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The big move to the hangar happened this morning. Although it was fairly stressful, and although wasn't completely without incident, it was successful. The wings and fuselage are now sitting forlornly in the corner of a large hangar at Smiths Falls.

More details on the move to follow tomorrow. I've got a bunch of beer to drink now. :)

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I had hoped to have the fuselage at the airport by now, but it has proved difficult to get all the ducks in a row. Every time I think I have sorted things out, one of the five ducks steps out of line. The trailer I had planned to rent has proven to be unavailable the two times I tried to get it. The weather has not cooperated. Etc. The other three requirements to do the move on any given day is that I need to be available, the pickup truck must be available, and I must have a suitable number of willing helpers.

In the middle of the night a couple of days ago, Jim Manton came up with a simple mod to make to his snowmobile trailer that should allow us to use it instead of renting a flat bed trailer. It is a very sturdy, wide trailer, but it isn't long enough. However, without the wings or moveable tail surfaces installed, there is actually very little weight on the tail wheel. Jim proposed to make an extension to the back of the trailer out of two pieces of plank. We'll stack two 14 ft long planks together, and bolt them on the top of the trailer deck, with the ends of the planks extending aft. We'll screw some plywood to the sides to gusset them together, and to make some fences on each side of the tail wheel. This should work quite well - knock wood. We bought all the hardware and wood yesterday. Tonight we'll install the plywood gussets. Tomorrow I'll pick up ramps from Mark Richardson. Friday night I'll do my weather dance, and Saturday morning we'll see how it all works out.

I have taken advantage of the extra time in the garage to do a couple of tasks that would be more difficult to do in the hangar. There is still a fair bit of work to do yet, so I've pretty much given up on flying before the end of the year. I might be able to get the actual work done, but there are at least a couple of required inputs from various layers of bureaucracy to get the necessary paper work. I can't see all that happening quickly.

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It's been a crazy few days. The first part of last week I was on mandatory cleaning duty, as four of Terry's five sisters were coming up for a visit, and the powers that be had declared that I had too many piles of junk in various places around the house. I learned a long time ago that once such a ruling had been made that there was little chance of winning on appeal, so I dutifully cleaned up. I managed to find a few things I had been looking for, so the effort wasn't completely wasted.

Thursday the four sisters in law arrived, and it was absolute pandemonium for several days. Terry had a master plan of things she wanted to try and do while they were here, but once you get that many women in one place, it is like herding cats to try and get anything accomplished. I ended up serving as chauffer for pretty much the whole visit. Everyone had a grand old time, and we poured them back on the plane this morning. This evening we had a quiet bottle of wine to celebrate a return to normalcy.

Yesterday I managed to escape to Smiths Falls for a few hours to assemble some IKEA shelf units, and install the pilot tube mount. I've got big meetings at work the next three days, so the next possible chance to move the fuselage to the airport is Saturday. We'll see if the weather, trailer, helpers etc all come together. I've got a bit of work to do on the fuselage that will be easier to do in the garage than at the airport. Once I get that done, if the weather becomes an issue I'll remove the horizontal stab so the fuselage will fit in a U-Haul truck. Terry will be so happy to get the garage back that she would spend a few hours buried in the back of the fuselage helping me reinstall the HS.

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I was trying to organize moving the aircraft to the hangar this weekend, but events conspired against me. I tracked down a suitable flatbed trailer early in the week, but it wasn't available on the weekend. The long range weather forecast said it was supposed to rain Saturday and Sunday, so I didn't look for another trailer. Then late in the week the forecast changed to show that Sunday might be suitable. I relaunched the "find a trailer" effort, and looked at two unsuitable trailers, then learned of a perfect trailer that I could pick up on Saturday. Unfortunately the owner of said trailer had misremembered the width, and it was obviously too narrow. Another lead also turned sour, then I got wind of another perfect trailer late on Saturday. By this time I had already told the prospective helpers that the move was off, so I didn't try to put it back on the rails, as Terry and I had already planned a Saturday night on the town, and there was no time to get things organized before our dinner reservation. I did arrange to have Jim Manton, a coworker with a pickup truck, help me move the wings.

Sunday morning I installed the fuel tanks on the wings (I still need to torque the bolts, and put in the screws on the upper surface). Sunday afternoon Jim helped me carry the wings up from the basement to the garage, then we brought up the wing cradle and put everything in the back of the truck.

The drive to Smiths Falls was a bit stressful, as the wind came up, and we hit some snow squalls. The front of one wing started to lift in the cradle - we had to make a quick stop to revise the way the cargo straps were arranged, to put one over the top at the front to hold them down. Then the centre part of the cradle started to lean over, as the very strong crosswind was putting a huge amount of side load on the wings, and the screws at the gusset at the bottom of the centre posts were working loose. We made another stop to add cargo straps to brace the centre posts. It was quite a relief to make it the airport.

Jim Manton - coworker, test pilot, proud pickup truck owner.

The wings are now safely parked in the corner of a large hangar at Smiths Falls, in the company of two Mooneys. I might have a chance to move the fuselage to the hangar Wednesday PM, if the weather forecast holds, the one suitable trailer I have actually seen is available, and I can organize a suitable number of bodies to help. If Wednesday doesn't work, it'll be another several days before I have another chance, as a whole herd of Terry's sisters arrive on Thursday, and we'll be busy with them until Tuesday.

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Dynon recently released a major firmware upgrade to their products. The new firmware adds a few new features, and fixes some bugs. It might even solve my EFIS battery charging problem. Today I decided to do the upgrade.

The Dynon firmware updater only runs on Windows. They may be selling products that can only be used by people who are non-conformists when it comes to aircraft, but they only support the conformists when it comes to computers. We don't own a Windows computer, but fortunately Terry has an ancient copy of Virtual PC, a program that runs on OS X, and emulates the hardware of a PC, fooling Windows 98 into thinking it is running on a bog standard Intel powered box. It runs slowly, as every instruction must be translated from Intel code to Power PC code.

Dynon has provided several dire warnings about making sure that neither the EFIS nor the laptop losses power during the firmware upgrade process - apparently the EFIS would likely be rendered inoperative, and could only be resurrected by a trip back to the factory in Oregon. The EFIS screen displays a suitably strong warning while the upgrade is in progress.

Virtual PC does a very good job of emulating Windows, including the infamous Blue Screen of Death - it gave me a good scare today when Windows crashed in the middle of the firmware upgrade. I had depressing thoughts of having to send the EFIS back to the US for service. But, once Windows rebooted, and I made another attempt at doing the upgrade, the Dynon upgrade program picked up right where it left off and was able to successfully complete the upgrade. Now I am charging the battery, and hopefully it will hold its charge for more than a few hours.

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The biggest accomplishment this week was putting on the registration marks. As usual, it took about three times as long as expected, as I had to clean off some oversprayed primer where the fuselage skins overlapped. The inside of the skins are completely primed, but I also applied primer on the outer surface of the skins where another skin riveted on top.

Originally, I planned to keep the aircraft in the garage until none of the remaining tasks could be done in the garage, but that plan has changed. I need to submit a picture of the assembled aircraft with registration marks as part of the application for the Certificate of Registration. I understand that it can take many weeks to get the C of R back from Transport Canada, so I want to get the application in as soon as possible. Now that the registration marks are on, I want to get the aircraft moved to a hangar as soon as possible.

I need to find a flat bed trailer for the move to the hangar. I thought I had a line on a suitable one, but I looked at it on Friday, and the bed is too narrow. I could probably just get the aircraft on it, but the wheels would be on the very edges of the bed, and that makes it too easy to have a disaster.