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I took the instrument panel to a local silk screening shop on Friday. They will give me a quote tomorrow, after they determine how much work they need to do to use the graphics files I gave them.

Saturday morning I drove to a local grass strip where a paint shop is being built. A friend recommended Bernie, the painter, so I wanted to see some of the aircraft he has done and talk to him. I saw two fabric covered aircraft he has painted, and an RV-9A. He obviously takes a lot of care when he paints, and he enjoys complex paint schemes. There was a bit of orange peel on the RV-9A, but you had to look pretty close to see it. The RV-9A was painted in a screened in area of a workshop, not a proper paint shop. I expect he can do a bit better job once he has a proper paint shop to work in. I need to take close looks at more aircraft to get a better idea of what a good paint job looks like.

I had thought I might just have the gold colour painted, then use vinyl for the rest of the Golden Hawks paint scheme.  But Bernie scoffed at that idea - he says that vinyl often looks great when it is new, but it doesn't look so good after a few years. I showed him some Golden Hawks pictures, and he said it would be no problem to paint it all. He is trying to talk me into having the aircraft painted before first flight, as it is a lot easier for him to do a good job if the aircraft is not assembled, and it is a horrible job to disassemble it later. I've got to think about that one.

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I finally registered a domain name - kilohotel.com. This site can now be found at http://www.kilohotel.com/rv8/.

Rogers, our ISP, is getting into bed with Yahoo, and that means I will need to change the URL for my boring main page. So, it seemed like the right time to buy a domain name, so any future screwing around by an ISP won't force me to change the URL to my web site, or change my e-mail addresses. And if I ever get fed up with the host for this web site, I can move without changing URLs.

I'm not the type to conjure up some flashing, smart domain name, so I simply stole a concept from RV-8 builder Randy Lervold, who has the romeolima.com domain. My initials are KH, which is Kilo Hotel in the phonetic alphabet used in aviation, so kilohotel it is. I used Active-Domain.com to register the domain name. It was quick and easy, and I have no complaints so far.

The existing URL will continue to work as long as I host the site with phpwebhosting.com. I am quite happy with their service, so I have no plans to move.

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I had a hard time getting started on the project today, but I finally dragged my butt out to the garage in the late afternoon. First I spent a few minutes looking around the cockpit and cataloging all the things that I need to make labels for. There were a whole bunch of things that I had forgotten, such as the Bowden cables for the cockpit heat, alternate air and oil cooler door. Alternate static source, CO monitor switch, rear seat trim, rear seat Push-to-Talk, etc.

Next I pulled up the floor boards, and modified the area where the rear seat riser will rest. I had originally used round-head screws, as that part won't be visible, and round-head screws were less work. But, the rear seat riser sits on top of those screw heads. So, I needed to do the work to to use flat-head screws that are flush with the floor. Then I put the floor back in, and studied how I will secure the rear seat riser to the floor. I came up with a plan, but my back was starting to complain from all the leaning over into the cockpit, so I changed jobs.

Finally I did a quick test to confirm that there were no issues with recording data from the EFIS and the Engine Monitor simultaneously. It worked great. No issues at all. I realized I need to modify the scripts so they won't fail if there is a momentary interruption in the data, such as might happen when the bus voltage plummets during engine start. And I still need to write the script to record GPS data.

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These panel labels are driving me nuts. I really want to avoid stick-on labels, because even the clear ones look like stick-on labels. I want labels that look "professional", not "home-made". I've given up on reverse-transfer labels. They don't stick well to my panel's finish, and they don't seem durable enough, unless I spray some sort of clear-coat on top, and that would likely yellow eventually.

Another builder suggested a local sign place that he had used for some other work. I called them today, and they only do vinyl. I searched the yellow pages, and found another local place that does silk screening. I phoned them and they said they had done instrument panels before. I'm going to try to get to their place on Monday to show them my panel, give them some graphics files and get a quote.

Meanwhile, I've been reworking my original planned label layout. I realized that I should move the labels on the right side console from in front of the switches to behind them. And I messed up when I cut the right fixed part of the instrument panel. I put the trim indicators lower than I intended, and the lower one impinges on where I had planned to put a label on a row of switches. I'm not going to redo the fixed panel, so I had to spend a bunch of time fiddling around with my CAD program looking at different label options. I finally printed out a sheet of paper full-size, cut the switch holes, and mounted a couple of switches to see how it looks. I've got to fine tune the spacing between the lines and some of the lettering, but I'm getting close.

I picked up a Palm Tungsten E PDA on E-Bay, and it arrived this week, so I've spent way too much time figuring out how to use it. Maybe I'll be able to keep my To-Do list sorted out now. I found a very neat free flight planning program called CoPilot. The author seems to live in Ottawa, as the sample database has his aircraft based at Rockcliffe, a small airport near down-town Ottawa. It is such a nice program that I will send him a donation, once I get flying and start using it for real. I threw together a quick-and-dirty RV-8 performance database, and I've looked at various trips that I hope to fly regularly. I finally had to put the thing aside or I would never get anything else done.

I finally managed to meet up with a coworker in Smith's Falls today. He has a large hangar with only one aircraft, and he offered to rent me some space. I like Smith's Falls better than Carp, which is where I have a hangar rented now (fortunately I have sublet it to another RV-ator, so it isn't costing me any money for now). And the space in Smith's Falls would be 25% the cost of my hangar in Carp. The only downside is that I would have to pull his Mooney out to get at my aircraft.I pulled it out today, and it is workable. I'm very tempted.

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I had high hopes for reverse-transfer labels for the instrument panel. I ordered a sample from Ambient Graphics, and they arrived while I was in Wichita. I tried part of the sample yesterday, but they don't seem to adhere very well to the finish on my instrument panel. Maybe I didn't get it cleaned well enough. I'll make one more try before I give up, but I fear I may have to go back to Plan A - silk-screening.

I really want to get the labels on the instrument panel before I rivet the outer parts in place. And that task is probably on the critical path. So I need to sort this out soon. I've got to create a computer graphics file with all the labels, as that will be the first step, no matter whether I use reverse-transfers or silk-screening.

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I hooked up the Dynon EFIS to my laptop while I watched the SuperBowl so I could record data from it. I took the partially-working data recording program I created many months ago, and merged it with the Engine Monitor program I created while I was in Wichita. I now have a working Perl script to record data from the Dynon EFIS, at a selectable data rate. It does exactly what I need now, so I won't waste any more time on it for the foreseeable future. Someday (i.e. after I get flying) I'll do some more work on this program to make it a bit more user-friendly.

The Dynon EFIS spits out data at 64 records per second, which is a very high data rate. I'm only interested in one or two records per second. And I wanted to add hi-resolution computer time to each record, so I could do a time-sync with the data from the Engine Monitor and the GPS.

I'll update the script to run in Active State Perl on Windows, someday. But, if anyone wants the current version, send me an e-mail (khorton01 AT rogers DOT com). It was developed on OS X, but it should work on any Unix-like operating system, such as Linux.