It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's, well.... a plane!

It seems like it was months ago when I was starting the finishing kit (it no doubt feels that way because it was months ago) and decided to skip the first step. In one of those inexplicable decisions that Van's makes now and then, they wanted me to get out a bunch of sawhorses and mount the wings to the fuselage for the first time and address any misbalance or instability issues with the prodigious use of said sawhorses.

I declined.

I decided instead to wait until the fuselage was firmly supported by the landing gear in order to defend against unwanted and expensive contact between fragile aluminum and immovable hangar floor concrete. As it turns out, though, there is still a risk of crumpling some skin even when the plane is on its legs because there is no engine hung on the front to provide balance. To address that issue, I copied an idea I saw when I visited The Jackson Two last week. I went to Lowes and picked up a mini portable scaffold and used it as a tail support. Well, I didn't actually do that alone; Cadillac Pete gave me a hand. I'm finding that having a reliable helper has really simplified a lot of the kinds of things that caused me great delays in the past.

One of those issues that I had before was, in fact, in trying to mount the wings alone. With Pete on hand and the airplane stabilized, we decided to give it a try tonight. I have read of the problems some other folks have had with the first installation of the wings and was therefore surprised when the right wing slid into place with no trouble at all. As usual, though, it was the left wing that gave us fits. I can now see why Rush Limbaugh is such an angry man.

It seemed that most of the problem had to do with various protruding parts of the spar (read: rivets) catching interference from the side skin of the fuselage.

That could only mean one thing: get out the file!

The biggest problem was one large rivet on the top of the spar. I filed out a nice half moon in the skin for it to fit through.

Once we were able to get the offending rivet through the skin, we were able to get the wing to within about 1/16" of an inch of where it needed to be. After that, we could get it to go no further. We examined every possible inch of the areas that could be hitting some obstruction on the outer skin, but to no avail. Having learned in the past that it pays to expand the search area when it seems that all of the possible solutions are wrong, we took a look inside the plane. And there was the problem! The top of the spar was rubbing against one of the inner pieces of framework. Again, time for the file. It only took the removal of a tiny smidgen of that edge to allow the wing to fully seat.

So, here she is with her wings installed for the first time!

UPDATE:

From the mail bag:

Regarding the Scaffold, is it this one: Werner 4' Portable Steel Work Scaffold, Item #: 145287, Model #:PS-48 ?? Looks much more stable than a simple sawhorse!

Yes, I should have provided a link. Here it is!

Link to Scaffold at Lowes

On her feet!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This was certainly a moment worth celebrating!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guess which position I favored!

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

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

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

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

A wheely tiring day

Yeah, I know, it's a hokey title, but we did work on wheels and tires today, and it was very tiring indeed. Our difficulties didn't arise from lack of help, though, since Cadillac Pete was back in the shop with his son 'Warthog' (everyone gets a bl

What? Don't look at me, his dad came up with that.

So, as I was saying, Pete and Warth

What??? Hey, don't be so judgmental. Pete came up with that sobriquet because he felt it apropos for a young man whose very laudable career goal is to pilot an A-10C Warthog for the U. S. Air Force.

So, again, Pete brought Warthog along to help because we had planned to start the installation of the landing gear. That job actually begins with the drilling out of the mounting holes for the top engine mount. I took care of that.

Before starting on the wheels, we had a brief meeting to put together an action plan. Personally, I thought that was a big waste of time; I've been disassembling and reassembling the wheels on the RV-6 for years.

While I have never had to do anything with a nose wheel, it really wasn't very much different from the wheels I have had so much experience with.

The Matco wheels and brakes on the RV-12 main gear, on the other hand, are like nothing I've seem before. I suddenly wished that I had paid more attention at the planning meeting!

I let Pete and Warthog figure the wheels out while I returned to my comfort zone: packing the bearings.

After a suitable period of letting them figure things out, accompanied by dealing with a faulty axle that held onto the wheel nut like an old widow hugging her last remaining cat, it came time to assemble the wheel halves with the tubes and tires in place. The way the valve stem works with these wheels is completely different from the way my old wheels work, and it fell to Warthog to figure out how they were supposed to be installed while the two old guys stood slack-jawed on the sidelines. It's pretty slick how the Matco's work, but it is a massive pain to get everything to fit into place. That nut in particular was horribly reluctant to grab the two or three threads available to it.

Too bad this part won't be visible when the wheels are mounted - it's all kinds o' sexy.

Sitting there looking at pictures, it's probably hard for you to believe how much effort went into this. I think it was a good three and a half hours of sweaty work to get these things put together, and it still isn't done. The wheels need the bolts that hold the halves together installed and torqued, and the tires need to be aired up. And I still need to call Matco for some help on the really tough axle nut problem. But it was quittin' time and Warthog had earned himself an RV-6 ride, so off we went!

What?? Oh, for crying out loud. He was that dirty when he showed up, I had nothing to do with it.

Rolling with the punches

It was a frustrating day in the shop, not least because I was working alone and had to do all of the hard stuff myself. It shouldn't have been a difficult day, really, since all I wanted to do was install the autopilot roll servo. As usual, it looked like a simple job from front to back: finish up the control rod that I had started yesterday, crimp some electrical connectors onto the wires, and bolt it in. Nothing to it.

The control rod was done in no time even with the slower pace dictated by having to gather the little pieces/parts by myself. It was also a simple matter to bolt it to the control horn. I didn't really start facing any significant headwind until I tried to remove the wrench that I had used to hold the nut.

Oops! In hindsight it appears that I may have selected the wrong end of the wrench to use. Trapped!

The fix for that was easy; all I had to do was loosen the nut a little bit. The next step is where it all fell apart. I tried and tried and tried to get the servo bolted in, but no matter how many times I tried it and how many different ways I ordered the bolts as I put them in, it always came out the same: the fourth bolt would not align with the hole in the servo.

It made no sense at all! Those brackets were pre-drilled and riveted into a set of holes put there by the ultra-sophisticated computerized parts making machines at Van's. There was simply no way that I could have screwed that up.

Or.... was there? Was it possible that those brackets weren't as identical as they appeared? Might there have been a 'left' bracket and a 'right' bracket that I had somehow managed to install incorrectly?

As it turns out, the answer is yes.

That mistake, made more than a year ago in the thermally controlled indoor workshop where the fuselage was initially constructed, was paid for today in a 91 degree hangar. Both of the brackets had to be drilled out and replaced in their correct positions. Not. Much. Fun. But in the end, the roll servo dropped into place perfectly and it was an almost simple batter to bolt it into place. I say almost because one of the bolts was in a difficult location, but I was eventually able to get it tightened up by using the same wrench that I had mis-used earlier in the day.

Independence Day break

The Production Floor at Schmetterling Aviation was open today for the first time since the traditional July 4th break.

Tradition since 2011, anyway.

Being the eco-friendly, free range, family-oriented type of corporation that we are, the entire production staff took the holiday upon which we collectively celebrate the freedoms that were won for us when our courageous ancestors fought with their very lives to break the shackles forced upon us by an over-bearing government by exercising our inalienable right to bear arms. And to light off fireworks, too, even though that is a (somewhat ironically) illegal way to celebrate freedom from an over-powerful government, when you think about it.

Being as we're all family-friendly and all, the Schmetterling executive leadership invited one of the organization's most valued employees to come along, and to bring along his lovely wife as well. And so it was that Cadillac Pete, Senior Manager of Jobs that I Don't Want to Do, and his wife Красивая женщина (everyone gets a blog name...) joined me in a ride over the hills and through the woods to do some shooting at The Farm.

Now it would seem that the courteous thing to do would be a "Ladies First" ordering of things, but one has to consider the extreme effort that goes into warming up the shotgun. Also, as the most experienced shooter, it was incumbent upon myself to provide an adequate demonstration on how it's done. And so it was that I went first. Makes sense, right?

Right???

Well, it worked out pretty well. For you long-time readers that still remember how bad I was when I first started trying to hit those elusive little clay birds with a piddling 24" spread of speeding lead pellets (It sounds easy when I say it that way, I suppose), you'll be thrilled to learn that I've improved. In fact, I think it hit 85-90% of the ones I shot at. That was fun! And it was instructive, too. Having never fired a shotgun at all, much less at a moving target, how else would you explain the fact that Красивая женщина hit the very first clay she shot at!

We can shoot trap down in the lower field near our campground, but when we decided to put away the shotgun and do some pistol shooting we had to move up to the rifle range adjacent to our sister business, 8150 Automotive Repair and Race Team. My brother is the sole proprietor and mechanic of both the auto repair and racing divisions, and the driver for the race team. One of his main sponsors is, of course, Schmetterling Aviation. It's always fun to visit the shop to see how things are going during the heat of the racing season.

Things are going well this year, but it has not always been thus. Each significant incident with The Wall at KilKare Raceway is commemorated with a new entry on the Wall of Pain.

This is all that's left of last year's car:

The shooting trip was great fun and a good time was had by all.

The following day presented perfect weather for another company event: the Schmetterling Senior Management Retreat. This year the CEO and I would take the company plane on a day trip to Put-in-Bay (3W2) on South Bass Island, Ohio. Now, I wouldn't like to see a fine corporation like Schmetterling Aviation get unfairly included in the latest group of capitalistic villains to be targeted for vilification, so I want to stress that Schmetterling's corporate airplane is bought and paid for, and thus has no need for a depreciation schedule, accelerated or not, that could possibly result in Tiny Tim losing his crutches or The Little Old Lady being evicted from her shoe. Why, the very last thing we would want would be for the good, solid name "Schmetterling" to be in any way associated with the deplorable act of pushing Granny and her wheelchair over a cliff.

What?

Oh, well.... yes. We do burn leaded fuel. Thanks for asking.

Oh look! A Squirrel!


View Larger Map

As long as I was dead-heading the plane out to corporate HQ, I didn't see any harm in having my younger sister tag along. She could help with the piloting duties (by which I mean polishing the pure teak interior and the 24k flush handles in the loo) in order to offset the incremental cost of carrying another passenger. Us not wanting to get in dutch (can you still say that? Or is it not PC anymore?) with the SEC and all.

She's a good sport; she didn't get upset when, right after I had taxied up to the airport terminal to drop her off and pick up the CEO, I quipped, "Out with the old, in with the older!" (See also: insensitivity.) She also showed immense patience with me later in the day when she found out that she was still uncomfortably hot while driving home from Bolton Field after our half hour flight in the bumpy, 91 degree air because I had turned her seat warmer on HIGH as a joke.

Hey, it seemed funny at the time!

The flight up north to the island was glass smooth and very scenic under cloudless skies. It took roughly an hour due to the decreased cruising speed I'm using in light of $5.80/gallon gas. There was a light breeze out of the south which necessitated a left downwind to runway 21. That's nice because it offers a point & shoot photo opportunity while on downwind. Because I am busy setting up for a landing on the short-ish runway, I can't do any more with the camera than turn it on and hold down the button, hoping that at least one shot will turn out okay.

Having survived a simply atrocious landing whose only salutary feature was making the turn off at the first taxiway, we walked down south to a part of the island most people don't go to. Part of the fun of the trip was presenting an opportunity for the land-locked Ohio horseman to get a look at a large body of water and to enjoy the relaxing sounds of water diligently at work eating away at an island lakefront.

Oh, and there's a light house too.

It's about a half mile walk past an incongruous mix of a crowded and hectic ferry port, small businesses renting the ubiquitous island golf carts and bicycles, and rustic scenery.

The lighthouse is like a breath of fresh air after the walk.

Well, drop the 'like.' It is literally a breath of fresh air.

If I didn't have an airplane, I would want a boat like this one.

Eh, who am I kidding?? Even with an airplane I'd like to have a boat like that one.

Rather than walk all the way from the southern ferry port to the town of Put-in-Bay on the northern end of the island, we took the bus. Capt. Buck was in fine fettle, positively jolly that he could speed north unencumbered by any worries of being pulled over by the police; they were all busy escorting a funeral. I commended him on his ability to see the silver lining in just about any cloud.

We were just going up to town to have lunch, but it doesn't take long to realize why people spend hours driving to the mainland ports, and then wait hours longer for a ferry rather than do what I do and fly in. It's so they can spend the night. Why do they want to spend the night? Well, because the town of Put-in-Bay is just one big collection of bars.

Some have been there for ages and define the former appeal of the island.

Some of the newer establishments look as if they were brought in on the winds of a tropical storm.

Others wanted a more traditional look, but simply selected the wrong tradition.

Fortunately the large public square is still in place right on the waterfront. Our lunch destination was close by.

The walleye sandwich was great!

The summer break had to come to and end, though, and this morning found Your's Truly and Cadillac Pete right back at work. Today we split up and worked on separate projects. Pete, as his official title would suggest, got the job that I didn't want to do. He would be installing the candle sticks. I've had enough experience with trying to get those nuts, bolts, and washers fit into very tight quarters to know that I wanted the other job: assembling the little pushrod that will fit down inside the flap handle.

Building up the pushrod required match drilling a tube to mate with an aluminum bracket that supports the little tabs that will press against the return spring in the tube. That was a matter of drawing a center line and measuring the depth that the tube needed to go into the bracket. Well, that and clamping and drilling and riveting...

The flap handle will have a curved, notched plate thrust through a slot carved into its back. This plate will provide the "stops" for the three available flap positions. That plate needed to be mounted onto a bigger, stronger plate that would in turn be mounted in the fuselage.

I could have squeezed the rivets, but it has been a long time since I have used my "real" rivet gun. I thought it would be fun to get it out and drive a few rivets for a change.

Meanwhile, Pete had to take a break from cursing the miner that had pulled the Bauxite out of the earth to create the aluminum that was eventually formed into a tubular shape with the sole purpose of giving him a part that would be just shy of impossible to install in an airplane to put the thumb knob on the flap rod that I had set aside as soon as it became difficult. He seems to have regained his composure quite quickly after being presented by a slightly less almost impossible job.

I went ahead with the fun and interesting (no, seriously! This is a super important part!) job of cutting a teflon-ish block into four equal lengths. These little blocks will sandwich the metal tabs protruding out of the root ends of the flaperons. The candle sticks that Pete had installed will push against a horn on the other end of the tubes that host these little blocks.  All of this combines to provide the ability to control the airplane about its longitudinal axis, which is to say "make it turn."

The first step is to match drill the blocks while they are clamped in place on the rod.

The next step is to drill out the holes in the blocks with a #12 bit, mix up a batch of epoxy and glue the blocks into place, and then rivet the blocks while a 1/8" piece of scrap is used to preserve the proper gap between the blocks.

I read that as "match drill, rivet in place."

I amended that to "match drill, rivet in place, drill rivets back out, drill out the holes with a #12 bit, etc..."

Meanwhile, Pete had read ahead into section 44 in preparation of installing the autopilot servos. It didn't take him long to be right back to cursing out that poor Bauxite miner: installing the roll-axis autopilot pushrod requires the removal of two of the bolts that he had just spent an hour installing. This as known as the "What goes on, must come off" syndrome. It is a malady well-known to aircraft builders throughout history. A little known fact is that Wilbur Wright was once mistakenly diagnosed with Tourette's Syndrome after having been overheard installing a control rod in the Wright Flyer*.

While that mighty struggle was going on, I busied myself by watching the paint dry on the flap position latching thingy.

Hey, someone had to do it!

* This might not be true. But you did read it on the internet, so feel free to use it as a rock solid fact anyway.