Returning to Urbana

There was a time back when I was still regularly flying the RV-6 when it seemed almost a weekly ritual to fly over to Urbana for breakfast. It wasn't that often, or course, but it was pretty frequent. With the the requisite five hours of probation nearly finished and nice weather in the forecast, it seemed that perhaps the time was ripe to reinvigorate the routine. 

The temps were in the 30's as we climbed out of Bolton, as was the ambient atmospheric pressure. Low temps and high pressure are the recipe for good engine and wing performance and this morning was a case in point: I'd swear I saw 1,700 fpm indicated on the Skyview.

It was a smooth ride at 3,500', so I let the autopilot practice its skills while I did some sightseeing. Nothing much to see, really, other than flat brown fields hiding under a dusting of snow.

Back when I was a regular at the airport diner, I used to like to park over in the corner between the restaurant and the maintenance shop. That practice is now apparently verboten. Fortunately Delta Golf and I were the first to arrive (at least via airplane) and there was no shortage of parking spots out on the ramp.

The Jackson Two arrived about a half hour later as I was well into my third cup of coffee. Well, the fourth if you count the one I had before leaving the house.  We had a nice breakfast before walking over to the hangar where a B-17 bomber is being restored. While the primary purpose of the hangar is to house the B-17 project, there are a few other planes parked in there as well. The first to be encountered is a DC-3.

It's in somewhat rough condition - I think it spent its last productive years hauling cargo. Most of the avionics have been either removed or eaten by mice. It's hard to tell which.

I always thought a neat vacation would be to go somewhere to earn the type rating required to fly as a co-pilot in a DC-3. If it ever happens, it won't be this year. We spent this year's vacation budget last year.

Still, I like sitting in the front seats.

You have to wonder how many sets of hands have held onto those controls over the years.

I was not surprised to see the ashtray, but I'm not sure what the other two thingys do. My theory is that the engine starting cartridges (have you ever seen Flight of the Phoenix?) go in there, but I can't prove it.

UPDATE:

After an hour of Google hunting, I found the answer:

They control the cowl flaps (or "gills"):

I wonder why one needle is shaped differently than the other.

Moving over to the B-17, I found that I look at things differently now that I have built an airplane. When I first saw these numbers, it reminded me of some of the odd fractions Van's likes to put in the plans. 35 feet, 315/16ths? Now that's odd. Having looked at it again, though, I think it is actually 25 feet, 3 and 15/16 inches.

Last time I was there, they were building the jigs to form new engine nacelles. It would appear that the jigs are done and are now in use for building the nacelles. Note the supercharger embedded in the frame.

I've never been able to figure out how the throttle quadrant works on the B-17. There are four engines, but six throttle controls. My guess is that a pilot would manipulate engines 1 and 4 (the furthest outboard on each wing) using the top handles, engines 2 and 3 using the bottom handles, and all four using the middle handles.

These are the control handles that the bombardier would have used to open the bomb bay doors and drop the bombs. Well, maybe not to drop the bombs, maybe just to configure how the bombs would be dropped and/or which bombs would be dropped. The bomb release itself was probably an electrical switch somewhere in the vicinity of the Norden bomb sight.

Norden bomb sight (a fascinating piece of equipment):

Decorative stuff:

This is the oxygen control panel for the bombardier.

This is a WWII B-24 veteran that survived thirty missions over Europe. He told us a story about how his B-24 was hit with a dud 88mm anti-aircraft round. He attributes the failure of the round to explode to it having been manufactured with slave labor.I guess it was as true then as it is now: you just can't enslave good help anymore.

This is, I believe, a firewall waiting to be restored or sacrificed for parts.

I understood that a B-17G carried a crew of ten. If that is the case, it must have been hellishly hard to find ten guys that averaged 120 pounds each.

There is also one of my fave planes EVER hangared there - this is a B-25:

It seems to be in for its annual inspection. Do you think the spark plug budget is significantly expensive? These are from just one of the two engines!

Back at the DC-3, I was still in rivet-looking mode. Through some strange accident of design, they had to do some modification of the manufactured heads to get these to fit.

People often wonder how they got pilots to fly these old buckets. I think it has to do with the on-board cocktail mixers.

Working under the theory that wartime planes needed to be easily disassemble for shipping overseas, I think that's why they had this row of bolts holding the outer wing panels together with the wing roots.

Walking back to our planes, we came across a cute little Luscombe.

My departure from Urbana was interesting, to say the least. I think it was my first takeoff with a crosswind, and I didn't like it. Before the rudder has a chance to become powerful enough to correct the forward path against a blustery wind, the brakes are the only way to do it. But applying the brakes during takeoff seems counter-productive. In short, it was the sloppiest takeoff I've made yet.

Once we were away from the airport, I slowed down a bit to let The Jackson Two catch up.



Somewhere lost in the haze out there is downtown Columbus.

And there's home base, right in front of my nose.

Today was one of the first really nice flying days that has fallen on a weekend. As such, the airport environment was somewhat crowded. Five targets in the air, and there was a sixth climbing off of the runway.

Left downwind to runway four took me right over my neighborhood.

The landing went well (in fact, both of today's landings were okay now that I'm not resting my feet on the brake pedals - I think the dragging brakes were causing the problem I had with thumping the nose wheel down) and I parked in front of the hangar having completed my five hour probationary period. No more 50 mile limit, and whenever I feel ready for it, I can carry a passenger!

An emerging pattern

I don't care if Monday's blue
Tuesday's grey and Wednesday too
Thursday I don't care about you
It's Friday, I'm in love...

Those were the words I heard on the car radio as I made my way down the dark, cold driveway last Wednesday at the commencement of my early morning commute across town. Those lyrics are from an old song that I've heard so many times that I barely register when it comes on the radio, but they opening lines broke through my pre-5 am funkitude due to the fact that they perfectly described our local situation. You might remember that I was able to finally get some more hours on the airplane on Monday of last week due to some well-needed yet unseasonably nice weather. Karma being what it is, we paid for that nice weather with two very ugly, grey days for Tuesday and Wednesday.

History repeats, or some-such, because we had another nice Monday this week, but the forecast for Tuesday/Wednesday can basically be described as late-season snowmageddon.  Six to eight inches, starting right around the time I start my way back across town on the homeward bound trek.

Cabot is preparing:



Well, no, not really. But he would if he was as smart as the brilliant hound above!

Anxious to build more time and to see if I can get a little better at holding the nose wheel off of the runway after landing to better protect it, I made my way to the hangar right after stopping at the house just long enough to grab an FAA-mandated prescriptive vision correction device.  Yes, my Class III medical now stipulates that I must wear glasses while flying.

The mid-40s temperature helped to get the oil warmed up fairly quickly -- that was nice, because the winds were favoring runway 22, which is a much short taxi than it's opposite end. There wouldn't be a great deal of time for oil heating to occur during taxi. As I was leaving the hangar area, a Beech Bonanza got in line behind me so it was a good thing that I hadn't planned on sitting at the end of the runway waiting for the oil to be ready -- he would have been stuck behind me waiting needlessly.

I was heading down south to Ross Co. airport for a brief meet-up with The Jackson Two. Kyle, the Chief Pilot and Tool Crib Manager had a couple of things to return to me, while I had a crimper of their's that I had been holding onto for so long that it was only a week or two from becoming mine by virtue of squatter's rights and/or common law marriage. Plus, the route TZR -> RZT -> TZR would look funny in my logbook.  I set a direct-to for KRZT, pre-set the desired altitude at 3,500', and set the vertical speed bug at 700 fpm, having decided that the default 500 fpm wasn't ambitious enough given the high amibient pressure and low-ish temps. The plane would want to climb so much faster than 500 fpm that I would likely run out of nose down trim.

As I was blithely riding along letting the autopilot do the yeoman's work of flying the plane, I noticed a sudden addition to the screen: a TRAFFIC alert had popped up seemingly out of nowhere, and it was at my altitude and basically right in front of me.

I took a look in the direction depicted on the display, and sure enough:

Ain't magic grand??!?

We're still in our brown months here in Ohio, but it shouldn't be too much longer before the trees start growing leaves and the grass/weeds start to green. There will be quite a bit of very dark brown lands soon too, as the farmers start to plow for their spring planting.

Here are the two RV-12s meeting for the first time:

I managed to get seven landings in before The Jackson Two arrived. I'm still having trouble keeping the nose up while rolling out after landing, but I think I have a theory. My previous theory was that I was landing too slowly (an RV-6 habit - landing with too much speed in the 6 was the recipe for bouncing on the runway) and I think that theory had merit - I was able to hold the nose up for a brief period if I managed to get full back stick in just after touching down, but it still seemed to really, really want to plant itself. My new theory is that my feet are on the brakes and the gripping of the tires on the runway is causing the nose to 'pivot' down onto the runway. The reason I think this is happening is that I'm not fully comfortable with the non-steerable nose wheel yet. As I'm turning base or final, I'm getting my feet way up high on the rudder pedals to ensure that I will be able to use the brakes for steering if necessary. I think I must be putting enough pressure on the pedals to at least partially engage the brakes.

I'll test that theory next time I get good enough weather to fly. Maybe next Monday, if current patterns hold.

Finally building some hours

Finishing an airplane in the dead of winter is an excellent example of really poor planning. There you are sitting at home as the cold winds blow ice pellets and other unsavory forms of seasonal precipitation around while what is likely to be the only brand new airplane you will ever own sits shivering in its lonely hangar. Mind you, "sitting at home" is merely an expression - various and sundry household tasks will inevitably fill the hours. Keeping in mind that in this case the airplane in question is very light and quite unfamiliar to the owner, it only takes moderately strong winds to preclude flight. Ten knots is the current limit as defined by your relatively weather-shy author, although that limit will surely rise as experience with the behavioral aspects of the airplane in question is gained.  Still, it's surprising just how many days in February boast winds of 10 gusting something.

Not having an airplane to devote the lion's share of weekend mornings to has freed up some time for other pursuits, of course. I actually dusted off the shotgun and paid 25% more for shells than was the tithe last year in order to go out and tromp through the woods shooting at (and mostly missing) bright orange clay targets. A round of sporting clays is ten stations, for a total of fifty shots. I was sitting pretty with eleven hits after only three stations, but only managed an additional five throughout the rest of the course. Ah well, going a year without practicing will do that. And yes, there is some willful amnesia going on here - I think a score of sixteen is pretty much my average no matter how often I shoot. Fact of the matter is this: sporting clays is hard.

All of that having been said, I was fairly twitching to get out of the office yesterday. The curse of a window office is that every now and then you can't help but wish you were on the other side of it, albeit at ground level. Light-ish winds, only a light haze, and plenty of blue sky beckoned as I slogged through some distinctly uninteresting work. I dived out (well, no, not literally) right on the stroke of 3:00 and headed for home to grab a hat and my flying glasses, then off to the airport.

The temps were in the mid 40s, so the oil warming process only took five to ten minutes. The winds were out of the east which meant a lengthy taxi to the far end of the mile long runway, so I released brakes at about 90 degrees, figuring the hike out to the runway would be long enough for the oil to reach 122 degrees. I timed it nearly perfectly, stopping at the end of the runway at 120.  I waited for the final two degrees before doing the engine run-up, and then it was off into the not-very-wild blue yonder.  I'm still finding that I don't need much more than two-thirds throttle to get the bird into the air, but once free of the concrete I push the rest of the power in to expedite the climb to a safer altitude. The ambient pressure was 30.08" and the combination of the thick air, cool temps, and light airplane coalesced into an amazing 1,500 foot-per-minute climb.

Have you ever seen a U2 take off? Yeah, it was pretty much like that! I totally loved watching those guys climb out back when I was working on SR-71s at Beale Air Force Base. The SR-71 takeoff is a visceral cacophony of deep, thundering noise trailed by long, blue afterburner flames which is impressive in it's own right, but the amazing leap and steep climb of the U-2 is like watching a world-class ballerina leap her way through Swan Lake.



I made a turn out towards the west and kicked on the autopilot, eager to see how well it behaved in the calmer air. I had changed the default climb rate from 400 fpm to 500 and that seemed to work much better. The RV-12 has climb capability in excess, at least when light, so there is no reason to hold the rate down. I also had MadCo plugged into the GPS as a direct-to, so I triggered on the Nav hold too.Everything was working fine, so I left the machine to its devices and concentrated on other things like checking all of the various engine parameters. The right side CHT (which has been somewhat flaky) was nicely settled down, although I think I did catch one untoward spike out of the corner of my eye. It will bear watching for awhile.

Before getting to MadCo, I did a little more practicing with the GPS nav and autopilot by changing the direct-to to an airport up north. For a few minutes I thought that it had over-corrected too far to the east, but soon realized that it had correctly and accurately arrived at a 20 - 30 degree crosswind correction. The winds at altitude, as it turns out, were far stronger than those on the ground.

Knowing that I'd have to do it sooner or later, I kicked off the autopilot and took control for myself. I turned away from the sun so as to have decent visibility and slowed down to try my first stalls. As I slowed through 50 knots, the stall warning started blaring through my headsets, so that's working as expected. At somewhere below 45 knots, the wing finally gave up with a little shudder and the nose dropped into the stall. As did the right wing, with an interesting sense of alacrity. Wondering if maybe I had been carrying a little too much right rudder, I tried it again.  Same result - an abrupt drop of the right wing. Hmmm, not very friendly behavior, that, but certainly not a problem if the pilot is aware of this tendency. Which he is, now.

Heading back to MadCo, I got lowed down and slowed down for landing. Both of these seem to take a little longer to do than in the RV-6, but if I'm honest I'd have to say that I have flown the six so little over the last year that I'm not sure my memory is accurate to wager on.  I made a full stop on the first landing and taxied back to takeoff again, mostly because I still didn't have a good enough feel for high speed taxiing to be confident in the success of a tough & go. The next three landings were made as touch & goes, however, so the confidence built quickly.

After four landings, I headed back north again to fly around a little bit before heading back to MadCo for a few more landings. While touch & goes are good practice for the actual landing, it is also important to practice arrivals into the pattern. Timing the descent and the speed reductions properly in a new plane takes some getting used to. The third landing was a full stop to buy gas. This was my first time filling the tank by myself and I can't say that I like it. The fuel neck is higher up than a wing tank would be and holding the pump handle is awkward, and it is hard to tell when the neck is filling. It's not hard to tell when it is filled, though. The splash of gas in your face is a fairly strident notice.

Even with full tanks (habit that needs to be broken - the correct expression is "full tank"), partial throttle was plenty for takeoff. I made one more touch & go to see if I could feel the extra weight of the fuel, but I couldn't. It was getting late so I headed back to Bolton. I was not alone. There were four other planes inbound and things were getting hectic. Used to be that I could just push the throttle forward and get to the airport before the rest of them, but those days are gone. I just have to blend in with the proles now.

Coming in from the west reporting point when landing on runway 4, the standard request from the tower is to report a two mile left base. This is in recognition that you're already south of the airport and won't need a downwind leg. Instead, I got "report midfield left downwind for runway four."

My radio skills having atrophied pretty much as my shooting skills had, this caused me a moment of confusion. The only time I have ever heard that request was when the controller got confused about his directions and thought I was on the other side of the airport port or he was accidentally positioning me for runway 22. After thinking about it, I decided to ask for a confirmation. That didn't sit well.

"NOVEMBER TWO EIGHT FOUR DELTA GOLF, WINDS ARE ZERO SEVEN ZERO AT SEVEN KNOTS. REPORT MIDFIELD LEFT DOWNWIND RUNWAY FOUR. DO. YOU. UN. DER. STAND??"

Chagrin, shame, and a dose of "Dude, lighten up!" flashed through my mind. Then, timidly:

"two eighty-four delta golf, yeah, I get it. report midfield left downwind runway four."

So what he wanted, it seems, was for me to fly a few miles to the north and then come back down to the south. As I was entering the downwind, I saw why: he had been creating spacing for a Cessna flying a straight-in to the runway.

I made amends, though. With two more planes behind me wanting to land, I made and early turn to base and landing a few thousand feet down the runway, timing it perfectly for making a turn off of the runway just as I got the plane slowed down. That got me quickly out of the way for the other traffic. Doubt if the tower guy even noticed, and he sure made no comment on it, but at least I was able to regain some level of self-confidence.

All told I put almost two hours on the plane.  It's flying very well and I'm starting to get comfortable in it.  The only maintenance problem that has arisen was somewhat expected - the paint that I sprayed on the roll bar is starting to flake off. I think this is mostly due to not adequately prepping the surface before painting. It won't be pleasant to fix, but it's not something I need to do right away.

The Dangers of Words

It's here again: one of the most dangerous weeks of the year. What's so dangerous? Well, this is Valentine's Day week. There are a few things more dangerous to a marriage than Valentine's Day, but they are so patently obvious that they are easily avoided. But Valentine's Day/ Fraught with peril for the naive or careless.  Consider: your typical married male thinks Valentine's Day is a "Hallmark Holiday," and besides which, if you have a marriage anniversary every year, who needs another candy/flowers event?? Answer: women. Women need all of the candy/flowers annual events that time and budget will allow, although I have met a few that share the male disdain for the travesty known as "Sweetest Day."  Those few are what men refer to as "keepers."

Now, I have a keeper, but when it comes to Valentine's Day she's very traditional. There came a year not too very long ago when all was not well with my professional life and I was spending a lot of time on the airplane. Busy as a one-armed chainsaw juggler, I was. Somehow I figured it wasn't all that important and failed to recognize the importance of the event.

Yeah, I was somewhat naive (read: stupid) back then.

It took nearly a week of the cold shoulder treatment for me to realize that something was wrong.

Very wrong. I swore to never, EVER let that happen again.

Having learned my lesson, I have gone to pains to make sure The Day lives up to her desires and expectations. I did pretty good last year - she told me that I had really hit one out of the park with my Valentine's Day gift(s). Unfortunately for me, I have no recollection of what exactly it is that I did. Floundering again this year, drat it!

Until.... salvation!  Taking pity on me, this year the CFO came right out and told me what she wanted: a heart-shaped box of chocolates. And they didn't even have to be the expensive Anthony-Thomas brand; anything from the grocery store would do. Hey! Even I can do that!!

So there we were, on our Sunday morning trip to Walmart for a week's worth of food. Having planned ahead, I figured I could get a few minutes of unchaperoned Walmart shopping time by telling her I needed to go to office supplies and pick up some laminating sheets to be used in the creation of a small checklist for the plane. This even had the benefit of being true!  I know her route, so I figured when she headed left to pharmacy and toiletries, I'd head straight down the middle aisle. That happens to be the shortest path to office supplies, but it also goes right past seasonal cards and gifts. And sure enough, right on one of the end caps was a big heart-shaped box of chocolates. But, it was some brand I had never heard of, proudly proclaiming a legacy of "Since 2011" or some-such. Right around the corner, however, was pay dirt. Heart shaped boxes of Lindt Chocolate Truffles, and another fancy brand that I had heard of but have trouble spelling.  Giardelhi maybe?  Ghirardelli?  Doesn't matter. The dilemma was which one to get? Time being of the essence (right after pharma and toiletries, she comes to cards) and me being paralyzed with indecision, I quickly grabbed one of each.  Can't have too much chocolate, right?

Being right there in the card aisle, I figured I could also get cards. I always get two: one funny, one sappy. Afraid of getting caught in the act, I had to limit myself to one, and I chose sappy. Funny is much harder to choose because many of them are just completely stupid. When I look for sappy, I try to shoot more towards the way I really feel than the clingy, creepy treacle the professional card authors like to crank out. I like something that tells her that I value her as a friend and life partner in addition to as a wife. And lo and behold, there was one that fit that message perfectly. I grabbed it and headed to the checkout, taking the long away around through Boys Clothes lest she catch me on her way over from the other side.

As I was standing there at the checkout buying two separate boxes of candy, I thought the young female cashier was looking at me somewhat askance. At the time I chalked it up to the fact that I was wearing a wedding ring but buying two gifts. It wasn't until I was out in the parking lot hiding the bag of stuff that I noticed that I had the card positioned such that it blared "For My Partner."

Oh. Now I know what she was thinking! One box for the wife, one for the boyfriend.

Damn words. They don't always mean precisely what they used to mean.

And I now find myself struggling with a new set of words. I've been reading the Operating Limitations that the FAA provided as part of the airworthiness inspection. It's a three page document full of "thou may" and "thou shall not" things. The very first section has to do with the phase 1 testing. This is the time period (five hours, in my case, but they can and typically are much longer) when I am required to fly alone, stay within a certain radius of the airport, and perform certain tests. At the end of the testing, I have to certify in writing that I have satisfactorily done so. The requirements for the testing are spelled out in FAR 14 CFR 91.319(b).

In a later section, the document provides the text that I am to use for my certification:

“I certify that the prescribed flight test hours have been completed and the aircraft is controllable throughout its normal range of speeds and throughout all maneuvers to be executed, has no hazardous operating characteristics or design features, and is safe for operation.  The flight test was completed under the following conditions: maximum operating weight, style/set of wing or sail, maximum demonstrated airspeed, and minimum demonstrated stall speed.”  All major changes or modifications will be listed in the aircraft records and the compliance statement will be restated with the changes listed.  The aircraft may not be operated in excess of the weights and speeds demonstrated.

The part in bold is actually bolded in the document. They must really, really mean it! And that's the problem. More precisely, the problem is the part that says "maximum operating weight."

By law and by design of the RV-12, the maximum operating weight is 1,320 pounds. The airplane weighs 722 pounds empty. Full fuel weighs 120 pounds. After a big lunch and soaking wet, I weigh 165 pounds. So, in order to achieve a weight of 1,320 pounds, I would need 313 pounds of ballast! There is NO WAY in the world I can put 313 pounds of ballast in that tiny little airplane!

I asked the FAA guy about it, and what I could do. He suggested I talk to Van's. Van's isn't the one that wrote that requirement, though. They have us do their required testing at a more realistic 1,050 pounds.

Curious, I looked up the testing requirements stipulated in FAR 14 CFR 91.319(b) to see if it would help. At first, I thought it did.

FAR 91.319 - Aircraft Having Experimental Certificates: Operating Limitations

(a) No person may operate an aircraft that has an experimental certificate—

   (1) For other than the purpose for which the certificate was issued; or

   (2) Carrying persons or property for compensation or hire.

(b) No person may operate an aircraft that has an experimental certificate outside of an area assigned by the Administrator until it is shown that—

   (1) The aircraft is controllable throughout its normal range of speeds and throughout all the maneuvers to be executed; and

   (2) The aircraft has no hazardous operating characteristics or design features.

Well, there ya go!  It makes no mention of "maximum operating weight!" Problem solved!

Not so fast. Reading further down:

(i) The Administrator may prescribe additional limitations that the Administrator considers necessary, including limitations on the persons that may be carried in the aircraft.

I think the Administrator (or one of his agents) did prescribe additional limitations with the "maximum weight" requirement.

So, am I stuck?  I think not. As I read the last part of the directions in my operating limitations, I see this:

 "The aircraft may not be operated in excess of the weights and speeds demonstrated."

I think this means that I can define my own maximum operating weight as that weight which I have tested to. Since I don't believe the airplane is physically large enough to ever carry a 313 pound passenger, I need only test to the weight that I think I can actually carry. I'll still need ballast to do so, of course, but I should be able to find a way to do it. Fifty pounds can ride in the back, and I can probably find enough ballast for the rest.

That might work. Or it might not.

Damn words. Sometimes no one really knows what they mean.

Building Trust

If the goal of a first date is to just get through it without saying or doing something so catastrophically stupid that any chance of a second date is out of the question, then I would consider the first outing with 284DG to have been a success.  To really start to get to know someone, though, you need the second date. The second date has the benefit of the nervous tension of the first date being somewhat lessened - hopefully having had time to reflect back on the hectic and stressful first attempt and think through all that happened will have had the effect of making the second try both more comfortable and more relaxed, allowing for the opportunity to get to know each other at a deeper level. This isn't to say that you have to, or even could,  learn everything all at once; there will still be a wariness, a caution, a reluctance to tell too much.  But the process of learning will have truly begun.

Trust will come later.

Which is all a long-winded way of saying that I'm shirking. I should be getting busy with the flight testing required by the FAA, and it wouldn't hurt to start considering working on the test cards that have to be returned to Van's, either.

I'm not.

First of all, I think a more sedate pace is called for. The FAA figures it will take me around five hours to do their required tests, and that could still turn out to be realistic. They aren't asking for nearly as much as Van's, but they are asking for stalls. Stalls aren't a big deal, really, but I think you should be a little more comfortable with the basic, routine realms of flight before advancing to what metaphorically might be considered second base. The first flight presented no opportunity to start learning the complexities of the avionics and the handling of the airplane in routine flight operations. I decided I'd do some of that before getting down to the more interesting stuff.

Secondly, I made a couple of changes to the airplane that needed to be tested. I adjusted the takeoff trim indication, and I added a little pitch to the prop to make sure the engine would stay under the 5,500 RPM red line. As it turns out, both changes were successful, although I will probably have to adjust the prop again - I could only get 5,280 RPM. The amount of adjustment to achieve a 600 RPM shift was nearly microscopic.  I'll probably be chasing this for awhile.

The weather was quite nice in that it was sunny and there was very little wind, but it was a little chillier than one might wish. At 26F, I thought it was going to take a long time for the oil to reach the required 120F before takeoff.

And it did.

After about ten minutes, it got up to nearly 100. Given that I had a mile long taxi out to runway 4 in front of me, that was enough to at least get started. I called the tower and requested taxi clearance.

The only other plane flying took off just in front of me, so with no one waiting behind me I was able to do another extended engine run-up.  Yes, still working on the trust thing.

I decided not to be quite as assertive with lifting the nose wheel on this takeoff and that worked out well. The truth is, this thing is off the runway so quickly that it doesn't seem to matter much. Again it seemed like we were climbing out at far too steep an angle, but when I saw that I had 80 knots on the speedo I realized that this is pretty much normal. I could have stayed at 80 knots and let it climb, but I felt the need to have a lot of air under me in case the engine quit suddenly. I pulled the nose up and climbed at 65 knots which resulted in a climb rate of  (get this!!!) 1,700 feet per minute!

I had plotted a 'Direct-to' waypoint into the GPS to lead me over to MadCo while I was waiting for the oil to heat up, so I turned us more or less on course once we were 1,000 over the ground.  I was again impressed with how light and well-balanced the controls are, and the visibility is simply spectacular. That didn't stop me from flying into a little wafer of a cloud, though, as I was looking down at the Skyview.

There's a whole lot going on with the Skyview at any given moment.  There's just tons of data rendered on the 10" screen and it takes awhile to get used to parsing out just what you want at the time.  Take a look at the screen below for an example:

Here's a list of some of what's going on in that screen:

• We're doing 118 knots through the air.
• We're heading two degrees north of west.
• We're doing 124 knots across the ground.
• We have a right quartering tailwind giving us an effective 5 knot boost.
• We're at 3,750 feet above sea level, but I had targeted 3,500.
• We're still climbing at 100 feet per minute.
• We're three minutes away from MadCo, we're left of the course that the GPS had plotted, and that is not going to get any better because we're also heading further left of the desired course.
• Another airplane just took off from MadCo. He is below us and to our front-right, 500 feet below us, and heading northeast. He's climbing. He will be abeam our right wing in one minute-ish, if all remains constant.

In the next picture taken a minute or so later, you can see that the first airplane we saw is now at the same altitude as us and heading away. The open diamond marker indicates that the Skyview thinks we couldn't run into him even if we were trying to.

Another plane seems to be on a left downwind to land at MadCo. He's currently 1,500 feet below us and descending.  The black diamond means that Skyview felt that this one was barely even worth mentioning.

I also fiddled around with the autopilot for a little while. I set Bolton as a Direct-to, set my desired altitude at 3,500'-ish, and let it fly. You can see the result in this video:


Not shown in the video is that I also let the autopilot do our descent from 3,500' down to 2,500 on our approach back into Bolton. You can bet I was keeping a keen eye on it to make sure it leveled us off at 2,500!

The approach and landing went fine, but for the second time in two tries the nosewheel has slapped down on the runway once the mains touch. I think I'm doing something wrong, but I'm not sure what. I'll go out and do some touch and go's next time I fly it.

Jitters

It has been more than a week since the FAA deemed N284DG as "pretty likely to be capable of flight," yet it hasn't happened yet. What's up with that?? Well, mostly it has been weather related. We got some snow - not enough to really matter, but the low scuddy clouds and high winds that ushered it in have steadfastly refused to move on.

Until yesterday. The weather was perfect!  But I hadn't yet filled the gas tank and performed the Dynon fuel tank calibration. I thought I'd go ahead and get that done. I had hoped to enlist the aid of my co-builder, but he was unfortunately detained by what be calls "chauffeur duty." I gamely pressed on, enlisting instead the guy that drives the fuel truck at Bolton. Assuming he was willing and able to stop the pump every two gallons while I pressed a button on the Dynon, his assistance would be all that was required.

Except for one thing: we got done while there was still good weather and available light.

Should I.....

I thought about it for a good long while and finally decided that it may be awhile before conducive weather  conditions rolled through our way again. I ought to fly it!! I texted the CFO to let her know I was strongly considering it.

She asked if Pete was there with me.

"No."

"Someone has to be there," was her reply.

My first thought was "Why?" but I quickly realized that it didn't matter. I had to acquiesce on this one - she's already dealing with a very understandable case of nerves over this whole thing. It wasn't much to ask, even if it did mean another delay.

Today dawned clear again. Light winds. Pete is available.

This might be it!

That, as you might expect, has really made me pretty useless at work today. I'm a bundle of nerves. Sure, at an intellectual level I can tell myself things like "more than 200 RV-12s are flying perfectly safely" and "there really isn't all that much of a catastrophic nature that can go wrong and I'm going to stay right over the mile-long runway in case the engine quits," but that kind of self-counselling only goes so far. At an emotional level, I know full well that this will be one of the riskiest things that I have ever done on purpose and without the influence of alcohol.

This is serious, serious business.

I have had ample time to reflect back on the last three years, wondering what little mistake I may have made that will come back to bite me. Are there any loose fuel lines? Are all of the screws and nuts and bolts and rivets and who knows what else firmly attached? Will the engine keep running? Are my piloting skills up to the task of a dead stick landing in an airplane I've never flown?? Should I go around the office and spend a few minutes with my close friends, just in case?

I can only imagine how combat pilots and crews feel before a mission. It must be this times a thousand. And they do/did it over and over and over.

Incredible.

I made a mistake, it seems, in my planning: I gave myself too much time to think about it.

I'm setting this aside now. The next words you see will be after the first flight.

[life-altering events ensue]

So, I'm back. The plane flew great, but the flight was not without some moments of interest.

I'm getting better at the choke-to-throttle transition while starting - I only lost it once and had to restart. The outside temp was somewhere near the low 60's, so the wait for the oil to warm-up to 122F went quickly enough.

I actually wasn't super nervous, as it turns out. That's not surprising - I go through something similar when I haven't flown the RV-6 for awhile. I'm a little tense until I get in the plane, then the tension just melts away and I go fly the plane.

Winds were light at about 6 knots, so the taxi down to the runway was easier than the ride I had when I did the brake conditioning/taxi test.

When I got to the end of the runway, there was a Cessna coming in on a four mile final. I decided to wait until he had landed before calling the tower for takeoff clearance. I figured I could use the time to run the engine enough to convince myself that it intended to stay with me throughout the entire event. Cleared for takeoff, I taxied out onto the numbers. I started to feed the power in slowly, trying to get a feel for the steering authority as the rudder became effective and as I felt out the influence of the 90 degree crosswind from the right.

The way you take off in a 12 is you hold the stick back early in the takeoff roll to get the nose wheel off of the ground. Right around 30 knots (that's a guess - I wasn't really spending a lot of time staring at the airspeed this early in the takeoff roll) the nose came up just like it was supposed to.

And it kept going up.

And it went up some more!

Then we were flying, but at what seemed to be way too low an airspeed. The stall warning was even chirping for a second or two. Clearly I had missed the mark when setting the takeoff trim position on the Dynon. I pushed the nose back down and let the speed build it (it took very little time) to a more proper 60 knots. As we climbed away from the runway, I fed in down trim until the pressure came off of the stick. It felt like it took ten minutes for it to get all of the pressure off, but it was probably only three or four seconds.  The plane was climbing well and required no roll correction at all.

In a word, it was great!

I had told the tower that I wanted to stay in the pattern at 2,000', so I climbed on up there. Well, that's a lie of omission: I actually wasn't paying close attention and ended up at 2,600'.  As I finished my turn to the left and headed downwind, I'm sure I saw 117 knots on the airspeed reading at one point but it really isn't something I was paying a lot of attention to. There were a couple of other planes in the vicinity and one of them was heading in for landing, so I was watching for them on the Dynon display. They showed up right where I expected them to be. How cool is that?? When I learned that I was getting a Skyview, I had no idea that it came with TCAS.



I told the tower that I would just orbit in the pattern until the arrival and a departure were gone. He was fine with that, although he complained that he was having trouble seeing me when directly overhead. Once those other planes were taken care of, I told him I was ready to land.  The three landings that I had made previously in a different RV-12 (that story is here) had prepared me for the differences between this smaller, lighter plane with a big wing and the heavy, stubby-winged RV-6.  A full mile of runway helped, too. I made a greaser of a landing, thereby boosting my record to 4 out of 4 good landings, with three out of four not requiring a go-around after failing to get the airplane low and slow enough to land.

I taxied back in and shut down the engine in front of the hangar. Oddly enough, I didn't feel my usual urge to just sit in the cockpit for a few minutes savoring the experience. I hopped out and waited for Pete to get back from his vantage point down by the runway, where unbeknownst to me he had been sending status reports back home to the nerve-wracked CFO.  I had already texted her to let her know that I had returned safe, sound, and in possession of a damn nice airplane, to which she had replied along the lines of "Thank God that's over!"

I heartily agreed.

I then pushed the plane back into the hangar, grabbed my log book, and headed over to JP's BBQ to knock back a couple of celebratory beers with the guy that was instrumental in helping me accomplish something very, very few people ever do:

I have built and flown my own airplane!

Trial Run

We had another one of those quirky Global Warming days today - 60+ degree days in January continue to make me wonder what precisely is wrong with a little bit warmer globe, although if asked in August I will probably be able to come up with a pretty good answer. It would have been foolish to waste the opportunity as the forecast for tomorrow takes us right back to the normal miserable wintry crud we usually have.  

Truth be told, it is tomorrow's weather that better reflects my current mood - three weeks into a six week audit and I have had enough of probing and repetitive questions. Don't get me wrong - there are very good reasons for these folks to be in here looking at my stuff - but it gets difficult when they demand evidence of something that happens invisibly. For example, the applications that I build determine who the user is and what that user should be able to do (or, more importantly, not do) by "asking" Windows who that user is and what groups he/she belongs to. This is great for me because it lets me trust Windows to manage their passwords - no more "Dave, I lost my password!!" interruptions to deal with. Corporate HQ also sets and enforces the password complexity rules, so I am automatically in compliance with their standards through no additional effort at all. It works wonderfully, right up until an auditor says "Prove it!"

Sigh.

Still, a little warmth in the late afternoon this time of year is a gift and it would be churlish not to appreciate it to its fullest, so Pete and I gratefully took the opportunity to button up the plane. That meant removing the spark plugs and re-torquing them with heat sink compound on the threads, putting on the cowls, and finishing up the installation of the fuel filler neck. With all of that done, the plane was ready for flight except for two outstanding tasks: the brake pads needed to be conditioned, and the fuel level part of the Dynon needs to be calibrated. I was able to do one of those.

We pulled out the plane and I managed to get it started. Five times. I'm still not very good at the transition from choke to throttle and it dies on me until I get it just right. I called Bolton ground for taxi permission, but there was no reply. That can mean one of two things: the day has been so slow and boring that the controller has nodded off, or that the volume is turned down on the radio. Because the first is so common, it took me a couple of seconds to test for the second. I did it just in time to hear an irritated "two eight four delta golf, how do you hear this radio?"  Oops. He must have thought that his primary radio was broken, which is also not uncommon at Bolton.

I replied back that I could hear him just fine, the fault was mine, and that I apologize. Not  accepted, it would seem, because he was surly for the remainder of our interaction. I asked to taxi down to the runway where I would need to perform "a high-speed taxi." I realized too late that from where he sits, 40mph was not going to look anything remotely like "high speed," but given his mood I just let it go.

The winds were fairly light at 8 knots, but I still had trouble taxiing in a straight line. That huge weather vane on the tail combined with a swiveling nose wheel had me punching at the brakes the whole way. I think this airplane is going to go through brake pads at a prodigious rate.

The taxi test/brake conditioning went fine. The idea is to accelerate to 40 mph, brake hard down to 5 mph, repeat three times. By the third time, I was able to get the tires to screech a little bit, so it would seem that full braking authority was attained. I also had time to monitor the airspeed indication on the Dynon and see that it's working fine.

While taxiing back in, I tried to engage the tower guy in a little chit-chat by saying that "next time out will be the first flight!"

He replied, "                                              ."

Sigh.

Final Steps

As most of you are no doubt aware, N284DG has been deemed to be a viable flying machine in the eyes of the law. That said, the fellows coming to inspect it wanted to see some of the moving parts normally hidden away by various panels and covers. Those all had to be replaced, so four or five hours working out in the cold environs of the hangar were required. Even then it still wasn't completely put back together, but it was far enough along to take some pictures of it in the most complete state it has been in for months.

So, you're probably wondering, what's left to do? Well, I'm glad you asked.  First of all, the fuel tank level needs to be calibrated. I had to remove the tank to replace the back bulkhead, which means that I had to drain out the two plus gallons of gas in it. The tank is now back in place, but it's empty. That's good, because the way the tank is calibrated with the Dynon is to put in two gallons at a time, pressing a button on the Dynon between each filling. It will take, therefore, ten repetitions of filling a little two gallon jug and carefully pouring it into the tank. If that doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun, it's because it isn't.

Then the cowls have to go back on, which is again no one's idea of a good time. In addition to which it will require some assistance - I'll need to schedule a session with Pete. On the plus side, it's supposed to get unseasonably warm again later this week.

Once it's all re-assembled, I'm going to fast taxi it down the runway a few times. That will double as my brake glazing operation. The primary function of it, though, is to make sure the wheels all roll nicely. Oh, and that none of them part ways with the rest of the airplane. That's important too.

After that it will be ready to fly, even if I am not. I've been thinking about the first flight quite a bit. Van's would have me get started on the flight test cards (which are intended to be used to gather information about the performance of the plane) on the first flight, but I'm thinking I won't. Van's tends to group-think quite a bit, and they are a group that seem to see nothing particularly special or difficult about a first flight. I think I will probably be a little too wrapped up in the intense experience of the even to be wanted to concern myself with measurements and writing stuff down.  

Their attitude is understandable, of course, since they live and breathe this stuff five days a week.  They're kind of like that with challenges to the build process too. They seem to forget that we aren't all working in large, temperature-controlled, well-lit facilities with every necessary tool right there for the asking, nor are we just a few steps away from the guy that can provide clarification for an ambiguously worded step in the plans. This manifest itself at times in the way they (well, some of them anyway) respond to questions and complaints.

Anyway, I see the first flight as an opportunity to get a feel for the plane and get used to the idea that it will actually fly. I'm planning on asking the tower to let me stay in the traffic pattern to the west of the airport (that's where all of the open fields are) as I climb to 3,000' or so. Once there, I'll fly a few orbits around the pattern before descending back down for my first landing. Then it's back to the hangar to open it all up again and make sure nothing worked its way loose.  I think I'll also drain out the full-synthetic oil that's in it now and replace it with semi-synthetic Aeroshell. That will allow me to burn avgas which, while more expensive, is better suited to my current need. That need being, as it turns out, a way to get gas into the plane without having to carry it home from the gas station and fill the tank by hand.

My flying area for the first five hours is limited to a radius of fifty miles around my home airport. That will be plenty. I probably won't get through the test cards in four and a half hours, though. There's quite a bit of data to be gathered.  We'll talk about that later, though.

The Inspection

It is done and, at least in the eyes of the Federal Aviation Administration, N284DG is an airworthy airplane.

Physics and aeronautics still get to weigh in, of course, and as potentially far harsher judges, but that hurdle has yet to be reached.

It's fitting, in a way, that the inspection should occur on a morning with temperatures hovering around the 10-15 degree range when you consider just how much of the work on the airplane was performed under similar conditions. Kyle, Chief Thermal Engineer for The Jackson Two, flew up in his own RV-12 to deliver a heater to aid in keeping the Feds happy, himself surely remembering the bitter cold January night a few years ago when he and his father riveted the skins on my tail cone before taking the leap into ordering their own kit.

Unfortunately, in this case the end result of his effort was to metaphorically bring a toothpick to a gunfight; the poor little thing didn't make a dent in the all-pervading deep freeze.

Still, it's the thought that counts and I appreciated the effort. The inspectors arrived a few minutes before the appointed time and got right to work. I wasn't sure what to expect with the conditions being as unfavorable as they were and found myself torn between wishing for something along the lines of "Yep, two wings and a tail - let's get inside for the paperwork" or a full-blown, find-anything-that-could-potentially-hurt-me inspection. It ended up being somewhere in the middle.

We started with the paperwork required for things that involve the actual operation and maintenance of the airplane. In my case, that meant showing them the Pilot's Operating Handbook (POH), the Equipment List, the Weight & Balance calculations, and the Maintenance Manual, all of which were provided by Van's as part of the kit. It's fantastic that these things are included with the kit because it would take hours and hours to do them from scratch.

For the weight and balance, I showed him the Empty Weight page where I had entered the weight and balance numbers I calculated back when we weighed the plane. I also had worked out two sample weight & balance sheets. I made one for minimum weight (just me), and one for gross weight. For each of those, I did the w&b calculation at both max and reserve fuel. The point of this was to demonstrate that the plane stayed within limits at the endpoints of the loading continuum which should address any concerns about how the plane is loaded.  It's important to know this because there are planes that can fall out of the CG range just by burning off fuel - you could take off just fine, but somewhere mid-trip you'd find yourself in trouble.

They then asked me something about the POH that somewhat confused me -- they wanted proof that the one I had was the correct version for my type of airplane. I wasn't sure how I would comply with that, but Kyle helped  by pointing out that my POH is labeled 'RV-12 Skyview' and to date, there are only two types. One of them was very interested in the Equipment List and asked me to identify what each item was. I only got stuck on the 'Odyssey PC3' (or something like that) for a moment until I realized that it's the battery.

The physical inspection of the airplane took fifteen to twenty minutes and resulted in them finding nothing more to comment on than a tie wrap that I should re-do in a slightly different way. They professed to be impressed with the quality of the build, but I think that's really more of a testimonial to the quality of the kit. The only thing I can honestly take credit for was the bundling of the wires behind the panel.

Once we got to the point where the presence of the airplane was no longer required, we moved indoors for the completion of the paperwork. Unfortunately, this was their first experience with E-LSA paperwork and they had listed me as the builder in a number of places where it should have listed "Van's Aircraft, Inc."  There were a few more issues as we got deeper in the pile of documents and it eventually got to the point where it seemed that the best course of action was to drive over to the FAA offices to have some of the forms re-done.  

Yes, I was going to have to go to the FAA office! It didn't escape me that this is an occasion that is probably somewhat rare in these inspections, absent a blatantly felonious act. Still, I thought it would be nice to get this out of the way rather than make a bunch of after-work trips later in the week, so I agreed. Into the car and off to Port Columbus we went.

Kyle and I got to their office first and had to sign a guest log and receive a little paper badge to wear. We told the receptionist who we were there to see and she was just starting to reply by telling us that he was out of the office when we heard a voice of disbelief from someone just getting ready to come through the main door:

"And they didn't even have a heater??!?"

I turned to the receptionist and said, "There he is."

Sure enough, the door opened and there were my two inspectors and the temperature-sensitive co-worker.

They escorted us to a conference room and finished up the corrected paperwork.

With the final form finally signed, N284DG officially became an airplane.

Pre-inspection wrap-up

The inspection is scheduled for Wednesday morning and perhaps not surprisingly, this has provided a much-needed impetus to wrap up the loose ends that have accumulated over the course of the last few months.  Because the inspectors are going to want a lot of the panels and floorboards removed, I went ahead and tore everything back apart after the carb syncing operation. Having everything opened up again offered Pete and me the chance to take another close look for things in need of tightening up and/or things that may be rubbing inappropriately against other things.

You know, like high school dance chaperones.

For the most part everything was pretty well put together, but with this being the first time that the tail cone has been removed since the day it went on it wasn't too much of a surprise when Pete found a screw/net pair loose on the trim motor tray. It must have always been thus; given that the airplane has never flown, it was very unlikely to have been caused by vibration. It is far more likely to have never been tight, and the experience of trying to tighten pointed out why. The nut is one of the tiny little metal locknuts that have given me so much grief whenever I have to deal with one of them. I don't have a wrench small enough, and pliers aren't strong enough to hold them. I did find that I have a 1/4" drive socket that will fit, though, so we were able to get it snugged up.


This experience reaffirmed yet again the tremendous value of having a second (or third, fourth, fifth...) pair of eyes looking things over; they see things as they are, not as someone like me sees what he's used to seeing.

One of the other little to-dos was to put a tail number identifying tag on the panel as required by the set of FAA regulations designed to assist the guy that steals your plane. I will eventually get a nice engraved tag, but for now it is a printed piece of paper held in place with packing tape. I installed it with the same preternatural skill at getting things dead level that was so well demonstrated by the installation of a new mandated tag on the transponder that is required by the update of the Skyview firmware to version 5:

I'm also to the point where I really need a tow bar. Moving the airplane around without one is difficult and to some degree, risky. It doesn't always go where I want it to go, and the moment arm on the tail is such that it wouldn't take a great deal of untoward swing at the front to cause crushing amounts of damage in the rear.  I looked around (since I'm not keen on the $100 offering from Van's) and found a suitable candidate at Lane Aviation, right here in town. They're located at Port Columbus, though, and it's moderately hasslesome to go there, so I called ahead to make sure they had one. The warning hairs on the back of my neck prickled a bit when the answer was "The computer says we have one," but against my better judgement I went anyway.

Naturally, they didn't. They would have to order one. One the plus side, they will have it shipped to my house without charging me for the shipping. Also scoring high in the plus column was this terrific find:

Note that while I am using this as a much-needed pitot tube cover, that is not what it really is. When it is doing its intended job, it protects the static wicks on Cessna business jets. It was a bargain at $7.15 if it was even possible to find a cover specifically designed to fit the odd size of the RV-12 pitot tube.

I also took the opportunity to check the compression levels on all four cylinders. I was pleased to find all four to be exactly the same, although I was somewhat surprised at their low level as compared to a more traditional engine like a Lycoming. Note that I am testing at the lower value of the 80-87 psi range called out for the Rotax, but still - I've never had a cylinder lower than 78/80 on the RV-6 and the Rotax cylinders are all 74/80.

Carb Syncing

So, here we are right smack in the middle of January, suffering through the season of... wait, what? Sixty-plus degree days?? Well, that isn't so bad!  Sure, the day job is fraught with stress and peril, what with corporate office auditors in the house for the next month or so (and hey, when did audits go from being 100% shouldered by the finance folks to them only getting 20% of the attention and the poor IT Director getting 80%???), but the clement outside temperatures are sure coming in handy. This is their first day here and I'm kind of on call, but they've disappeared for lunch. I figured I'd fill the time waiting for them to come back by writing a little update.

The unexpectedly warm weather is very welcome as I had been mortally terrified of standing behind a propeller turning at 4,000 RPM and producing a wind chill of something like minus two hundred degrees while trying to make small adjustments to a throttle cable, but as it turns out I worried needlessly. First of all because of the temperate climate, and second of all because I was able to foist that job off onto someone else. Well, to be fair, he really knew how to do it, having done it once already, and I had no clue at all, so it made perfect sense. But still, there I was sitting in the warm dry cockpit while he stood out in the elements (exacerbated by a touch of rain) adjusting the throttle cable -- it's hard not to feel at least a little bit guilty about that. That said, I'm doing an admirable job of it.

I suppose I ought to explain this whole carb syncing thing. As you may or may not know, there are two carburetors on the Rotax 912 engine. And, as I've always said, "My dad always told me to stay away from two things: blondes and carburetors."  He never actually said that, but that inconvenient little fact has never dissuaded me from sharing that little tidbit of parental wisdom. After all, it has been my life-long experience that he should have said it, even if he didn't.

The thing about having two carburetors is that they have to be very closely aligned with each other lest a dangerous vibration occur as a result of two cylinders receiving more or less fuel than the other two. This synchronization is achieved by inserting a pair of pressure sensors between the two carbs. That feat is performed by plugging a device containing the requisite pressure sensor/displays into the crossover tube that normally connects the two carbs. The answer to the now begged question of just why a crossover tube is needed to connect the two carbs is an exercise left for the reader, which is academia's way of saying, "Beats me."

And so it transpired that The Jackson Two, them having already performed this operation on their airplane in addition to having purchased a more expensive and more sophisticated electronic tool for the job than the mechanical version I bought, made the trek up north to assist in the synchronization effort. In the rain, as it so happens. Unfortunate, that, but probably more desirable than in the bitter cold. The view of it was terrific from my seat inside the airplane, and the wind was no bother at all.

This job quite naturally entailed the operation of the engine, a fact that forced me to get back out to the hangar and finish up a few outstanding jobs before getting the fuel tank back in and replacing some removed panels. I also finished up a few of the remaining items on the to-do list, chief amongst them being the torquing of the nosewheel nut. This nut is what holds the nosewheel fork to the nosewheel gear leg, but it also serves the purpose of putting a little resistance in the directional turning of the nosewheel itself. Without any such resistance,

[pause] The phone just rang.

"Dave Gamble" (my standard gruff greeting, used to discourage cold-calls)
"Hi, this is (mumble) calling. Have you had a chance to read through my emails yet?"

Now, this is a standard cold-caller tactic in IT. They send my emails trying to interest me in buying stuff that I have no use for. I just ignore them, hoping that they will get the hint, but sometimes that's not enough and they actually call.

"Well, which of the many people that send me emails are you?" I asked.

"I'm calling about your RV-10. Aren't you the guy with an RV-10?"

Ah, I see. It's someone calling about buying the RV-6! Yay!!!

"Well, no, I have an RV-6 for sale."

"No, I thought you wanted to have an RV-10 inspected," he replied.

"Ooooohhhh! You mean the RV-12!  Is this John W.?"

And it went on from there. So, the inspection is scheduled for Jan. 23rd, 9:30 am.

I originally had asked for Monday the 21st, but he informed me that the 21st is Martin Luther King day.  And as I've always said, if you find yourself in a hole, keep digging:

"Oh, you get that day off? I gotta get me a government job!"

I have that day off too, so I was just joking around. We had a nice chat and I'm now pretty clear on what I need to do to get ready for the inspection.

[end pause]

Without any such resistance, the nosewheel would shake and shimmy uncontrollably during takeoff and landing.  The nut gets tightened until it takes 26 lbs. of force to get it to swivel. That's pretty easily accomplished with this handy little scale I bought at Walmart.

I also updated my Skyview firmware to version 5.0. I had been putting that off out of fear that it would break something in the avionics, but I figured the plane is just sitting there anyway... it went without a hitch. Worth it, too. The moving map graphics are much, much nicer with version 5. As long as I was at it, I updated the aviation databases, something that we're supposed to do every 28 days. I never did with my Garmin because it was far too expensive, but the Dynon pricing is far better: $0.00.

With the carbs synced, there's nothing left to do but take all of the panels off again to give the inspectors something to look at. I'm pretty confident that there won't be any big issues, and I attribute that to the quality of the kit.  There really isn't much to do wrong enough to render it non-airworthy. I anticipate things more along the lines of "You ought to secure this little wire" and the like. All easily repaired.

I was worried that I would need to get the transponder checked before they could sign the plane off as airworthy so I asked about it, but he doesn't think it's necessary. I think avionics are pretty much out of his realm.

Bleeding while Freezing

It's not always a good idea to look at the thermometer whilst on the way to the hangar to do some airplane work. Sure, you'll find out soon enough that it is way too hot or way too cold to be out there crawling around on the floor, but why rush into it? Enjoy the drive!

So, yeah, it was bitter, bitter cold when Pete and I arrived at the hangar hoping to perform the most procrastinated task yet: the replacement of the brake fluid lost from the system as a result of removing the landing gear and taking that opportunity to also re-route a brake line that was poorly positioned and was rubbing against a neighboring line is a most disconcertingly intimate way. No good was ever going to come from that!

I had been dreading the re-bleeding of the brakes based mostly on the frustrating experience we had with it the first time. But, as with many (but by no means all!) of these things, it went far more easily the second time around.  For the most part I was pretty well thermally protected by my Walmartts and glittens, but exposed fingers and anything else than came into contact with cold-soaked tools and airframe strenuously objected to the frigid conditions.

The brake bleeding went so well that we had a little spare time before our core temperatures reached the level of mild hypothermia, so we took the opportunity to do few more of the ever-dwindling list of to-do items. Probably the most gratifying was the final riveting job: the installation of the data plate.

To top it all off, we put the wings back on. 

I have a few more placard decals to put on in order to satisfy the labeling requirements of the FAA, and then it is simply a matter of paperwork.