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I've had a very busy May and early June - on the road for about 3.5 out of 4 weeks. The last trip was a one week vacation in Quebec City with Terry. We had a great time. Old Quebec is a very interesting place to visit - the only North American fortified city north of Mexico where the walls still exist. Many of the buildings inside the walls date back to the 1700s or 1800s, with a very few from the 1600s. Very scenic. Lots of history. Too many great restaurants. Friendly people.



We spent one day on l'Ile d'Orleans, a medium sized island in the St. Lawrence river, east of Quebec City. It is full of interesting places, and it has to be the best organized tourist destination I have ever seen. You stop at the Chamber of Commerce a bit past the bridge onto the island, and they sell you a $1 guide that lists a bunch of the various types of attractions. The guide lists the attractions by category, and shows where they are on a map. Each place has a number, the number is on a sign by the road, and the numbers go in sequence as you drive around the coast.

We spent an hour at Domaine Steinbach, tasting their wonderful cider, ice cider, duck pate, mustards, etc. We bought a bunch of their products - highly recommended if you are in the area. They also ship the items, so don't be afraid to give them a try.

Terry, although she is from Wisconsin, has a few very distant French-Canadian ancestors. We spent a day at a genealogy centre in Chateau-Richer, and found some interesting tidbits on several ancestors from the mid 1600s, including exactly which pieces of land they had settled on. Then we went for a drive and found the pieces of farm land that her ancestors had.

We got back home Sunday afternoon, a week ago. I don't have any more trips scheduled, for now, so I need to make some progress on the aircraft. This week I did several rounds of fill, sand and paint on various fibreglas parts, plus I knocked several small items off the snag list.

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A local builder ran into an administrative glitch during the final inspection of his RV-3 last week. The MD-RA inspector insisted that he could not approve the aircraft as it had a halon-filled fire-extinguisher. He had been told by MD-RA headquarters that Transport Canada had sent a letter which said that they should not approve aircraft with halon-filled fire extinguishers.

The builder asked me if I could shed any light on the subject. I dug into the TC regs and guidance material, and couldn't find anything that should preclude the use of a halon-filled fire extinguisher. I then sent an e-mail to the TC inspector who is responsible for coordinating the airworthiness policy for amateur-built aircraft. He replied that halon-filled fire extinguishers were completely "legal".

Just in case someone else runs into this problem, here is the body of the e-mail I sent, and the various replies:

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I was surprised, and gratified, to see today that my collection of Flight Test Links was mentioned on the RV Builder's Hotline, an electronic weekly RV newsletter published by Bob Collins. The whole point of this list of links is to help amateur-built aircraft builders do better and safer flight testing. So the more eyeballs that find this list, the better.

Bob mentioned that several of the links were broken. I've got so many links that it isn't practical to check them manually. Most of the automatic link checkers won't work, as the links are pointers to an entry in a database, as the link checkers simply find that the link to the database is OK, rather than check the underlying link. I had hoped that I could rely on people to let me know if a link had gone bad, but I guess that doesn't work. So, I finally got off my butt, and figured out how to export a list of links to a file, and then automatically check that list using deadlinkcheck. I've now got a list of bad links (it looks like about 15% of them are suspect), and I'll gradually fix them, or delete them over the next while.

Update - 0730 4 June 2006 - I've fixed or removed most of the bad Flight Test Links, I think. Please let me know if I have missed any. I'll start working on the bad RV Links this evening.

Update - 11 June 2006 - All the links should be working now, I think. I've also cobbled together a script that checks for bad links every day and e-mails me a report. I should be able to keep on top of them now.

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I just did a minor security update to the Geeklog software that runs this site. Part of the update was with the code that handles user logins, so there is a chance that the new code has a glitch.

Please let me know if you run into any problems. I try to look at the site logs once in a while to see if users are having problems, but I tend to get busy and forget about it.

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I got back on Friday from two weeks in Brazil. Great trip, but it looks like this is the last one, as we closed off all the outstanding items on the Embraer ERJ 170/175/190 projects.

While we were in Brazil, I visited Gilberto Cardoso's RV-7 project. Gilberto previously built a One Design (wooden single seat aerobatic monoplane), but decided that the RV-7 is a better match to his needs.

Gilberto showed us Joseph Kovacs K-55 project. Mr. Kovacs was the chief designer for Embraer for many, many years. He was responsible for many aircraft, including the Brasilia, Tucano, AMX and ERJ-145. After retirement, he designed the two seat K-51, which looked like a small taildragger Tucano.

We met Joseph Kovacs, and saw the K-51 on my very first trip to Brazil, in 1999.

Now he is working on the K-55, which will be a single seat unlimited aerobatic monoplane, with an unusual flight control system. The inboard and outboard ailerons also move when the stick is move fore and aft. If you pull the stick aft, the ailerons deflect down, to increase the wing's lift.

This weekend I did a couple of rounds of fill, sand and prime on the wheel pants, upper landing gear leg intersection fairings and the spinner.

I'm heading back on the road today, getting back Thursday night. Oh well.

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I'm going through a very busy travel period starting a week ago - four weeks out of five on the road. I was in Wichita last week, getting back last night, and leave on Monday for two weeks in Brazil. Needless to say project progress is essentially zero.

Last Saturday, before leaving on Sunday, I did manage to fabricate a lower oil pressure hose. The original hose end was very close to the engine mount. I changed the fitting on the cooler from a straight out to a 45 degree elbow, which increased the clearance to the engine mount. But that necessitated a hose with a 45 degree end fitting. The new hose fits, and there is good clearance to the engine mount. I need to put the firesleeve on it yet.