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Congratulations to Rob Erdos, who flew the first flight on his RV-6 at Smiths Falls yesterday! Pictures on Facebook (Facebook login required).

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Normally Terry accompanies me to the big EAA AirVenture Fly-In at Oshkosh, WI every year, camping with me by the aircraft. This year, however, she needed to spend that week helping a sister, so I had an empty back seat. I offered a ride to Oshkosh to my Dad and brother, but neither could make it. Lee, a coworker with an RV–6, jumped at the chance to go to Oshkosh again - he used to go there every year as a child, as his father was building an aircraft. He went a few more times after growing up, but hadn’t been back since 1997.

The scheduled activities at the Fly-In start on Monday morning, but most people arrive on Sunday. Sunday afternoon is extremely busy, with several thousand aircraft landing on three different runways (one of which is really a taxiway, pressed into service as a temporary runway). I’m happier avoiding the rush on Sunday PM, so I normally plan to arrive on Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning.

The master plan this year was to fly to Green Bay, WI on Saturday, spending the night with one of Terry’s sisters. We would fly to Oshkosh first thing Sunday morning, following the special arrival procedure, described in the AirVenture NOTAM (Notices to AirMen).

The long range weather forecast for Saturday got worse and worse as the week progressed. It was looking pretty grim for Saturday by Friday morning, with very low clouds around our planned US Customs stop at Sault Ste. Marie, MI, and lots of thunderstorms on the “Plan B” southern route around Chicago. Lee and I both agreed that it made a lot more sense to fly to Green Bay a day early, taking advantage of the nice weather on Friday.

We got airborne around 1030, did a quick Customs and fuel stop at Sanderson Field (KANJ) at Sault Ste. Marie, MI, then ripped down to Green Bay, WI.

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I got back home from Oshkosh today. Great flight there and back in the RV-8. More later.

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The repaired Hall Effect Module for the Light Speed electronic ignition system arrived on Friday. Klaus replaced the seal, cleaned the oil off the circuit board inside, and updated the unit to the latest configuration (the later ones have an oil shield to increase the reliability of the oil seal).

I went out to the airport first thing Saturday morning to put everything back together and do some other maintenance. When working inside the forward baggage bay I discovered the source of the big oil “leak” that had been troubling me. I had a quart of oil in the forward baggage bay, way over on the left side. The quart had fallen on its side, and the seal on the cap had broken (I had climbed to 9,500 ft during the flight when I had the big oil “leak”). The oil that leaked out of the container had gone down the inside of the skin on the left side of the forward fuselage until it reached an angled brace that went down to the lower left corner of the firewall. Then it went down the cockpit side of the firewall and came out between the firewall and the skin on the lower fuselage, then ran along the bottom of the aircraft.

I was very relieved to understand where the oil had come from, and that it was not an engine issue. I had been very puzzled as to why this oil on the belly looked so yellow, when the oil in the engine was a bit brown. I was also completely befuddled why there was oil on the left side of the fuselage bottom, when there was no oil on the left side of the engine.

I did a ground run and a flight test after putting it all back together. Everything is working nicely now.

Next weekend I hope to fly to Oshkosh for the big EAA Fly-In. It’ll be great to meet up with a bunch of old friends.

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The “UV” light bulb I ordered arrived on Thursday. i took a day off work on Friday to look for oil leaks. I was disappointed to see that while some things ahead of the firewall highlighted nicely under UV light, oil wasn’t one of those things. Oh well. I cleaned everything up as nicely as I could, then went flying.

After landing it was clear that there was no evidence of a large oil leak, but there was still some oil coming from something.

Saturday I took another look, and noted a drop of oil in a strange place, on the bottom of the Hall Effect Module for the Light Speed electronic ignition system. Everything below there had sign of oil, and everything above was dry. Hmm. I removed the cover on the back of that module, and found roughly one teaspoon of oil inside, where there isn’t supposed to be any oil at all. The circuit board attached to the cover was contaminated with oil. The oil seal around the input shaft had obviously failed, allowing oil to sneak in from the accessory case. Drat.

At first I hoped I could find an oil seal locally and change it myself, but online research suggested that it really should go back to Light Speed so they could do the job. This is apparently a fairly common issue with the Light Speed Hall Effect Modules. The good news is that the unit will tolerate a lot of oil inside, and I found no reports of any adverse effect on the operation of the ignition system. But, I’m not sure that the ignition would continue to operate correctly if enough oil got in there, so I need to get this sorted out ASAP.

I boxed it up and shipped it via UPS from Ogdensburg on Sunday afternoon. I’m hoping they can turn it around quickly and have it back to Ogdensburg by Friday afternoon, so I can reinstall it on Saturday. If I have a repeat failure I’ll either switch to the other option for crank position sensing - magnets on a plate attached to the crankshaft, with sensor bolted to the crank case, or ditch Light Speed ignition completely and install a second PMag.

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The PMag installation took quite a bit longer than I hoped, largely due to poor access to some of the areas I was working in. It was a real pain running the wires to the aft end of the switch console in the cockpit so I could have the CB in a logical location. Access was poor to the mag area on the back of the engine - there were many times when I could only get one hand on a task when it would have been 10 times faster if I could have used both hands.

I finished the installation late Saturday afternoon. I had hoped to do an engine run on Saturday, but I was pretty beat by the time I finished, and I knew that I should do a good final inspection first, and I was too exhausted to do a proper job. Sunday morning I did the inspection, then a short engine run to check the ignition system. The ignition worked well, but the rpm indication on the engine monitor was screwed up - it was reading zero at low rpm, and twice the correct value at higher rpm. This was an easy fix - I changed the engine monitor number of pulses/revolution setting from 1 to 2, and the sensitivity from low to high.

I looked for oil leaks after the engine run, then installed the cowling and went flying. The ignition worked perfectly, but I noted quite a bit of oil on the bottom of the aircraft after landing. I pulled the cowling again, but there was so much oil on the back of the engine that couldn’t nail down where it was coming from. The area around the PMag seemed dry, so I don’t think it was the source. I checked torque on all the bolts, nuts and hoses on the back of the engine, but didn’t find any obvious loose items. I was able to turn three oil hose connections slightly, but I don’t think either of them was loose enough to cause such a large leak.

I also need to redo the manifold pressure plumbing for the PMag. I couldn’t find one of the fittings I would have preferred to use, so I did a temporary jury-rig job. I think I have found a source for the needed fitting on Monday via another RV aircraft owner.

I’m searching for a UV light bulb, as apparently aviation oil shows up well in UV light. I’ll confirm the UV light shows the oil, then clean the engine, and confirm it is clean under UV light. Then I’ll do short engine run and check again.