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Taking the aircraft to the Vintage Wings airshow yesterday was both very satisfying, and extremely frustrating. The weather was fabulous, if a bit hot, and there was a huge crowd on the airfield. The aircraft drew a large amount of interest, and was surrounded by people the whole day. I ran into quite a few old friends who knew I was building an aircraft, but had never seen it.

The down side - Most folks were careful, but there were a distressingly large number who were completely thoughtless. I had to yell at quite a few kids who were beating on it. One little boy, sitting under the shade of the wing, suddenly started yanking on the pitot tube. I was extremely upset to find a big chunk of ashes that had fallen off a cigarette onto one of the elevators. Fortunately the ashes seemed to have not been that hot, and I don’t think they did any visible damage to the paint. I had the canopy cracked open to keep the interior temperature from getting too high, and I had the key lock locked to prevent anyone from pulling it any further open. But, that didn’t stop someone from yanking on the canopy hard enough to pull it open past the lock - I need to figure out how they did that, and beef it up. When cleaning the bugs off after the flight home, I found a big black mark on the side of the fuselage - I think it was from the sole of a kids foot - he must have kicked as his parent held him up to peer in the cockpit. I managed to get the mark off after quite a bit of scrubbing.

Lesson Learned - I won’t put the aircraft on static display at any more big airshows unless I have arranged to have the aircraft cordoned off to keep the crowd away from it.

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I flew out to Gatineau for the Vintage Wings airshow today, with RV-7A builder Jim M. in the back seat. I was looking forward to see how RV-8's paint scheme compared to that on the Vintage Wings Sabre, which is also in Golden Hawk colours. I had discussed parking arrangements with the airshow organizers - at one point they planned to have me park next to the Sabre. But, they eventually decided it would be too much trouble to pull the Sabre out of the static display area so it could fly the planned aerobatic routine. But, they arranged to have me park next to the Sabre for a few minutes immediately after my arrival so I could take a bunch of pictures. Then they helped me push the aircraft into the static display area.

 

The Vintage Wings Sabre looks good from a distance, but there are many different shades of gold on it, and many of the lines between different colours are a bit rough. The gold on the two aircraft is similar, but the red on the Sabre is darker. I think their red looks a bit nicer, but mine is a closer match to all the colour photos I have seen.

 

 

 

The sun was out in Smiths Falls before I left, so I took advantage to get a few more pictures.

 

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Saturday morning I did five quick flights to take up Christian, Sarah and Benjamin (my sister Natalie’s wonderful children), my Mom, and Odile Rablat, who was stuck in Yarmouth for the day because the weather forecasts for the Bay of Fundy were not that good.

RV Grin from Christian.

 

Sarah

 

Ben - very happy to have experienced a loop and a roll. He has dreams of being a fighter pilot, and this flight further solidified his dream.

 

Mom, who also wanted a loop and roll.

 

Odile, who greatly enjoyed the flight also. She reciprocated by giving Dad and I flights in her ultralight on Sunday morning, before Odile and I departed Yarmouth. I greatly appreciated the experience - superb visibility, but a huge amount of wind and noise. I was happy to later see via her SPOT Tracker that Odile made it to Port Hawkesbury in Cape Breton. Congratulations Odile.

 

I took more pictures today, but stupidly left the camera in the aircraft at Smiths Falls. I’m not going to spend an hour and a half to drive there and back just to rescue the camera. It’ll have to wait until next time I’m at the airport. Oh well.

The RV-8 is definitely the preferred way to get between Ottawa and Yarmouth. It took 2:30 to fly down, and 3:11 to come home. That sure beats the two day drive, or airlines to Halifax + rental car, or the train to Halifax + rental car.

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I’ve been itching to fly the aircraft back home to Yarmouth, NS for quite awhile. I looked at my schedule a few days ago, and realized that this past weekend was possibly the only chance I had before Labour Day to get to Yarmouth. The weather looked acceptable, so I booked a day off work (Friday), and planned the trip. Terry couldn’t get away on Friday, and I had to at least try to be back in Ottawa for Monday morning, so I had to go without her. Otherwise it would have been fly down on Saturday, and back to Ottawa on Sunday, which would be pretty crazy.

The weather was fairly good on Friday, with some mid level cloud, and strong tailwinds at altitude. I elected to fly IFR, which allowed me to go higher to take advantage of those winds. The tailwinds averaged about 25 kt, but they were over 30 kt in some places. I took advantage of the empty back seat to strap my laptop down and recorded cruise performance data for the whole trip. I got at 10 or 20 minutes of data at five different altitude/power setting combinations. I'll crunch that data in the coming days.

 

Montreal off the left wing.

 

Starting across the Bay of Fundy, with Grand Manan Island just ahead. I climbed to 13,000 ft for this part of the trip, to ensure I was well within gliding range of land the whole way across. There is about 24 nm of water between Grand Manan Island and Digby Neck.

 

Going past Digby Neck - almost back to the main land.

 

In Yarmouth County now, with its hundreds of lakes. I grew up near Lake George, which is the big lake in this picture. I did a quick pass by the house to let Mom know I was in the area, then headed to the airport where Dad was waiting. The weather was very nice, and you never know when it will be nice again, despite all the predictions by the weather guessers, so I took Dad for a local flight shortly after arriving in Yarmouth.

 

Odile Rablat, from France, arrived about the same time I did. She is making a grand tour around Canada in an ultra-light. She went from Montreal to British Columbia and back last summer, and this year she is doing the Maritime Provinces. She is a real adventurer, living a dream she has had for several years.

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I’ve had several requests for details on the paint colours used on my Golden Hawk paint scheme.

The gold on the original Golden Hawks wasn’t paint - it was Sheffield Luxor Pale Gold powder from the Sheffield Bronze company mixed in clear lacquer - One pound three ounces of powder per Imperial Gallon of lacquer. The gold powder was dissolved in cellulose nitrate thinner before mixing with the lacquer. Three coats were used. The white on the original Golden Hawks was Dupont Dulux White - DU246-1497. The red was Dupont Dulux Red - DU93-2622R. The blue for some lettering was Dupont Dulux Blue - DU93-24160. All the original paint info is from RCAF drawing 5212 “AEROBATIC MARKING SABRE (F-86) ACFT” revision C6, dated March 1961.

All paints used on my aircraft are from the Dupont AF400 aviation Imron family. The gold is Antique Gold Metallic - P1165 - it was chosen after looking at dozens of colour pictures of the Golden Hawks. The apparent colour of the original aircraft varied quite a bit depending on the lighting, and perhaps on the accuracy of the colour reproduction. Antique Gold seemed to be the best overall match. The white is Matterhorn White - AF402. The red is Flag Red - P1202. The white and red were chosen because they were extremely close matches to the Dupont paint colours on the original RCAF paint scheme drawings.

I hope to have the aircraft on display at the Vintage Wings airshow on 4 July. The plan is that after their Golden Hawk Sabre finishes its flying display, they will park it next to my aircraft. It will be interesting to see how the colours compare when the two aircraft are side by side.

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I had a bunch of comp time built up, and Friday was looking like being the best day of the week, so I took the day off and spent it at Smiths Falls. I flew first thing in the morning to gather a bit of static system position error data. After lunch I zipped up to Carp to visit Touch N Go Aviation, a pilot supply shop at Carp. I picked up a neat night light that straps onto your forehead, and some other odds and ends. I was very impressed to see that I only burned 1.9 USG from engine start to engine stop to get from Smiths Falls to Carp (24 nm each way), and 2.3 USG to come home (I did a touch and go in Smiths Falls on the way home, so the extra circuit cost me a few tenths of a gallon).

Today Terry and I flew to Muskoka for the Grassroots Aviation BBQ. It sure is pretty country up there - cottage country, with lots of lakes. I had no idea who Grassroots Aviation was, but it turned out that they supply raw materials and hardware to homebuilt aircraft builders. I picked up some floating platenuts that I need to improve the way the wheel pants are mounted. Bob and Christine were very nice people - we'll probably go back next year. It would have taken about 5.5 hours to drive to Muskoka, and we got there in an hour (plus 40 minutes driving to the airport, and another 30 minutes to get the plane out of the hangar, do the walkaround, etc).

I was glad to have the XM weather from the Aera 510, as some of the weather guessers were predicting a few thundershowers to develop. The public forecast guys were crying the blues, predicting doom and gloom all day. The aviation forecast guys said no showers until 11 PM. As it turned out, while we were on the ground in Muskoka, a line of convective activity developed between Muskoka and Smiths Falls. I left the XM weather on while we were on the ground, so I could run a radar loop before we left to better understand how things were developing. The radar loop gave the impression that the weather would pass through Smiths Falls before we got home, and that is the way things turned out. The runway was still wet when we landed, and the cells weren't very far off to the east, but they didn't get in our way.