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Not much to report this week. I didn't hear anything from the painter guy at all. If they are on schedule, he should start spraying paint this week.

I was in Wichita from Monday to Thursday evening, flight testing a prototype Synthetic Vision System on a Head Up Display. Bombardier and Rockwell Collins are developing the technology for a big update to the Global Express. It isn't ready for offical type-certification flight testing yet, but they wanted to give us a look at this initial version, as it is easier and cheaper to make any big changes now than it will be later.

Yesterday and this morning were spent working a "Honey Do" list, but this afternoon I headed to Smiths Falls. RV-9A builder Phillip Kaye had a big bunch of local builders gathered in his hangar to help him install the wings on his aircraft. There were the usual little hicups, but things were progressing well when I left around 3 PM.

The weather was absolutely wonderful here this weekend. Sunny and unseasonably warm. Terry and I took the opportunity to go for the first walks together we have done since the car accident, almost one year ago. We didn't go quite as far as we used to go, but my ankle did very well. It got a bit tired, but there wasn't really any pain.

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In other news, Terry's recovery has progressed enough that she went back to work Friday, the first time she has done that since the car accident, almost a year ago. She took it pretty easy, just doing checkups on patients. She had a bit of pain, but not too bad. Next Friday she'll try again, doing some easy drill and fill. She gradually ramp up the number of hours per week, and the difficulty of the procedures she does, until she figures out what her back and neck will tolerate.

This was a huge milestone. Terry was very happy to be back at it, finally.

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I took some comp time Friday afternoon, and dropped by the paint shop to see how things were going. The guys have spent quite a bit of time tidying up the fibreglas, and masking off the cockpit, engine, prop, etc. They hope to start spraying paint in a week or so.

I shipped the EIS 4000 back to Grand Rapids for a firmware update, after carefully recording all the configuration settings, as I suspect those will be zeroed out.

The weather was pretty terrible most of all week, including the weekend, so I didn’t miss too much good flying weather.




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The aircraft is at the paint shop - I delivered it Tuesday morning. It was very strange having a weekend and not planning to go flying. I thought of a few more little odds and ends I need to talk to Korrey about, so I’ll almost certainly head back out there sometime this week. Korrey’s guys will be working on the fibreglas, and he said that he hoped to start spraying paint around the 1st of March.

I pulled the EFIS and EIS 4000 out of the instrument panel before I pushed the aircraft down to the paint shop. I’m going to send the EIS back to Grand Rapids for a firmware update, and I will experiment with reading serial data from the EFIS with a Propeller microcontroller - the first step to a potential pitch axis autopilot I am pondering.

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I spent all day at the hangar the last three days. Thursday and Friday were spent trimming the top edge of the lower cowling, so that there was enough clearance between the upper and lower cowlings. I then did a detailed inspection of the engine, put the cowlings back on, and did a short 20 minute flight late yesterday afternoon - just a few loops and rolls and three quick circuits. That is the last time the aircraft will fly until it comes out of the paint shop.

Today I removed all the control surfaces, fairings, access panels, spinner, etc. I also removed the UHMW tape that protected the leading edge of the flaps, and the temporary wing walk material on the wing roots. The aircraft is all ready to go into the paint shop - I'll push it down the taxiway to the Kolorfast hangar first thing Tuesday morning.

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I spent most of the day at the hangar, working to open up the clearance between the upper and lower cowlings. Korrey, the painter, commented on the fact that the edges of the upper and lower cowlings touch all the way along the horizontal line where they meet. There needs to be a gap between them, or the paint will chip.

He said that he had faced this issue on some other aircraft, and had used a needle file to open up a gap with the cowling installed. I didn't want him to do that, as the hinge eyes could be scored, which could eventually lead to a fatigue failure.

I attacked the problem this morning - I decided that it would be best only remove material on the edge of the lower cowling, as that would also help solve a problem I had with the hinge eyes interfering with the edge of the lower cowling when installing it. I marked a line where I wanted the new edge to be, then removed the upper cowling. I used a thin feeler gauge to slip between the hinge eyes and the inside surface of the cowling to protect the eyes as I used a needle file to remove material. It worked, but it was very, very slow. It would take over a week to finish at the rate I was going. I eventually got brave and very carefully used a Dremel tool with a small cutoff wheel to remove most of the material, and only had to do a bit of cleanup with a needle file. I got the left side finished, then stopped for the day.

Originally, I had hoped to get a short aerobatic flight off this afternoon. I had flown on seven of the last nine days (six times for work, and once in the RV-8), and really wanted to go up again today. But I ran out of time. It has been many years since I flew that many times in a few days. Oh well - it was a good run while it lasted.