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I spent the whole day at the hangar today, finishing off the annual inspection. I found and fixed a few minor snags, but that is why you do these inspections. It took longer than expected, but I expected that. :)

After I finished, the weather was perfect - very light winds - so I went for a short flight. Only 17 minutes, as it was getting late. I went a few miles south, and did some slow flying, stalls, and some manoeuvring. I can’t legally do aerobatics yet, but I did a few manoeuvres that don’t yet have a name. Then I rejoined the traffic pattern for two touch and goes and a full stop. The landings weren’t perfect - I had a bit of a skip on each of them, but they were far from the worst landings I’ve done in the aircraft. It had been almost exactly six months since the last flight (13 March 2009), but the feet still remembered how to manage a tail dragger.

I’ll head back to the hangar tomorrow, and pull the cowlings to make a prop governor adjustment. I had found the prop governor nuts were not properly torqued during the inspection, and I retorqued them. I had hoped that the inadequately torqued nuts might have allowed an internal leak at the gasket that could explain why the max rpm decreases as the oil temperature comes up, but the problem was still there on this flight. I’m going to try adjusting the stop on the governor a bit, to see if that is really the cause of the problem.

It is great to have the aircraft flying again. Let the good times roll.

Terry is at a dental school reunion for the weekend, then she will be visiting family for the rest of the week. I will attempt to make as much progress as possible why she is away, as she won’t be competing for my time.

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I got the paperwork problem resolved today. I had contacted the MD-RA by e-mail on Tuesday morning, and got a quick response that I should contact the local TC office. I phoned them, played phone tag a bit, and finally spoke with an inspector in the afternoon. George E. was very helpful, and said that he would extend the expiry date of Special Certificate of Airworthiness if I brought it to their office. I finally got a break in my schedule this afternoon, so I left a bit early and dropped by their office on the way home from work.

The aircraft is finally legal to fly again. YeeHaa!! I’ve got a few more hours of work to do to finish off the annual inspection, but I hope to be ready to fly Saturday afternoon. It will have been almost six months since I last flew the aircraft, and I haven’t flown any tailwheel aircraft in that time either. So I will want pretty good wind conditions for the first flight. Hopefully the weather will cooperate.

While I had George E. captive in the meeting room, I also discussed the Catch 22 that the regs seemed to create with the aerobatic approval. The regs say it is prohibited to fly aerobatics unless you have completed the aerobatic evaluation called for in Airworthiness Manual Advisory 549.101A. But, you are required to have an “Aerobatics Prohibited” placard installed unless you have had the aerobatics restriction removed, and you must fly aerobatics as part of the process to get the restriction removed. But, it seems like TC has a way to cut this Gordian knot - they issue a temporary Flight Permit which removes the Aerobatics Prohibited limitation, so you can fly the aerobatic evaluation.

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This has been a frustrating day.

I spent most of yesterday and this morning at the hangar, working on the aircraft’s annual inspection, which I had started back before our week in Sedona. I was making steady progress, and hoped to do the first RV-8 flight since the accident either late this afternoon, or Tuesday evening. Yesterday I inspected the tail surfaces, wings and aft fuselage. This morning I greased the main landing gear wheel bearings, and started inspecting ahead of the firewall.

At lunch time, I ran into Alfio, an RV-9A builder from Carp who had flown down to get some of Smith Falls’ cheap gas. I mentioned my frustration at still being in the flight test phase more than one year after first flight, and that I hoped to get the aircraft flying again today or tomorrow. Alfio questioned whether my Flight Authority was still valid - I honestly didn’t know, as I hadn’t looked at it since August 2008. I thought they remained valid as long as the required maintenance was done. Alfio thought the initial one with the flight test phase limitations was only valid for one year, and that you didn’t get the one that didn’t expire until you had finished the flight test phase.

After lunch, I pulled the Flight Authority out of its envelope in the baggage compartment, and found that Alfio was right - it was only valid for 365 days, and that period expired in mid August. Drat. Double Drat. Many bad words were spoken, then I closed the hangar door and left in disgust. I was in a foul mood for a couple of hours, but have snapped out of it. Now I have to contact the MD-RA and find out what I need to do to get a new Flight Authority. Hopefully this won’t take too long, as we are having some wonderful weather, and I know it won’t last forever. I fear I may need another official inspection, which may take some time to organize.

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It's been a busy few weeks, hence no site updates for too long.

I was in Montreal for most of the week of 16 August, then had to get ready for a week of vacation in Sedona, AZ. We had organized this vacation well before the car accident, and the original plan had been to fly to Sedona in the RV-8. But, the car accident killed that option, so we flew there and back with the airlines.

We flew to Phoenix on Sunday the 23rd, and came back home a week later. We really, really enjoyed Sedona. We took a very enjoyable balloon ride with Red Rock Balloon Adventures - what a wonderful way to view the area. We got a very close approach to Cockscomb Mountain, saw quite a bit of wildlife, and landed on the Aerie development. We also drove up to the Grand Canyon for a day - I had seen it back in 1982, but Terry had never been there.

Saturday we drove down to Tucson to visit friends, spent the night there. They have a beautiful house on the spectacular Ventana Canyon Golf Course. Andy drug me up to the elevated green on the #3 hole on the Mountain Course, and had me attempt to hit the green, on top of the next hill, surrounded by rocks and a bunker, 107 yards over a deep ravine. I had only ever hit a golf ball once before, but the third attempt was good, and the ball hit the green. I don't think I'll be taking up golf anytime soon though, as the aircraft eats enough time and money.

Sunday morning we drove to Phoenix to catch our flight, arriving home near midnight. It was a very nice trip all in all.

This weekend I'll be working on the RV-8's annual inspection, which must be completed before the aircraft flys again.

My ankle is gaining a tiny bit of flexibility every week, I think, but the progress is very, very slow. At least the circulation problem seems to be improving. I can't yet go at full speed all day, every day, but I don't need to spend nearly as much time with the leg elevated as I did even two weeks ago. I can do a couple of days at my old pace, then I need a slow day to let it recover. Or, I need to give it some elevated rest time every day. The wrist and shoulder are doing quite well. Terry is OK as long as she keep popping the pain killers. Her neuro-surgeon gets back from a long vacation after Labour Day - hopefully she can get in to see him soon after he returns, so they can discuss the MRIs she had recently, and work on a treatment plan.

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I had another followup appointment with my orthopaedic surgeon on Thursday. He is very happy with the way my injuries are healing, and doesn’t want to see me again until a year from now. The range of motion in the wrist and shoulder are getting close to where they should be, but the last little bit is going to come at the expense of a lot of stretching. The ankle swelling issue seems to have improved a bit in the last week. I still need to spend some time each day with my leg up, but not nearly as much time as I would have in the past. The range of motion in the ankle is still far short of what I hope to achieve.

Terry had another MRI yesterday, trying to chase down the cause of some of her back pain. Her neurosurgeon is on vacation until the second week of September, and we aren’t sure where Terry sits on his priority list, so it isn’t clear when she will be able to get back in to see him again to discuss the MRI results and see what treatment options she has. She has a fair bit of pain, which is mostly controlled by some pretty powerful pain killers. Hopefully this is not a permanent situation.

Sunday I went out to the hangar to work on the aircraft, and hopefully go flying. My big task was to retorgue the main landing gear attachment bolts. They were torqued when I installed the landing gear legs, and they were supposed to be retorqued at 10 hours of flying time, and every 50 hours after that. The retorque at 10 hours slipped through the cracks, so I really needed to do that before flying again.

I pulled off the access covers on the bottom of the fuselage, briefed my helper on his job, then climbed in the cockpit to get at the top end of the bolts (I put them in with the nuts on the bottom, which is the opposite of what is shown on the plans, as it is pretty much impossible to get a torque wrench on the top end, and it is not good practice to torque the head of a bolt). I quickly discovered that I had a major problem - there was a nut coming in sideways above the head of each bolt that made it impossible to get a socket in there. I couldn’t come up with a better solution, so I removed those four structural screws and nuts to get access to the bolt heads. The next fun part was that you had to go through a small oval shaped access hole to get at the bolt heads. Once you put your hand in, it blocked your vision, so you had to work by feel, trying to get a socket on a bolt head which was in a corner, and there were fuel lines, brake lines and wiring bundles in the way too. Great fun. We eventually got all the bolts retorqued, but at the expense of a lot of sweat, and a bit of blood. I found that the bolts were slightly below the required torque values, but they weren’t too far off the mark.

It was a very, very hot, humid day, and I was absolutely beat by the time we finished. I still had to reassemble things, and do a compass swing before I could legally go flying. I was clearly not in a good condition to go flying, so I cancelled the planned flight. The annual inspection is due at the end of the month, and I’m going to be on the road almost continuously between now and then. I think I’ll put off any hope of flying the aircraft again until I finish the annual inspection, compass swing, etc in early September. Oh well.

I’m in Montreal all this week, for tech review meetings on the mythical CSeries airliner project. This project has been on again, off again so many times I have lost count. This time it looks like they are serious about it.

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We had a reasonable good week, all in all. I had three flights scheduled at work, but my two attempts to get requalifed in the King Air C90A both foundered due to a shortage of training pilots. I did manage to get current again in the mighty Cessna 182 at least. That flight, on Thursday, went very well. I finally seem to be getting used to my new progressive bifocal glasses, as unlike my only other flight since the accident, on this one I had a pretty good idea how far off the runway I was during the landings.

Yesterday we had the annual Flight Test gathering at a cottage on Calabogie Lake. The weather cooperated, and it was nice to spend time with everyone.

On Friday Terry finally had the MRI of her neck she has been waiting for. We made a copy of the CD with the images on it, and dropped the original off at her neurosurgeon’s office. We learned that he is on vacation until early September, so there is no prospect of a quick move to the next step in this process - drat. Today we played amateur radiologist, comparing the MRI images to the images found on the web. It sure looks to us like she has two or three herniated or bulging disks in her neck, which could explain the pain she has been having in her neck, shoulders and arms. She hopes to get in to see her neurosurgeon shortly after he returns from vacation.

I had an appointment with my family doctor on Friday, and got a prescription for the next grade up of compression stocking. I hope to pick them up sometime this week, and with luck this will allow me to get a bit closer to my normal schedule of activities. I’ve got a followup appointment scheduled with my orthopaedic surgeon on Thursday.

At one point, I had hoped to fly the RV-8 today, but my ankle needed a rest after the busy day yesterday, and the weather wasn’t suitable either. I may head out to the hangar tomorrow evening to hopefully reinstall the turn and bank and do some other maintenance to get the aircraft ready to fly perhaps some evening this week, if the weather cooperates.

I’m going to make yet another attempt to get requalified in the King Air tomorrow afternoon.