washers/isolators ready and positioned, it was time to move the engine into place. Co-pilot Rick agreed to stand ready to throw himself under the engine to protect it from damage in the somewhat likely case that I managed to knock it off of the hoist.

We preloaded the top mount holes with the assembled attachment parts:

At this point I adopted my usual management role and guided Rick and Pete's strenuous efforts from afar:

I swear, some day I'm going to form a blues band just so I can name it Three Bolts Easy. There's always one bolt that doesn't want to cooperate. Rick assessed the situation:

A little pushing and prodding finally got the fourth bolt in. The bolts are to be tightened to a torque value of 160 inch-pounds, but can be further tightened to as much as 190 inch-pounds if needed in order to get the cotter pin hole to align with a slot in the castellated nut. At 160 inch-pounds, the hole was actually slightly beyond the nut. I'm going to have to research whether or not that's a problem:

Problem or not, we considered the job done and celebrated the event in the only way possible:

The tears can come later, if for no other reason than that I can finally, after weeks of worrying about it, be assured that I'm not going to drop that engine.

Just count to 10....

It's one of those old, been-around-forever sayings: when you are getting ready to lose your temper, just count to ten. Well, I've had a couple of instances over the last few days where that has turned out to be good advice. Fortunately the type of units that are to be counted are left to the discretion of the user and I opted for days. It is for that reason that I have yet to talk to the mother of the youngster that vandalized Egg's car, and to a much lesser extent, it is why I had not yet called Van's regarding the need for the new style fuel pressure sensor.

I still haven't done anything about the vandal, but the Van's situation is now resolved.

There I was, sitting at my desk at the paying job noodling over a Gantt chart, trying to figure out how to squeeze three weeks of work into a two week window when I received an instant message from home:

Home: Scott at Van's is on the phone here.

RV6FlierAtWork: About?

Home: Don't know. Should I have him call you at work.

RV6FlierAtWork: no.

Why "no?" Well, think about it. I've been pretty open about my unpleasant interaction with Mr. Ken S., and really, who knows who reads this stuff? That was part of it, anyway, the other part being that I had three days worth of work items on my clipboard and I am absolutely paranoid about losing data on the clipboard! It must be pasted somewhere before I will entertain an interruption.

As soon as my data was securely pasted back into an unreasonably tight schedule, I returned the call. Scott wanted to tell me that he had heard through the grapevine that I was one of the two builders that had received the wrong sensor from Van's and that Dynon was sending over a few of the new units. One will be sent to me as soon as it arrives from Dynon.

Wow!

I thanked him for his "extremely proactive customer service."

He chuckled and said, "Well, we're not always this way."

Hmmm, a hidden meaning there? Probably not. In any event, I told him that "life in Skyview purgatory must be pretty tough on everyone."

Another chuckle, then, "Hey, I like that term!"

So, one problem solved. And as an extra bonus, I now have the direct dial number of someone in Van's tech support that I might find it more pleasant to deal with if I run into any more problems that require their help.

Maybe I'm ready to call that kid's mom now...

Doors, doors, doors

The Saga of the New Years Doors is growing ever more complex and, quite frankly, irritating. It's a bit of a distraction from more important stuff such as building airplanes and the like. The long and short of it is that there are two potential criminal charges against the Teen Kickboxer: criminal damage (the doors) and some other charge having to do with the fact that the alleged perp also saw fit to shoot paint balls at Egg and some of the other kids. The latter charge is out of my hands and will proceed apace through the court system, but it is within my realm of decision-making to put a stop on the damage charge if I so choose. I was informed of this by the officer that has been assigned to the case; he happened to mention that fact at the same time he informed me that he had given my phone number to young Bruce Lee's mother. Just in case I was desirous of settling this issue out of court, as it were.

Mom Lee called yesterday and we had a twenty minute talk. I'm sympathetic to her plight (which is completely out of character for me, to be honest) and I'm considering trying to work something out with her. The child has apparently been something of a handful for his entire life and has had a number of run-ins with the long arm of the law. Egg has met, and has a favorable impression of, Mom Lee, and as long as the Molester of Doors is still on the hook for the other infraction, she's agreeable to a civil deal for the damage to the car.

However...

Little Bruce Lee is going to find that he is not the only person involved with this that has a temper if he continues to openly brag to his friends that "he ain't got to pay for nuthin, and juvie ain't that bad anyway." 

We'll see about that. Yes, we will.

As can be imagined, this whole ordeal has been a very unwelcome cause of stress, especially considering that I returned to the paying job today after a relaxing 17 day rest, only to find that all of the problems I left behind are still there.

Rats. No helpful elves for the likes of me.  Cobblers have all the luck.

And tonight I need to accompany young student Egg to a high school basketball game where she hopes to corner a minimum of 33 random samples, having achieved a count of 17 earlier today at the public library but having quit before reaching the requisite count of 50 due to the immense stress of asking a simple question of strangers, all of which is in support of a homework assignment from her Advanced Placement Statistics class.

Oh, bother.

That's time that I could be spending hanging an engine on an airplane.

Or not. It's 22 degrees out in the hangar. I'm thinking a sweaty, smelly gymnasium may not be all that bad after all.

In preparation for The Great Hanging, Co-pilot Rick lent a hand yesterday in finishing up all of the tasks that I wanted to get done before putting the engine in the way, so all I need now is a slightly warmer day...

I started out solo, figuring it would only require my two hands to prepare the radiator hoses. Easy first step: cut a 30" and a 20" length from the provided hose. A hack saw worked great for that:

I imagine everyone but me already knew this, but it seems that a spring has to be put inside a radiator hose to keep it from collapsing/crimping. Knowing that the outer diameter of the relaxed spring is identical to (or slightly larger than) the inner diameter of the hose, Van's suggests grabbing an end of it with a pair of pliers and twisting it to tighten it up and reduce the diameter. That can't be done with two hands, so I enlisted the aid of my trusty third hand:

That worked for awhile, but eventually the end of the spring reached the bend in the hose. I needed to straighten the hose, but the best way I could come up with to do that was to splint it:

That worked for awhile too, but not at all easily. After twenty minutes of effort, the spring was only halfway into the 20" hose. That's right around the time that I realized that I don't really need the hoses yet; I just need to concentrate on the things that get mounted to the firewall behind where the engine will be. I also had the uncomfortable thought that perhaps the 28 degree temperature might be a factor in the very tight fit between the spring and hose, and that isn't likely to change all that much for oh... about three months.

So, I quit.

It was much easier to fabricate this hinge:

The hinge then gets match-drilled to a stainless steel door. This door will sit between the back side of the radiator and a set of holes in the firewall. It will be controlled by a cable leading from the instrument panel. Opening the door will introduce hot air into the cockpit, which will be quite handy in the winter months. This is actually a better system than what I have in the RV-6. The -6 provides heat from a cuff wrapped around an exhaust pipe. There are two problems with that system:

- it can be a wonderful way to pump carbon monoxide into the cockpit, with dire consequences
- it works poorly. When you throttle back, the heat goes away almost instantly.

Match drilling through two pieces of stainless steel was every bit of the pain that I thought it would be, but all in all the hinging of the door was pretty easy.

There's another bracket that gets attached to the firewall. This is the bracket that will actually hold the radiator. It too has to be match drilled to a piece of stainless steel hinge, but this was the dreadful case of drilling though soft and thin and into thick and hard. That nearly always results in the elongation of the holes in the soft and thin. This case was no exception to that rule.

All that done, I ran into another firewall related quandary: the holes in the firewall weren't there. This is apparently due to the advanced age of the firewall that Van's sent me, just as was the spacing issue between the starter relay holes. Reluctant to incur the snippy, snarky cynicism of Mr. Ken S. at Van's tech support by asking him what I should do, I made the obvious decision without consulting with him: I went ahead and drilled the three holes that I needed.

The door needs a gasket to prevent leakage of fumes or unwanted hot air (heh, 'unwanted hot air' - it seems that we're still on the topic of Mr. Ken S.) and the easiest way to make a gasket is with RTV. A coat of wax gets applied to the firewall to keep the RTV from sticking, then a bead of RTV is run around the perimeter of the door. The door gets tightly closed and clamped into place while the RTV sets up:

All I have to do now is run the cable from the instrument panel and attach it to the control horn on the door and it's time to mount the engine!

Once Egg's door problems are solved too, that is.

New Years Day hangover

Here it is, the first day of 2012. If the Mayans are correct, this will be the last time we all have to endure the fallout from New Years Eve partying. Myself, I'm just fine this morning since I long ago parted ways with the late night partying crowd. I was comfortably settled in for a night of NCAA football last night until about 9:30.

That's when I received a phone call from Co-pilot Egg.

Just to set the stage, Egg just recently had a birthday and is now old enough to be considered an adult for the purposes of voting, fighting a war, or going to prison for knocking over a liquor store, but not yet old enough to (legally) drink alcohol. That's just fine with both of us, frankly. For me it's because I'd prefer to not have to worry about her any more than I already do, and for her it's because she just doesn't seem to have any desire to imbibe.

Or so she says. There's a lot riding on trust here.

In any event, recognizing that she will be out on her own in less than a year, I've begun trying to loosen the leash a little bit with regards to her comings and goings. Sure, I still like to know where she is and when she will be back, but when she said she was going to a friend's house for a New Years Eve get together, I didn't probe too deeply for details regarding which friend, where he lived, the arrest history of his parents, currency of rabies shots, percentage of allowance spent on pornography, or any of the plethora of things I used to try to determine before granting permission. I did refuse her request to drive my car instead of hers, though, since it wasn't supposed to get cold enough for her to really need the heated seats that she likes so much.

That turned out to be a fortuitous refusal.

So, the phone call: "Hey, Dad, I'm at... wait, the sheriff is here. [click]"

Ah, nice. Nothing to worry about then.

The inevitable follow-up call came in soon (not soon enough to keep my nerves from getting seriously frayed, though) and further details were provided, albeit in the breathless, faster-than-light, deeply dramatic narrative style of a teenage girl. Which, to be perfectly honest, I have developed the ability to completely filter out.

At this point, I'm still not yet sure that I have the entire chain of events straightened out, but the gist of it is that her host's younger brother doesn't seem to think much of Ms. Egg and through some series of escalating events took it upon himself to express his displeasure with her through the convenient proxy of her car.

Now, Ms. Egg wants a new car and has for awhile, but that by no means diminishes the affection she has for her current ride. Infuriated with the damage that had been done to her baby, she decided to call 911 to request the assistance of some law enforcement officials. (We will have a little discussion regarding the appropriate nature of 911 usage later.) The net result in this case, however, was the arrival of a pair of Sheriff's deputies. They were out of their jurisdiction, so referred her to the local gendarmes. Rather than have them dispatch a cruiser to the scene, they suggested that she just go to the station to have a criminal damage report filed. As the spouse of the legal owner of the car in question and the only one willing to forgo the pleasures of NCAA football, my attendance was required at the station as well.

The report was completed by a courteous and professional young officer who let the veneer of professionalism slip just a little after speaking to the perpetrator on the phone. I overheard enough of the conversation between the officer and the vandal to fully agree with the officer's observation: "That kid is as dumb as a box of rocks."

So, that was my New Years Eve.

If the Mayans have their way, next year will be only slightly worse.

This morning dawned cloudy, windy, and down right dismal. A perfect day to work out in the hangar! I want to finish up as much wiring as I can before hanging a big obstructing engine in the way. Wiring an RV-12 is about a thousand times easier than any of the other RVs since 98% of the work is already done at the factory, but there are still a few wrinkles now and then.

The first of which is that I still don't have the cushion clamp set-up shown in the drawings.

I've been told that those are provided with the avionics kit which neither I, nor anyone else, have right now. Luckily, I keep a few different sizes of cushion clamps around in the hangar in support of periodic needs on the RV-6, so between that and the big "spare nuts/bolts" order I placed a few months ago to amortize down the shipping cost for some small thing, I was able to put together a solution. I tried different sized clamps until I found one that held onto the engine mount tightly. I guessed that the second one that the wires would pass through would be the same size. I must have been right, considering that it was a tight fit to get all of the wires through.

Oh, and I really need to secure that cotter pin!

The most challenging part of all of this wiring is, as it usually turns out to be, selecting the correct wires out of the bunch. The first couple were easy - those thick white wires branched together were easy to find. They're very stiff, though, so it took a little wiggling around to get both of them into the connector.

We're then supposed to find the yellow and red wires from each of the EGT probe wires. I had no problem with finding the EGT wires, but there were no yellow or red wires in sight. I figured if they're not in sight, they must be inside:

And there they are!

They get stripped and then have male terminals crimped on.

The directions then directed me to "find the EGT probes." Man, those folks at Van's really know me - how else to explain that they knew that "finding" anything is half of where my time gets spent.

The terminals already in place on the EGT probes get cut off ("preserving as much wire as possible," making me think that this is going to be a tight stretch at some point) and the wires stripped for new terminals. Oddly, the stripped wire is the same color on the inside as the outside.

That didn't seem right, so I scraped at the wires with my thumbnail. That exposed the actual wires:

With the extreme close-up photo, I imagine those wires look plenty big to you, but they are, in fact, quite small. Small in the same way the wires to the trim motor are. Small in the way that means a crimped on terminal will not stay on. I had to use my invented method of beefing up really thin wires, which involves using a short length of 22 gauge wire wrapped around the original wire.

That method makes the wire thick enough to provide a good grip for the crimp.

The EGT probes get tossed back into the parts bin for later usage, presumably once there are some exhaust pipes for them to probe. I'll have to find them again, someday.

The next set of wires are easy to separate out because 1) two out of the three have fairly distinctive coloring, and 2) they have these nifty little green collars on them:

In a separate bag, there is an orange shell that will hold the wires. In the same bag, there were three more pins and collars, leading me to believe that Van's (or Stein, the outsource for the wiring harness, I think) put those connectors on the harness for us. That was nice! The pins just click into the back of the shell:

The shell snaps shut and the finished connector plugs into the manifold pressure computer mounted just below the antenna shelf:

This is followed by one of those occasions where Van's provides too much instruction and muddies the mental waters a little bit:

"Locate the ES 24115 Master Relay. (Hint: it's right where you left it after you bolted it to the firewall - DG) Remove the outer nut and washers from each of the three studs on the relay. Do not remove the nut that lies against the relay body."

I spent a lot of time looking for "the nut that lies against the relay body."

There isn't one. What they really mean is "Remove the outer nut and washers from each of the three studs on the relay." That's all they needed to say. Their over-explanation just confused me; I would not have tried to remove the three nuts left behind after the outer nuts were removed:

"Locate the ES DIODE MASTER Master Relay Diode." Say that three times fast!

It gets paired up with another wire in one of the pesky wire condoms:

The pair of them get attached to the master relay:

Now we encounter two steps that would have been easier if reversed. I followed the provided step order and found the correct wire, stripped it, and crimped on a terminal. Had I been thinking more clearly, I would have reversed the steps and fed the wire into the wire condom first, rather than encountering an all too familiar problem from my distant past: the item to be protected was too large for the protective device:

Wait! It gets better! In the unicorn-populated world that Van's lives in, it looks to be a simple matter to take the loose end of the ES DIODE MASTER Master Relay Diode and pair it up with the newly terminated wire and attach them both to the center post of the master relay:

Yeah, right. Remember that too small condom? Well, it really complicates matters:

A rather uncomfortable arrangement, eh?

But wait! I gets even better! Remember the starter relay adapter plate that caused such a rift between me and the snarky Mr. Ken S. at Van's and how it moved the started relay a little bit lower on the firewall? Well, as it turns out there is a precisely sized wire that is somewhat, well, inconvenienced by the new distance:

A slight tug was enough to get it to fit. It doesn't seem to be overly strained, either, so I guess it's okay.

There is another wire that goes on that post, but it needs to have a terminal attached to it. This resulted in a quandary: which of these terminals is the ES 324082? Both fit on the post, and both fit the wire, although the red one fits it very loosely and the blue one fits it very tightly.

I opted for the red one for the most critical of reasons: the blue would have clashed with all of the other red terminals.

There it is, all attached and ready to go:

Well, not quite. There's another odd combination that gets separated out:

It plugs into the almost-hidden spade at the bottom of the starter relay:

Done? Not quite. There's one more, and it requires that a bolt be removed and replaced on the starter relay:

There! All done and ready to mount the engine.

Well.... no. A wise man shared with me that it is much easier to install the oil cooler assembly and the cockpit heater cable before the engine gets mounted. "Easier" doesn't mean "easy," as we all know, but we still take "easier" whenever we can get it!