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My recent trip to Brazil (CIA Fact Book entry) was the third time I've been there (two weeks in 1998, one week in October 2004, and two weeks in November 2004). Brazil certainly has its share of challenges, but I really like the people. They are extremely friendly and helpful, practical and optimistic.

This latest trip to Brazil has me thinking crazy thoughts about flying there via RV-8 someday. It's a very crazy idea, due to distance, weather, terrain, language, etc, etc, etc. But, I'm still pondering the idea. I started looking at maps, seeing where the airports are. The trip to São José dos Campos would be over 7,000 nm, which would be over 40 hours of flying each way. There are large expanses of jungle, and the vexed Intertropical Convergence Zone weather to contend with.

I haven't mentioned this crazy idea to my wife yet, but she'll be suspicious when she sees the list of Central and South American ONCs on my Christmas list.

I quite enjoyed my time in Argentina too, in 2000. So maybe this trip should go all the way to Ushuaia, the southern-most city in the world, near the southern tip of South America.

Just dreaming. For now. :)

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I had a very interesting and enjoyable two-week trip to Brazil to do type certification flight testing on the Embraer ERJ-170 and -175. Many years ago the Brazilian government decided to make developing a world-class aviation industry a priority. They created Embraer, established a government-run aeronautical engineering training program, and now all this work is paying off. Embraer has developed a very impressive family of aircraft. The ERJ-170, -175, -190 and -195 are probably the best aircraft in their class now. Bombardier has their work cut out for them to keep up.

I was back from Brazil for two days, then went to Montreal for two days. Now I'm finally back home for a week or so, and am trying to get back at the RV-8 project. I'm working on a replacement instrument panel. The first panel has a removable section in the middle, as I originally intended to use conventional electric gyros, and I wanted to be able to remove the gyros when I intended to do aerobatics. But I later bought the Dynon EFIS, which has a solid-state attitude reference, which can't be damaged by aerobatics. So I don't need that ugly removable panel section. I planned to redo the panel after I got flying, but I have realized that several parts of the new panel will have to match the old panel exactly, or it won't fit up to the avionics stack, or the platenuts where the EIS-4000 mounts.

So, I ordered a new panel, and I started working on it this week. So far, I've nibbled the square holes where the avionics stack and the EIS-4000 go, and drilled the holes where the avionics rack support angle will attach to the panel. It took quite a bit of fiddling to get everything to match perfectly, but it all fits so far.

I was troubled by the annunciator lights. The aircraft is currently wired for ugly big round LED annunciator lights. But I later purchased nice square Vivisun annunciators. I need to cobble together a dimming power supply for the Vivisun lights, and I might hold off on sorting that out until after I get flying. I was afraid that I would need to fly initially with the first panel, then replace it with the new one after I get the dimming power supply fitted. But I just had a Eureka moment when I realized that the original LEDs are small enough that they can be inserted through the square holes for the Vivisun annunciators. I'll need temporary large "washers" to make this work, but that will allow me to fly with the new panel and the original annunciators for a while.

 

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I've had a very busy few weeks, and the craziness isn't done yet.

I spent the first week of October in Brazil, doing 3.5 days of ground school on the EMBRAER ERJ-170, a half day in the avionics test rig, then did a famil flight. It was a fascinating week. I was back at the airport about 20 hours after getting back from Brazil, to fly to British Columbia for two weeks of vacation. It was a wonderful break, but I had originally thought that I had scheduled the vacation in a quiet period at work. But schedules slipped, and everything got crammed together.

After getting back from British Columbia ten days ago, there was a bunch of odds and ends that needed sorting out around the house, so no real project work got done. That Friday I flew to Wichita for some Beech King Air simulator training over the weekend, then flew back to Ottawa on Monday. Then some family arrived for a several day visit. On Saturday, I'll head back to Brazil for two weeks of ERJ-170 flight testing. After I get back from Brazil, I have a bunch of work to do in Montreal, then I probably have some Global Express flight testing to do in Wichita.

Project progress has essentially stopped for now, except for some work I'm doing on the POH and flight test program. It's frustrating, but there isn't much I can do about it.

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Some jerk has been posting comments with links to porn sites. There is a Geeklog plugin that should prevent that from happening, but I need to upgrade to the latest Geeklog software to use it, it seems. I'm going to be on the road for the next several weeks, starting tomorrow, so there is no time to do that.

I have disabled comments by anyone who is not logged in to the site. Hopefully that will stop the porn spam. I'll upgrade the site software sometime after life slows down a bit, which should allow me to eventually allow anonymous comments again.

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I've made quite a bit of progress on the fibreglas in the last few days. Depending on how you count them, there are around 25 to 27 fibreglas parts on the RV-8. Starting this week, I had eight of them finished (empennage tips and empennage fairing), and I was working on another 13 parts (canopy skirt, upper and lower cowling, oil filler door, front and rear wheel pants halves for each side, gear leg fairings, spinner and wing tips.

The canopy skirt really came together over the weekend. I took Friday afternoon off, and got another round of sand and prime done. Once the primer went on I could see that I finally had the contours right, and that there were just a few minor rough spots to sort out. So one more minor round of fill, sand and prime, and it was ready of the silver paint this afternoon. It isn't perfect - there are still a few rough areas to sort out when it gets the real paint job someday, but it is more than good enough for now. I still have to run a small bead of sealant along the top edge of the canopy skirt.

I thought the upper and lower cowling were ready for the silver paint, but I can see that a few rivet heads can still be discerned under the primer, so I've got some more sanding and filling to do.

I haven't accomplished much this summer except fibreglas work. I need to get this aircraft flying, so I've decided that I won't shoot for perfection on every fibreglas part. I decided to focus on the parts that will be difficult or impossible to remove from the aircraft, as any future work on those parts would have to occur in the hangar. Parts that can be removed (e.g. cowling, wheel pants, etc) can be easily brought home to work on, even after the aircraft is flying. So, now that the canopy skirt is painted, I probably won't do any more significant fibreglas work except for the wing tips until after first flight.

I've got a lot of travel in the next two months, starting this week, so progress will pretty much stop until December or January.

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I've been pondering instrument panel labels the last few days. I had planned on using clear Avery labels, and printing the text on a computer printer. But I was at the EAA Chapter 486 RV Forum two weeks ago, and I saw several aircraft that had used clear labels, and the clear portions of the labels were much more visible than I had hoped. I did a search of the RV-List archive, and found several recommendations for silk screening as a way to obtain professional looking labels. I picked up a silk screening kit at a graphics arts store, and I'll experiment with it over the winter.

Update - 27 Sep 04 - Another builder sent me an interesting e-mail:

Kevin,My buddy used these folks to make dry transfers forhis panel.  They look really good and professional.  Iused Visio, but they can take anything that outputs an.eps file.  You can get a lot on a sheet if you try(think model decal sheet). Make multiples of eachlegend in case you mess up and you can practice.  It'seasier to do before the panel is populated, but Ithink you could still do it.http://www.cliffcolor.com/color_transfers.htmlI've attached the sheet for my legends as an example. Font is Arial Rounded.

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The sample label file he sent gives a good idea of what can be done using this technique. This idea is the front runner right now. I haven't opened up the silk screening kit, so I'll probably take it back to the store.