The weather has been pretty terrible the last few weeks, with long periods of day after day of low cloud and rain. This has definitely put a crimp in my RV flying.

I did get up 10 days ago on one of the rare sunny days, during the week. It was blowing pretty hard though, about 15 kt straight across the runway, so it was good to get some crosswind practice in. I did some aerobatics, then did six landings. The first one was pretty ugly, but all the rest were passable. Then I changed the oil and filter and inspected ahead of the firewall, and did the annual compass swing.

This weekend we had low cloud forecast for both days, so I didn’t plan to do any flying. I did head out to the hangar on Saturday morning to clean, inspect and grease the wheel bearings, and the tail wheel pivot. Of course the clouds lifted and the sun came out as soon as I had the aircraft ripped apart, and it closed back in again as I finished and put it all back together. Oh well.

To jack the aircraft, I use a jacking point that I made from a bolt, screwed into the tie down location under the wing at midspan.

Ron, the hangar owner, has these nice jack stands that support a small hydraulic jack. They are optimized for his Mooney, but they work for the RV if you set them on some wood blocks.

The tie down holes are a bit farther aft than optimal as jacking points, so there isn’t much weight on the tailwheel after you jack one of main wheels clear of the ground. It wouldn’t take much to have the aircraft tip onto its nose, so I tie the tail wheel spring to something heavy for security.

Left wheel off the ground. The bottom of the wheel pants are getting a bit beat up. Oh well.

I found a bit of light corrosion on the cylindrical support for the brake disk. I’ll have to keep on eye on that.

Ready to go, whenever the weather allows.