Details
Hits: 1928

The tailwheel steering has been acting up lately. There is a spring loaded plunger that connects the tailwheel to the rudder, until the full rudder is applied when the tailwheel is allowed to fully swivel. I took it apart after I flew on Sunday a week ago, and brought the plunger home to touch up on the Scotchbrite wheel. I thought the large radius on the end was prompting it to slip out of the slot in the tailwheel control arm. I removed some material to make the end more square, with small radii on the corners. Early Thursday morning before work I zipped over to the hangar, cleaned, lubricated and reassembled the tailwheel. I did a short test flight, and while its behaviour was a bit better, it still would unlock when it shouldn't have. There must be some other issue that I haven't found yet. I have ordered a new plunger, and I'll take the whole thing apart and give it another big inspection once that part arrives.

The drain valve on the bottom of the gascolator had started to drip a bit, so I ordered a new one. It arrived on Friday, and I replaced it and cleaned the screen in the gascolator on Saturday, then went for a short flight. The winds were blowing a bit from the left, so I took advantage of the gusty crosswind to get some practice. The crosswind component was about 8 kt gusting to 15. The take offs and landings went very well - much, much nicer than a week ago.

I've started planning the Trio autopilot installation, figuring out which wing leveler wires I can reuse, and what new wires I will need to run.

Details
Hits: 2302

It was a bit of a busy week at work, trying to get caught up after the week at Oshkosh. But I did manage to escape to do proficiency flights in the King Air and Citation, so that helped improve morale. Terry is still in Wisconsin, visiting various sisters, so I took the RV-8 flying both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday I tried out recording flight test data on my small EeePC 901 - that proved to work well, once I invested the time to get a suitable version of Linux installed on it. I had been using an ancient Apple PowerBook, but its power cable is dieing, so charging it has become hit and miss.

Today I flew up to Carp for the EAA Chapter 245 Fly-In Breakfast. They had a huge turnout, even though the weather was looking a bit dodgy, and one of the electric grills was giving them grief, so I waited in line for an hour to get the excellent breakfast. There was a gusty crosswind both at Carp and Smiths Falls, so I took advantage of the opportunity for some practice stop and goes at Smiths Falls, and I used the out of wind runway at Carp.

On the way back home from Oshkosh a week ago I remarked to myself that my landings had been very nice the last few flights, and allowed myself the thought that maybe I had finally gotten on top of them. Big mistake. I paid the price for that hubris this weekend. I did several landings on Saturday, and one of them was the worst landing I have had for months. I bounced bad enough that I decided to go around from what was intended to be a full stop landing. Two other landings were safe, but not at all pretty. Only one of the four was satisfactory. Today it was quite gusty, so that gave me a small excuse. The landings were all quite tidy from a directional perspective, which is a worry in a crosswind. But I got a bit of a skip on every one, as I always had just a touch too much rate of descent at touchdown. The landing gear legs are spring steel, with no damping, so the rate of descent at touchdown must be very low to avoid the gear throwing you back in the air. Oh well - this would all be very boring if it was too easy. I'll do a bunch of landings on my next few flights. Hopefully we'll get some more crosswind too, as I need to open up the crosswind envelope a lot further.

I spent quite a bit of spare time this week reading the Operation and Installation Manual for the [Trio Pro Pilot autopilot] that I ordered at Oshkosh. I made up a list of stuff I will need to install it, and put in an order with SteinAir. I also started writing up a list of various tests I will want to perform once I get it installed. It has quite a long list of capabilites, so that leads to a very long list of tests at various weights, CGs, airspeeds, etc to confirm acceptable behaviour. And there is a also a long list of potential failure case scenarios to assess - e.g. what happens if the GPS dies when the autopilot is commanding a turn at a GPS waypoint, etc. The autopilot should ship on Monday, and I hope to install it when I do the annual inspection in September.

Details
Hits: 1931

My original plan, weather permitting, was to leave Oshkosh on Saturday, and overnight in Green Bay to put the wheel pants back on and spend time with Terry. Terry spent the first three days on site with me, and took the bus to Green Bay Wednesday evening to spend the next two weeks with her sisters.

I've been watching the weather, and a low pressure system with quite a bit of rain was forecast to arrive overnight Friday night. It wasn't certain that the weather would be good enough to get out of Oshkosh VFR on Saturday, and I didn't relish spending the day trapped on site in the rain. So, I decided to leave on Friday, and at least get to Green Bay.

I packed up and got started just after 11 AM, and it took almost 45 minutes to get airborne, as only one runway was available for both departures and arrivals due to an accident on runway 36. Things were moving quite well at first, then there was a continuous stream of arrivals that brought departures to a halt for about 25 minutes. I kept a close eye on the engine, and all temperatures remained well within comfortable limits. The engine eventually started to run pretty rough, as the fuel in the lines ahead of the firewall started to vapourize. Selecting the Boost Pump ON smoothed things out. The issue had cleared up right after take-off, as the high fuel flow brought enough cool fuel ahead of the firewal to cool the system down.

I finally got to Green Bay just after noon. I quickly reinstalled the wheel pants, then checked the weather. It was clear that it would be a much more pleasant flight home today than tomorrow. I had a good night's sleep and was well rested. The weather was good, and there was about 10 kt of tailwind. I decided to head back to Smiths Falls after lunch.

The flight back was smooth and uneventful. There was quite a bit of cloud to climb through on the way out of Green Bay, but after that I cruised on top at 9000 ft in smooth air all the way home. The cloud petered out in western Michigan, and it was clear skies all the rest of the way home. 3 hours and 28 minutes from take-off to touch down. I landed with 1.5 hours of fuel remaining at normal cruise power.

The aircraft really needs to be washed, as it picked up quite a bit of dust while parked at Oshkosh. I also need to unload all the camping gear. I'll do all that sometime this weekend.

Details
Hits: 2542

It's been a busy few days in Oshkosh. The flight in on Monday morning went extremely smoothly, with very little traffic. We had expected it to be pandemonium, with heavy traffic, planes cutting in front from left and right, and likely holding pattern at Green and Rush Lakes. But, we only say a handful of other aircraft, and it didn't really get busy until we were on base leg, when suddenly there was a conflict between two landing aircraft ahead of us, and some faster traffic coming up behind us. Tower first wanted us (flight of four RVs) to land long, then they wanted us land on the button, then they wanted a long landing again. Then they asked a Cessna ahead of us to go around, as he was about to land on top of another aircraft.

Our lead RV misunderstood the final instruction from ATC, and he landed at the button, did a very short roll out, and then turned off at the first taxiway, which put him beak to beak with a few dozen aircraft trying to take-off. The rest of us realized that wasn't what ATC wanted, so we landed long and taxiied in to the camping area without lead. We saved a spot for him, and he came taxiing in about 20 minutes later.

We're camped between Brian and Marg Carr (RV-8 with 434 Sqn motif), and George and Elsie McNutt (RV-7A painted in a very fetching chartreuse. Brian is working on his tenth RV. He built several RV-4s, including one with retractable landing gear, several Harmon Rockets, and an RV-9A for Marg to fly. He is currently working on a Harmon Rocket with retractable landing gear. Chris and Joan Cox's RV-7 is parked on the other side of Brian and Marg's RV-8.

On Monday Terry and I set up camp, had lunch, registered our aircraft and tent, and went to an RV-8 builder's get together. On Tuesday we attended a forum by Jessica Cox, a young lady pilot who was born without arms, and did a whole bunch of walking around. Tuesday evening we went to the Van's Aircraft banquet. A cold front with thunderstorms went through overnight Tuesday night. It rained pretty hard for a while, but the tent didn't leak, there was no hail, and I don't think any aircraft got damaged.

Wednesday morning we went through some of the vendor displays and checked out many of the RV-8s in the parking area, looking for good ideas to steal to improve the cockpit. There are some very, very nice RVs here.

I also bought a Trio Pro Pilot autopilot. I currently have a very agricultural single-axis Navaid Devices wing leveler. It works well enough, but it sure would be nice to have altitude hold when doing long legs, especially when flying IFR. The Trio autopilots are compatible with the Navaid Devices servo, and unlike some other popular autopilots they completely disconnect from the flight controls when they are not active.

Details
Hits: 1934

We made it into Oshkosh this morning, arriving around 10:30 AM. Traffic wasn't bad at all. We're camped next to the aircarft in row 302, well west of the RV aircraft parking area.Wireless access is pretty spotty, and it will be difficult to keep things charged so updates will be sparse.

Details
Hits: 1943

We're in Wausau, WI. We flew there and met up with three other couples from Vancouver, BC. We flew as a flight of four RVs towards Oshkosh. The word on ATIS was they were accepting homebuilts for parking and camping, but once we got to Ripon the story changed and they stopped accepting new arrivals because they had run out of parking. So, we went back to Wausau, and are in a Holiday Inn. We'll try again on Monday.

 

Planning the formation flight from Wausau to Oshkosh. Left to right - Joan, Chris, Marg, Kevin, George and Brian (George and Brian are two of the founding members of CRAP - Cheap Retired Airline Pilots).

 

Doing the runup prior to take-off.

 

Most of the flight was done in a very loose formation, but the other three guys tightened up a bit on the way home. I didn't snuggle in too close, as I've never flown with these guys before, and I can't really consider myself current in formation flying.