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Terry and I spent the week of 31 May at Panorama Mountain Village in south-eastern BC. The weather didn't work out so well, but we really enjoyed getting back to the mountains. We spent quite a bit of time soaking in various hot springs, including a long drive on logging truck gravel roads to get to the natural Lussier Hot Springs. We also quaffed quite a bit of the excellent BC wine. We can't get much BC wine in Ontario, as those greedy BCers drink most of it themselves.

We passed through Banff National Park on the way to and from Panorama, and made a pilgrimige to Lake Louise and Moraine Lake on our way back home. They were just as beautiful as we remembered.

Moraine Lake was still quite low, as it is fed from a glacier, and it apparently doesn't get up to its normal level until mid summer.

Last week was very busy at work, so I didn't get out to the hangar during the week. I had brought the wheel pants home before the trip to BC, and did several sessions last week putting some extra fibreglas inside to reinforce a couple of areas. I also bonded in some metal spaces on the inside where the wheel pants attach to the mounting bracket on the landing gear leg. I had noticed that the attachment screws were pulling the wheel pant out of shape, as there was a gap between the inside of the wheel pant and the bracket. The metal plates I bonded in place fill that gap, and they also provide a wear surface for the screw shafts.

I got up for an IFR training flight this afternoon - I did a practice ILS approach at Ottawa, and a VOR approach at Carp. It has been over 15 years since I did any single-pilot IFR flying, so I need to do some workup before I launch into the clag. I had hoped to get to the Owen Sound Wings and Wheels event, as my brother lives in that area, and he would come down, but they postponed it due to an overly pessimistic weather forecast. I'll try again on the 27th.

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I've been on the road quite a bit the last two weeks, and it has been crazy at work when I've been home. I've flown the RV twice, but have nothing specific to report.

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I finally took Terry for a flight today after having the aircraft painted. It was the first time she had seen the airplane since it came out of the paint shop. She was very, very happy with the way it looked. It was very bumpy though, so she didn't enjoy the flight so much. I kept the speed low, and climbed up to 7,500 ft, but it was still bumpy way up there.

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Yesterday I did a short flight to evaluate the mount I made for the Garmin Aera 510 GPS/Satellite Weather system I bought. The mount isn't perfect, but it is good enough for now. The Aera comes with a mount designed to attach to a control yoke, which is useless for me as my aircraft has a control stick, not a yoke.

I disassembled the yoke mount and kept the part that the Aera clips into. I attached this piece to a small piece of aluminum, and bolted a mount for a 1" RAM Mount ball to it.


I have an unused 2 1/4" instrument hole over on the right side of the instrument panel (long story). I made a blanking plate with a 1/4" hole in the middle in the centre, and bolted another RAM Mount ball there. A long mounting arm goes between the two balls. I forgot to take a picture of the whole thing assembled.

The weakness of this design is that the loads on the ball mounted to the instrument panel tend to unscrew it. I put an internal locking star washer under it, and torqued it down very tight, but I doubt that will work forever. I've got an idea of a better way to secure it, but it will take some time to fabricate the next version.

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Late Thursday afternoon I did a short flight to check static system errors and to gather some cruise performance data. I did a pretty complete flight test to measure static system errors in the early part of the flight test program, but there was a chance that they could have changed somewhat due to the new paint. Before the paint, I had vinyl registration letters with sharp stepped vinyl edges very close in front of the static ports. Now there is a roundel close to the static ports, but the edges are smoother. Also, there is now some thickness of paint on the skins, but the static ports (Van's recommended blind rivets with the stems pushed out) were masked off, so their surface is now a tiny bit closer to the fuselage surface than it was before.

Static Source Position Error in SpeedI checked the static system errors at 80, 120 and 150 kt, taking hand recorded data, and also recording data on my laptop. I crunched the hand recorded data, and all three points show errors one to two knots different than the original tests at the same speeds. I haven't crunched the data on the laptop yet, as I discovered that the recorded OAT data is screwed up. I had the engine monitor firmware updated while the aircraft was down for paint, and something has changed in the way the OAT data is handled. I need to sort that out before I can do much with the recorded data. But, it seems that the static system errors may possibly have changed a bit, so I'll plan to do another full set of flight tests to see what the full set of errors are now.

Note: Astute observers may notice that the November 2008 position error line shown on this graph is slightly different from the one that I originally posted in 2008. The original data crunching used an OAT probe recovery factor of 0.85, but as I gathered more data on later flights it became clear that the recovery factor was actually much less than that. It is hard to know the exact value, as there isn't enough resolution in the indicated OAT vs TAS data, but the average of all the data I have suggests it is on the order of 0.5. Changing the assumed value of the recovery factor changes the OAT values for any given indicated OAT, which changes the CAS that is calculated from the TAS, which in turn slightly changes the calculated airspeed error.

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I had a major motor vehicle meltdown while on the way home from the hangar late this morning. There was a loud bang, then there was a huge cloud of smoke behind me. It was like you see in a NASCAR race when the engine blows. I put the car in neutral, turned off the ignition and coasted to a stop on the shoulder of the road. I opened the hood, and saw smoke pouring off the exhast. After the smoke cleared I could see that the whole back of the engine and firewall were covered with oil. It is so tight back there that I couldn't see what had failed. I called a tow truck and had it towed to my local repair shop. Hopefully the extended warranty folks won't give me too much grief.