Letters from Flyover Country

Debunking the 'scary landings' video

2012-01-25T07:56:00.002-06:00

(Cross-posted from the day job)

Among the "viraliest" of the viral videos being picked up by "news" sites in the last few weeks is this video showing "scary" and "dangerous" landings in jetliners. Commenter Jim Shapiro forwards the latest victim of the supposition, the Huffington Post.

Said the Huffington Post:

The planes, from Emirates to Thomas Cook, approach the runway at odd angles to compensate for the high winds, which were gusting up to 55 knots on the day, Bogdan says.

Landing (and takeoff) is statistically riskier than other parts of the flight, 'Miracle on the Hudson' pilot Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger' told us over the summer, due to cloud height, wind and visibility, among other things. Now we see why.

"Look at these impossible landings," a TV anchor on WCCO declared the other morning while showing the video.

Let's analyze what's really happening here. While it's flying, a plane doesn't move against the wind, it's in the wind. If the winds are blowing 55 mph across a runway (it's not here although the suggestion is that it is, but that's another discussion), the plane is also moving at 55 mph across a runway . That's not a good thing.

What the pilots of these planes are actually doing is making very professional and safe approaches. They're turning the nose into the wind -- against the wind, really -- in order to align with the the centerline of the runway...drifting neither left nor right. Where you do see the plane drifting, is the pilot calculating how much of an angle is necessary to align the jetliner's track with the centerline of the runway.

But, of course, you can't actually land that way, so shortly before touchdown, the pilot uses the plane's rudder to align the nose with the runway, so as not to put any "side load" on the landing gear. Every plane has a maximum "crosswind component" to help pilots calculate whether a landing can be made safety given a certain amount of wind and the angle at which it intersects the runway. So what you see above, while an example of pilot skill, is not luck at work.

If a pilot needs more time to get the angle right, he/she simply "goes around" and tries the approach again. Look up on any day with a light breeze the next time a small plane flies over your house, and the chances are the nose of the plane is not aligned with the path (heading) of the plane. Same thing.

Think of it this way: You're crossing a river with a canoe. If you point the canoe to the spot on the opposite shore where you intend to disembark, the current will carry you downstream. So, you point the canoe upstream of where you want to land and between your heading and the current, the result is usually a straight line to your intended "touchdown." With any luck when you get to the other side, there's nobody there with a camera to tell you how dangerous, scary, or impossible it was.

Oshkosh in winter

2012-01-24T08:07:00.001-06:00

Yes, it's a lovely video of landing at Pioneer Airport on skis. But what I find most interesting is the flight over a snowed-in Camp Scholler. Find your "spot."

NTSB's probe into experimental aircraft accidents

2012-01-23T13:34:00.000-06:00

The NTSB today said it has finished collecting data on accidents involving experimental aircraft.

Here's the NTSB news release:

WASHINGTON - Throughout the 2011 calendar year, the National
Transportation Safety Board has been conducting a study of
Experimental Amateur-Built (E-AB) aircraft to evaluate the
safety of this growing and innovative segment of general
aviation. In addition to using the information gathered
during its accident investigations, the NTSB has been
working with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the
Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA), and individual
owners and builders to evaluate a range of issues unique to
this popular segment of general aviation.

"The cooperation we have received from EAA and the E-AB
community has been tremendous," said NTSB Chairman Deborah
A.P Hersman. "Through this study, we hope that we'll be able
to give the innovators and aviators in the community
information about accidents that will result in a real and
immediate safety payoff for them when they are flying these
aircraft."

As part of the study, NTSB investigators have conducted in-
depth investigations of 222 E-AB aircraft accidents that
occurred during 2011. Fifty-four of these accidents resulted
in 67 fatalities. Most of these accidents (93%) involved
amateur-built airplanes, the remaining accidents involved
gyroplanes (4%), helicopters (2%), and gliders (1%). These
accidents occurred in 44 states, with California (18
accidents), Texas (16 accidents), and Florida (14 accidents)
accounting for the most. More than half (53%) of the E-AB
accidents investigated in 2011 involved E-AB aircraft that
were bought used, as opposed to having been built by the
current owner.

The EAA has supported the study by conducting a web-based
survey of E-AB owners and builders. More than 5,000 E-AB
owners and builders responded to EAA's survey, and 4,923 of
these responses were sufficiently complete to use in
analyses. Most respondents (97%) described E-AB airplanes,
while gliders, gyrocopters, and helicopters were each
described by slightly less than 1% of the respondents.

Sixty-three percent of respondents had already built their
E-AB aircraft, 13% were currently building their E-AB
aircraft, and nearly 24% had bought used E-AB aircraft. More
than 340 distinct makes of amateur-built aircraft were
reported, although kit manufacturers accounted for more than
55% of the reported aircraft.

"The NTSB is extremely pleased with the number of
respondents who participated in the survey," said Dr. Joseph
Kolly, Director of the Office of Research and Engineering.
"The survey data provides us with quantifiable, factual
information that enriches our understanding of how E-AB
aircraft are built and operated."

The safety study is scheduled to be completed in the spring
of 2012.

Risk and the perfect picture

2012-01-17T11:10:00.004-06:00

(This is a cross-posting from my day job)

There's no question that Pioneer Press photographer Ben Garvin's aerial photographs of the Crashed Ice event are some of the most spectacular photographs ever taken of the Capital City. True to the nature of geeky pilots, I wondered how it was possible the pilot could legally -- not to mention, skillfully -- get them.

It was difficult airspace for the pilot of the Cessna aircraft to navigate, given the smokestacks along the river (note: they're not so much aviation hazards as they are markers of the point at which the big airport's airspace begins at ground level), the height of the Cathedral, and the heavily-controlled airspace overhead that's meant to protect the jets at the big airport. Any safe pilot is always mindful of the possibility of an engine failure, but Garvin's pilot left himself with few options if something had gone wrong.

Having witnessed the plane circling the Cathedral at a low altitude on Saturday, I tweeted on Sunday that the pilot may have been breaking the regulations to help Garvin get his shot. He was that low.

In MinnPost writer David Brauer's excellent interview with Garvin, the suspicion was confirmed with this passage:

"We had to fly low because of the smokestack of the District Energy power plant. The pilot mentioned a couple of times, 'We're too low, we might get in trouble.' I was kind of saying 'Do what you have to do, but keep doing it,'" the photographer says with a chuckle. "He said he hardly ever got to do cool things like this. He was banking sharp, and flying in high-traffic airspace, so it was technically challenging."

It was also likely illegal at some point. Here's the relevant FAA regulation:

Except when necessary for takeoff or landing, no person may operate an aircraft below the following altitudes:

(a) Anywhere. An altitude allowing, if a power unit fails, an emergency landing without undue hazard to persons or property on the surface.

(b) Over congested areas. Over any congested area of a city, town, or settlement, or over any open air assembly of persons, an altitude of 1,000 feet above the highest obstacle within a horizontal radius of 2,000 feet of the aircraft.

If the engine had failed, there was nowhere for Garvin and his pilot to go but into a neighborhood, building, or the crowd below (one might have been able to limp over to the Sears parking lot to minimize the toll). And on ( b), the pilot also likely failed. The highest obstacle in the area, of course, was the Cathedral at 306 feet, requiring a minimum altitude of 1,306 above it. That would have put him in the so-called Class B airspace above the city, which protects the jets landing at Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport. It appears that he was circling just outside the reach of the controllers at the downtown St. Paul airport.

This photo, which raced around the Twitterverse -- and deservedly so -- reveals the pilot was no more than 200-500 feet above the top of the spire (estimate adjusted for the use of an 80-200 mm lens).

Another pretty photo of #crashedice looking from the north over cathedral, complete with Cessna wing. twitter.com/bengarvin/stat...
— bengarvin (@bengarvin) January 15, 2012

Who couldn't look at that beauty all day?

And fortunately, airplanes don't usually develop mechanical problems, and Garvin wasn't responsible for following aviation rules -- his job was to get the shot. But the regulations exist because of the high risk involved in low- altitude flights with steep turns, which increase the danger of a stall/spin crash that, in this case, could have far eclipsed the toll in the recent Reno airshow crash.

A study by the Aviation Safety Foundation found that 80 percent of all crashes involving a stall/spin, began within 1,000 feet of the ground.

The challenge of photographing an event like Crashed Ice is also why TV news organizations use helicopters for their photo platforms. The FAA regulations exempt helicopter pilots from the minimum safe altitude requirements above, as long as the helicopters are flown "without hazard to persons or property on the surface."

It's hard to know whether the "trouble" the pilot of the plane was concerned about was the potential problem of an engine failure, or the possibility the FAA would find out .

The FAA has not yet responded to inquiries on the matter, and it's fairly unlikely it will.

The pre-inspection inspection

2012-01-15T19:07:00.006-06:00

In a week in which the value and future of EAA with regard to homebuilders has been rightly questioned, I was reminded today -- as if I needed to be -- that RV builder groups are much more valuable for people building airplanes than an other source of advice.

Fortunately for me, two of the most knowledgeable RV builders on the planet live in the Twin Cities and, even more fortunately for me, think nothing of giving up three hours on a Sunday afternoon to go over my RV-7A project before the FAA D.A.R. (likely, Tim Mahoney, another RV builder who knows these guys well) takes a crack at it.

Doug Weiler has headed the Twin Cities RV Builders Group since at least the time when I thought an RV came on four wheels. He and Tom Berge showed up at the hangar today, Doug announcing that the "guys who destroy dreams" had arrived.

By nature, I assume I've done stuff wrong, so I'm always a little skittish about having people look at my work too closely. But when I was building, I constantly heard Tom's voice in my ear. Years ago, I did an interview with him for the RV Builder's Hotline. So I knew -- generally -- what he'd be looking for.

He's done so many inspections, he now has a form to check every little thing. He crawls into places that make me hurt just thinking about it. Nothing escapes his notice. When he called out a problem, I wrote it down on the paper covering my workbench. See? (click here for the large image)

The biggest problem he found were the jam nuts not tight on the forward elevator pushrod, some loose bolts on the fuel tank attach, and the lack of a backout bracket on the TruTrak wing leveler (they were introduced well after I'd bought and installed mine). He had great ideas.

He also told me to change the breather tube route that some people on Van's Air Force had told me to make, after seeing my original route (down around the oil filter was the original). It was a good reminder that sometimes the information you get in a builder's forum, isn't as good as the information you get from a rootin' tootin' expert.

Tom even found a missing cotter pin on the left nut on the right pedal of the rudder/brake pedal on the pilot's side.

One more tip: For an RV-7A bottom cowl rear hinges, a piece of .063 angle should be riveted across the three most inboard rivets of the hinge. Otherwise, Tom said, the "eyes" of these hinges tend to break.

I knew Tom would point out that the oil pressure transducer line and the fuel pressure transducer line should have firesleeve on it, even though Van's' instructions don't call for it, and many others say it's not needed. But he makes a very compelling argument for it to take simple precautions to prevent a fire under the cowling.

One very interesting piece of advice: Tom suggested disconnecting the aileron trim before the first flight. Otherwise, he said, it'll be hard to detect a heavy wing.
Then, once fixed ("it's easy to fix a heavy wing," he says), it can be reconnected.

It'll take me a few weeks to work my way through all of these things, but I'm not in a hurry.

And when Tim Mahoney takes a look at this bird for the actual inspection, I'm betting when he finds out Doug and Tom have already given it the once-over, and the appropriate items have been fixed, that'll make his job, and my day, a lot easier.

Here are most of the specific items:

1) Move oil breather hose back to the way I had it before VAF told me I should change it.
2) Separate engine probe wire bundle from starter cable
3) Safety wire the dipstick assembly better
4)Set engine idle to just above stall (haven't done any tinkering on actual engine operation)
5)Firesleeve the oil and fuel lines to the transducers
6) Use a cork, rather than a typical paper, gasket between the fuel servo and the FAB plate.
7) Attach .063 angle across the innermost three rivets on the bottom of the cowling aft hinges. The eyes tend to break in that spot.
8) Seal inside of lower cowling with a white epoxy.
9) Torx screws on the wing tips but do not use any stainless on fuel tank attach points.
10) Retorque all fuel tank attach bracket bolts (one or two were loose)
11) Tighten jam nuts on the forward elevator pushrod
12) Disconnect aileron trim before first flight to aid in establishing whether there's a heavy wing.
13) Add backout bracket prevention to TruTrak wing leveler (mine was purchased before TT made these available)
14) Use foam to seal the forward gap between the main wing spar and the fuse. Aileron boots not needed.
15) Silicon seal area around the bottom edge of the rear window.
16) Use a longer flap weldment bolt
17) Change -8 screws in flap housing covers to 3/8" length.
18) The left aileron push tube is binding, rod ends bearings aren't clocked properly. Loosen jam nuts, adjust, tighten.
19) Right flap pushrod also binding for same reason.
20) Crotch strap bracket...use a spacer and bolts to to tie front and back together rather than nutplate through the floor.
21) Top rib cutout under floor (for installing yoke) is cracked.
22) Bolt missing on passenger stick spreader bar
23) Add washers to the ball joint installation for canopy struts
24) Add led to elevator counterbalance
25) Cotter pin missing on left side of right pedal bolt on pilot side
26) All tires to 40 pounds
27) Double check to be sure the forward tank attach bolt wasn't torqued down.

Cuts at EAA

2012-01-12T15:42:00.010-06:00

It appears to be Black Thursday at the EAA. From what I am told, Twenty to 30 people were let go today, including the people who put together the electronic newsletters (and including Fareed Guyout, who has been a very good friend to the homebuilder community and EAA Radio's efforts during Oshkosh).

The people who were let go were told to leave immediately and there is a staff meeting getting underway today at 4pm (CT) for those who remain.

I don't yet know if there was a funding reduction somewhere or if this is a strategic shift but have messages in to EAA.

Update 4:43 p.m. More information from inside:

* The cuts appear to be more than 35 people.

* Two staff laisons to EAA Radio were cut.

* The entire E-pubs division was cut (except Ric Reynolds).

* All video and photography was cut. (Goodbye, Tips for Homebuilders?)

A recently appointed VP (& new head of AirVenture) is rumored to have resigned in protest.

Update 5:24 p.m. Just got an email response from Dick Knapinski.
Here's the release he just put out:

EAA AVIATION CENTER, OSHKOSH, Wis. — (Jan. 12, 2012) — EAA President/CEO Rod Hightower today announced changes that will allow the 170,000-member organization to better fulfill its mission to grow participation in aviation. EAA is strengthening and reshaping the organization to capture the opportunities within its long-term strategic plan. As a result, the organization will be adding important capabilities, and aligning its resources with strategic priorities

“This will strengthen our organization in several key areas to more effectively meet the needs of our members, donors and aviators,” Hightower said. “We’ve made these moves after spending the past year reviewing EAA’s operations to best align them with the organization’s goals, and listening to many EAA members and supporters regarding the most valued areas of EAA.”

The changes include the addition of new positions, transfers of responsibilities, and the elimination of some positions. There are also senior leadership changes as well, including:

Jeff Skiles – Vice President, Chapters and Youth Education. Skiles is already well known as one of the famed “Miracle on the Hudson” pilots and for the past two years as Young Eagles co-chairman. He brings a wealth of aviation experience and passion to this new role as EAA strengthens and expands its global Chapter network and industry-leading Youth Education initiatives and programs.

Chad Jensen – Manager of EAA’s Homebuilders Community. Jensen brings extensive homebuilding experience and aviation skills to this important role as EAA increases its knowledge and information capabilities for Homebuilders and the amateur-built segment of aviation. He will have extensive involvement with Flight Advisors, Tech Counselors and the passionate community of builders.

Heidi Strand of Blue Door Consulting in Oshkosh will lead EAA Marketing on an interim basis while EAA completes a search for a Vice President of Marketing. Strand will lead EAA’s brand and marketing capabilities and also be responsible for EAA digital media properties and strategy.

Vice President, AirVenture. This newly created role will lead the world’s premier aviation event to continued growth and importance as the preeminent general aviation marketplace.

“Much thought and collaboration has been invested in the reshaping process to make EAA a stronger organization, better equipped to lead aviation and welcome the next generation of aviators,” Hightower said.

Update 5:29 p.m. RVer Chad Jensen, homebuilt community manager, moves to senior leadership position.

Update 5:47 p.m. More names of the departed leaking out: Steve Buss (Young Eagles and Chapter relations), ~~Ron Wagner, Sue Lurvey,~~ Adam Smith.

Update 5:51 p.m. Adam Smith, AirVenture manager and VP resigned.

Update 7:13 p.m. Also out: Jim Koepnick of EAA photo, Rob McAllister of EAA video. There is still video/photo capability Jim Soyk, still on staff.

Starved and Exhausted: Why can't pilots manage fuel?

2012-01-08T22:25:00.001-06:00

There's really no excuse that I can think of for running out of fuel other than either willful stupidity or the passive kind. My flying buddy was surprised the other day when he pulled his flying club's Arrow out of the hangar and discovered a right fuel tank run almost completely dry. How do you miss that? Wouldn't you at some point wonder why you were rolling in so much control out put to keep the heavy wing from dropping.

True, whoever ran it dry had another tank to count on once the big fan in the front stopped turning, but the event is an example of fuel mismanagement or, more accurately, no management at all.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau today issued "Starved and Exhausted," a report on the number of fuel starvation incidents in that country, which obviously has plenty of application here. Stupidity knows no boundaries. (Here's the pdf of the report)

The report documents several common problems by citing several individual cases. Coincidentally, this one rings a bell:

These occurrences are sometimes referred to as ‘finger-troubles’, on the basis that a pilot did not ‘use his/her fingers’ to select the tank with more fuel remaining. It is probably more helpful to look at why the pilot did not make that selection in the first place.

The simpler an aircraft’s fuel system, the easier it is to avoid selecting the wrong tank. A Cessna 150, with a separate fuel tank in each wing, has a very simple fuel selection, either ‘off’ or ‘on’. Although the Cessna 172 and 182 have a similar fuel system, the fuel selector has four selections; ‘off’, ‘both’ wing tanks at the same time, or either wing tank. In contrast, the Piper single engine training fleet all have separate wing tanks, but only one tank can be selected at any one time.

Once a selection of tanks is available, there is a greater chance of selecting the empty one, and the greater the number of tanks, the greater the chance of a mistake. The risks are increased when pilots forget to change tanks during the cruise when workload is lower, or when pilots forget to select the appropriate tank prior to the approach to land. Although tank selection for approach and landing is often specified in the aircraft flight manual, following this procedure will only be successful if the pilot has also ensured that there is sufficient fuel in the required tank for landing.

These risks are best managed by the strict application of a standard procedure, fuel logs and checklists. If a pilot is disciplined in always writing down a tank change with the time of the change, then any doubt about whether a tank was changed can be checked against the fuel log. If a tank change had been forgotten, then there will be enough information available to work out how to rebalance the fuel quantities. The use of a fuel log is discussed in the next case study.

The RV paperweight

2012-01-04T06:42:00.001-06:00

I "finished" N614EF after a more-than-10-year construction over the weekend. And I sat down to figure out how to finance getting it into the air, only to realize -- again -- I can't. So there it sits, ready to be inspected, and presumably ready to fly. But the sales tax, insurance, and transition training costs are -- for now -- insurmountable, especially since my wife's unemployment started yesterday and who knows how long that will last. I also badly timed getting an estate plan put together which comes with a $4,000 legal bill. D'oh!

In the meantime, though, I'm buoyed by the RVers who produce great videos.

Like this one:

(h/t: Fun Places to Fly)

Why aviation people need to be better at telling media's stories

2011-12-27T14:45:00.001-06:00

I'm a big fan of the podcast, Uncontrolled Air Space, which is three very knowledgeable gentlemen gassing on for an hour about all things (general) aviation. They're smart, they make excellent points, and they're a great companion for me out at the hangar.

A couple of years ago, I interviewed U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood at Oshkosh along with Jeb Burnside, one of UCAP's founders, although I doubt he'd remember me and I wouldn't expect him to.

It was surprising on Sunday, then, to be listening to a recent podcast while I was working on the RV-7A at the hangar, when this blog was mentioned and came up for discussion. Unfortunately, they did to me what many reporters do to aviation, they talked as informed analysts even though they didn't fully know what they were talking about and, in the process, they got the story wrong and did a disservice to the listener.

The subject of their segment was this blog post about the landing gear problems of a Polish airliner on a flight to Poland from Newark.

I had access to (I think from the Aviation Safety Network) the English version of an initial report from the Polish version of the NTSB. Not only that, I read it and I provided links and information contained therein.

I made clear in the post that the belly-up landing did not have its roots in the circuit breaker -- that clearly was from a hydraulic leak -- but that one reason for the belly-up landing was the circuit breaker.

In the telling of the story, however, my three friends neglected to read what I wrote and adequately inform themselves about the information before commenting on what they were reading.

You could hear the whole presentation here.

Even though I provided the source of my information, they initially questioned from where I was getting it. They proclaimed it an "implausible" scenario, and they objected to the possibility that a circuit breaker wouldn't have revealed itself via the usual annunciation systems. They also didn't quite comprehend that I was talking about the failure of the alternate landing gear system, not the initial problem of the hydraulic leak.

As they worked their way through the post, they eventually figured things out, although by not reading it ahead of time, they also missed the very real factoid that the landing gear came down on this airliner once the CB was pushed in; that just didn't happen until it was already on the ground.

But, I guess what I generally object to is the live questioning of a journalist's work to a wide audience without fully understanding what that work was. I rather hope in the future that my three companions will take the time to fully familiarize themselves with the topic before tackling it, because people's reputations are valuable.

It's nothing we don't ask of journalists toward the aviation world, and nothing we shouldn't expect of ourselves.

All that said, it's a hell of a great show, they're three great guys, and if you're not a regular listener, you should be.

I'd have posted these comments in the show's forum on their excellent website, but I haven't been approved yet.

Reporter/blogger in battle over EMI on aircraft

2011-12-27T14:08:00.003-06:00

It's pretty unusual to see journalists sniping at each other across the country, but that's happening today between aviation reporter Christine Negroni and a blogger at the New York Times.

Negroni, who reported for the Times this year on a story about the electromagnetic interference consumer devices could cause for airplane navigation systems, is hitting Times blogger Nick Bilton hard for a series of posts that pooh poohs the threat.

Negroni makes a ~~rationale~~ rational argument before unleashing the journalistic version of the "nuclear option."

For those who prefer their pilots not to be wetting their pants over suspected EMI flight control issues I'll point out that it is a basic tenet of aviation safety that events are more predictive than accidents. These pilots were reporting on the precursors to crashes.

But Bilton, having spoken to at last count about half a dozen people over the course of four posts tells Times readers its "time to change the rules."

He's wrong. Aviation's remarkable record is the result of eliminating anticipated risks and creating redundant systems for the risks and errors that are unpredictable. The use of portable electronic devices falls squarely in the former.

Bilton would know that if he felt the need to take his reporting even slightly off the path between his hunches and his biases. As a blogger he may not need to do that, but as someone who's opinions fall under the banner of The New York Times, he and his editors certainly ought to.

Ouch.

By the way, it would be "whose opinions."

Don't turn back

2011-12-26T13:43:00.003-06:00

This article from AOPA last summer really caused a lot of furor in the piloting community, and it's probably what's led a few pilots to get it into their head that it's advisable to turn back to the airport when there's an engine failure on takeoff.

I'm a big fan of Internet builder and pilot forums. You can find a lot of great information there. I also think they can kill people, and I think Doug Rozendaal thinks so too.

Rozendaal is one of the best pilots in the country. He flies his Rocket up from Iowa to fly the CAF's P-51 Red Tail and the B-25 out of KSGS. He does spin training and upset maneuver training, as I recall.

So I tend to listen to what he says. This week, he penned a response to another discussion, this time on Van's Air Force, about the possibility and practicing of returning to the airport when there's a failure on takeoff.

I was leisurely digesting my Christmas Dinner, surfing VAF, and "what to my wondering eyes should appear......" Another Turnback thread.... OMG

Those who know me can imagine my indigestion...

Nothing seems to change.... Every few months I read about another SSCBD accident after a turn-back after take-off...

The AOPA did a terrible disservice to General Aviation with their articles this summer... I know for a fact that there was disagreement internally about the things they have published on the subject this summer...

I also realize this thread was started to gather data, but for what purpose.... If you believe you have the skills to consider a turnback when the unthinkable happens to you, the you have the skill set to collect your own data on your own airplane. If that is beyond your skill set, then a turnback from an EFATO should not be in your toolkit...

The most recent post that says pulling the mixture at altitude is going too far??? If pulling the mixture 4000 ft above a 4000 ft runway increases your heart rate even 1 bpm, then the turnback from an EFATO is not for you....

Long term readers of this forum know that I have never said it is impossible. What I have said, and continue to repeat, is this..

When it happens for real, there are so many variables that must be considered that make it impossible to have a cookbook go-no/go decision. That combined with the shot of adrenaline that comes with the emergency turns the brain to mush.... The statistics bear this out...

The default response to an EFATO needs to be, "lower the nose and pick a point ahead of the wings, into the wind, and land at the slowest possible airspeed." Airplanes that arrive at the earth, wings level, under control, at minimum airspeed, have survivors onboard...

There is an attorney in Des Moines IA, Tom Drew, who coined a phrase that I call "Drew's Law" Tom says that "80% of the pilots believe they are in the top 20%..."

To that I add a corollary, "The reality is that half of us are below average." (the median actually for the statisticians, but that's a detail)

Pulling off a turnback from an EFATO is a maneuver that requires the skills found a group much smaller than the top 20%.

Trying would be fine if failure did not result in almost certain death for all aboard....

Everyone have a wonderful Christmas, and I will go find a roll of Tums....

Over the years, I've covered a fair amount of accidents involving people who tried to turn back to the airport. They usually end up looking a lot like this.

Here's an article Doug wrote a few years ago which might help explain why you shouldn't turn back.

Almost done

2011-12-15T12:07:00.003-06:00

I took this week off from work to make some progress on the RV-7A project and, wouldn't you know it, I got a bad cold on my vacation. But I got two long days of work in, including installing the interior from Flightline Interiors.

You can see when I close the cowling how well the fiberglass "skirts" I made came out. I didn't like the gap between the fuse and canopy, not so much because it looked lousy from the outside -- it did -- but I didn't like seeing so much daylight when inside, even if I had put the weatherstripping in place there (not to self: don't forget to put the weatherstripping in there).

And then, realizing a little more about how the baffling material relates to the nose inlet "ramp," I drilled out a couple of pieces and added a few more, finalizing that project. Even better, having moved a couple of pieces, the cowling fits better.

(The music is the Killers, which I have begun and ended every work session with since this video came out)

The white cowling? That's Smooth Prime -- a filler primer and UV blocker. I have some sanding to do on the bottom piece before painting. I bought a can of MarHyde from the auto parts store and some catalyst and reducer, intending to shoot the cowling, then realized the can they sent me wasn't grey, but beige. Beige? Man, that'll look lousy. I may just get a big rattle can of MarHyde grey to finish this off.

There are a few more things to be done, yet. The empennage fairing is almost complete, just need to sand some SuperFil off and roll on some Smooth Prime. I haven't done the leg fairing, intersection fairings or wheel pants yet, and I still need to configure all of the avionics.

I had the Grand Rapids EIS-4000 engine monitor updated to allow a second tach reading, but I don't know yet where that shows up on the unit. Also, it occurs to me as I look at the engine start video that the RPM reading off the lightspeed ignition was probably half of what it actually was.

Oh, and I have to rivet on the most forward piece. After that, done! Well, there's the weight and balance and static system check, of course.

I did see an unusual blue spot on the floor under the tank the other day. It's very suspicious for a couple of reasons (a) I went almost three months without seeing any such spot, (b) the spot was big enough that you'd think there'd be fresher gas dripping (or any additional, for that matter) and c) we considered playing a practical joke on another builder in which we'd pour a small amount of avgas under his wing just to watch his reaction.

I've been filling out the paperwork to get a bill of sale from Van's so I can register this. Also contacted the Minnesota Department of Aeronautics regarding sales tax. I've been dreading this. You have to pay sales for anything you buy online, although all they really want to know is kit cost, prop cost, and engine cost, which should run me about $3,700.

I'm looking for Minnesota builders to come "inspect" the plane before I even think about having a DAR look at it. Interested? I'll be at KSGS most weekends.

My wife is losing her job at the end of the month and most of the things I thought might come true when I put this plane up for sale last winter actually have come true. So writing big checks right now is not something I feel comfortable doing. So, the plane will sit until we figure out a solution to what life is throwing at us.

Wired discovers homemade airplanes

2011-12-07T06:51:00.002-06:00

A nice piece on the RV line of homebuilt airplanes was posted today by Wired.com.
Find it here.

Remember: The media is stupid and never writes anything positive about aviation.

It's the little things

2011-12-01T14:13:00.001-06:00

See this?

It's a circuit breaker that's "popped." They sell for about $30.

It apparently contributed to this, which happened a month ago today (and which I wrote about here):

The Polish airliner left Newark and noticed right away there was a leak in the plane's hydraulic fluid. That's when the pilots made mistake #1, according to a report that was just released (available here). They decided to continue flying to Warsaw, where they found out the plane's landing gear wouldn't extend.

An alternative landing gear extension system didn't work because of that $30 part shown above.

Had the pilots noticed the circuit breaker, they could've pushed it in, lowered the gear, and landed the plane.

But these days, airline crews depend on computers to tell them what's wrong and the Boeing airplane wasn't built to tell pilots when a $30 circuit breaker had popped (pilots of smaller airplanes have an old-fashioned fail-proof system: They touch run their fingers across each circuit breaker to be sure they're all engaged before taking off).

When authorities lifted the plane off the runway, pushed in the circuit breaker, applied power, and flipped the landing gear switch, down came the landing gear.

And that's the simple sort of thing that causes major air disasters.

Acknowledging an uncommon skill

2011-11-23T08:08:00.000-06:00

Pilots and non-flyers are reading differently the story of a pilot who crashed in his plane in Princeton yesterday.

Most of the news stories, like this one in the Star Tribune, hinted that the result pilot Barry Ramage, 33, of Princeton, encountered -- crawling out of wreckage after his plane lost power when taking off -- was primarily because of his inexperience.

Ramage was not immediately available to explain what happened, but one of his partners in a gymnasium floor installation business said that this was just his second solo flight.

"There were a lot of trees in the area" where he was trying to land, said Debbie Covlin, a former commercial pilot, who spoke with Ramage afterward and added that she got him interested in flying. "It was a small area to put it down in, with what training he had."

The reality? There are a lot of pilots with much more experience than Ramage who are dead because they couldn't resist the urge to do what Ramage was able to resist -- turning back toward the airport when an engine quits.

Pilots are taught from an early flying age to "land straight ahead" when an engine quits at such a low altitude. There's no way a plane without an engine could stay aloft long enough to make it, and pilots often die trying (like this, for example).

"Landing straight ahead," however, is no fun, even if it's the best alternative. That a pilot on only his second solo, with minimal training, was able to make the right decision not to turn back to the airport, and then survive the forced landing, is a significant tribute to his skill and his flight instructor.

It's the kind of decision and result that the best pilots make. Perhaps you remember one such pilot.

Acknowledging the pilot's considerable skill would have been a much more accurate story.

The incredible journey

2011-10-19T08:37:00.000-05:00

Early in this film -- brought to my attention by Ted Chang -- there's no indication that pilots of RV airplanes are involved, until you hear the sound of an engine start with a black screen. There's no mistaking that sound.

This is a great film about six RV pilots on a great adventure...

Chapter One - Blast Off (Incredible Journey) from Fly Rod on Vimeo.

Chapter Two - Camp Stories (Incredible Journey) from Fly Rod on Vimeo.

Ho, hum: Another day of the mean old media negatively portraying aviation

2011-10-18T07:50:00.002-05:00

The direction of EAA

2011-10-17T11:50:00.006-05:00

A short-lived thread at Van's Air Force raised the question of what's happening to EAA's Sport Aviation. The author of the thread -- I think it was the very talented Bill Repucci -- said it's becoming too much like Flying Magazine, not surprising since J. Mac McClellan, who was the editor of Flying, is now the editor of Sport Aviation magazine.

I feel like I’m about to go through a divorce

There were early signs, that’s for sure. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I felt like my needs were no longer being met. Then I started looking elsewhere.

However, I’m still not ready to call it quits and hope it isn’t over, maybe things can turn around.

Yep, when the October issue of Sport Aviation arrived I flipped through the pages and couldn’t bring myself to read it. Yet, when the latest KitPlanes arrived, I read it from cover to cover that evening.

While I like the T-6 that was on the cover of Sport Aviation and have some time in an SNJ, the cover article was all about Mac getting checked out in the plane, not so much about the plane or its history. Then there was the story about how the avionics in the Cirrus helps keep pilots out of trouble. There is an article about how every Bonanza owner must maintain / upgrade their airplane because, after all, it is a Beechcraft. Next up for me were the articles on retired airline pilots, pilot attitudes, and a story from Jeff Skiles about flying an airliner on News Eve. The list goes on but you get the idea. At least they still list have the completions section

Sport Aviation had two stories on aircraft restorations, one a pre-war Stearman mail plane and the other a Baby Ace; but not one story about a builder or their aircraft.

This morning I called the EAA and asked them if they had a magazine for home builders and the nice lady on the other end of the phone said they did not, Sport Aviation was it. What a bummer as that is no longer a magazine that represents my interests in aviation.

I’m really conflicted. I like the idea of the EXPERIMENTAL Aircraft Association but it seems they have taken the Experimental part out and have turned it into the “Aircraft Association”. While I used to be very proud of my low EAA membership number and association with the organization, I’m seriously thinking about letting my membership expire.

In addition, what is troubling is the number of people who have contacted me who feel the same way and have asked about setting up a new organization to represent the interests of the builders.

The thread, for reasons not specified, was deleted by one of the moderators there (it's a whole 'nother topic but more and more threads are being deleted there because of an opinion that runs counter to a nameless moderator, rather than a violation of the terms of service). I was in the middle of typing a response to it when the thread disappeared, so I'm putting it here (A thread about the thread was also deleted).

Feel free to comment. I won't delete them:

I used to save my Sport Aviations, now I just read and toss 'em.

Coincidentally, yesterday I grabbed a stack of unread mags from the den and leafed through them as I watched the Patriots game.

I ripped out a couple of Sport Aviation articles -- stuff Dick Kohler wrote, for example, and tossed it. I also read Lauren Paine Jr.'s article about the old guys (I love his work but this article was a rehash of previous work, I'm afraid), and I read Lane Wallace's column. I love her work but I'm starting to wonder how many articles you can get out of one trip East with one (sort of) stepchild.

I didn't read Mac's stuff; I didn't read his stuff with Flying. I leafed through the pictures of the T6 and breezed through some of the copy. There's a T-6 or two on my field and when they rumbled past and fly over, I always stop what I'm doing and go watch them. They provide some motivation and inspiration. OK, it's not homebuilding, but there's a relationship between homebuilding and the T-6, at least in my case. That's the thing with aviation; it's incestuous.

But to be fair, I leafed pretty quickly through Kitplanes, too. I read Stein's stuff and I read your articles, Bill, which were fabulous; I was unaware of your incident.

I didn't read Jim Weir's stuff because it had a picture of a circuit diagram which made those little squares you scan with your smartphone look like the wide open spaces. And I read the article on stall/spins.

I still think Sport Aviation has the right idea with the "how to" articles -- short as they are -- pushed toward he back of the mag. And -- no offense at all to either you or Paul dye -- but I think Kitplanes suffers from getting its content from too few writers.

What content should be in there specifically? I don't know, and neither do many other people. That's the nature of these things; we know what we don't want, we know -- philosophically -- what we do want, but getting to particulars is problematic.

EAA is in a major push right now to redefine itself. It's suffering what all "non profits" suffer from. It can no longer sustain the growth required by the core audience with which it started. That's just the way it goes. It clearly sees itself as the home for all things flying (little "F") and that's its future. I get that.

It's also trying to compete in a dying medium: magazines. Anything you want about building, you can already find online. There are numerous sources of good writing and good blogs.

There was this story the other day about a 3 year old who picked up a magazine and said, "something's wrong with the iPad." I think the lesson of that is probably not lost on Mac and EAA.

update 9:19 a.m. 10/18 -- cooler heads have prevailed (i.e. Doug has come back from lunch) and the thread has been reopened.

The instrument panel

2011-10-15T08:14:00.002-05:00

As with so many parts of building my RV airplane, I wasn't sure I was up to the task of designing, cutting, and wiring my instrument panel. Wiring, as I've written many times, was particularly scary to me.

Last night, I finished the instrument panel.

Hard as it is to believe, I started the process two-and-a-half years ago, but that's the nature of (a) going slowly while learning what I'm doing and (b) paying as I go and (c) making changes along the way.

Here's was my final design at that time:

When you're designing a panel, it's really easy to forget a lot of the little details, so it was important to remember some of the initial advice I had received, especially in the area of not designing a panel that would preclude changes.

As it is, I sectioned the panel off into clusters. A systems cluster on the left -- the electronic flight information display, engine monitor, backup altimeter and backup airspeed indicator -- a "switch cluster" in the center -- the Vertical Power system, mag and electronic ignition switches as well as switches for flaps, boost pump and master switch -- and a "communications cluster" on the right, all within an arm's reach. This section includes the GPS, transponder, and communications radio, as well as an input under the panel for an iPod.

The wing-leveler (autopilot) and fuel gauge are tucked under the Vertical Power system.

On the far right is a "nice to have but not-necessary-to-keep-the-shiny-side up" section which includes a remote switch to activate the emergency locator beacon, a power adapter (which I'll use to power a traffic avoidance system of some sort) and a compass.

A lot of people install a map box here but I couldn't -- or at least, didn't -- because it would have meant cutting into the subpanel behind it and I would've lost this...

...the story of which you can read about here.

Oh, and way over on the left is the "keep it away from the passengers" cluster which is the starter button (actually, I put it there to (a) keep it out of the way from being accidentally hit and (b) allow me to keep my right hand on the throttle when starting) and the cable to allow the "emergency air" into the air intake of the fuel servo in the highly unlikely event the snorkel on the cowling gets plugged up in flight.

The two switches under the Vertical Power unit are for the left mag and the right electronic ignition (Lightspeed). The switches just above the throttle knob are (left to right) master switch, engine monitor power (I really didn't need this switch but it was simpler to wire it this way in order to include the red warning light), flaps, and fuel boost pump. The boost pump switch is powered by the Vertical Power system when flipped "up," and powered off a separate bus if I flip it down.

I like this panel a lot, partly because we've come to know each other over two years. It's the nature of the beast now that it's probably outdated even though it's never flown, but it is a functional and affordable panel.

I know a lot of people think, "an airplane you built yourself? How can that be safe?" But take a look at what one is able to do building one's own airplane? Compared to renting the factory-built Warrior II at the local airport, I'll have a traffic alert and avoidance system, better displays of airspeed and situation, an autopilot wing-leveler, immediate engine information that will alert me to problems with an engine before the big fan in the front stops turning, and a system that monitors my electrical infrastructure. That's a lot of safety right there.

I'm a VFR pilot and a lot of the big bells and whistles stuff I don't need. Most of the information I need to fly an airplane, I actually get from looking out the window and listening at the same time.

Flying is fun like that.

The nose-gear debate redux

2011-10-11T08:10:00.000-05:00

In the RV-airplane-building community, this video is making quite a buzz.

Nose-overs of the "A" model have been a fairly common occurrence among RV airplanes. Van's has denied any engineering shortcoming over the years, but an accident in the UK seemed to confirm that all was not right with the design.

I'll be curious to see how many people buy this product and how it performs.

The pilot with the smoking gun

2011-10-05T08:10:00.000-05:00

(From my day job)

There aren't a lot of people in the world who have been war heroes, created a high-flying business, and uttered the words that would bring down a presidency. Ken Dahlberg was one of them.

His obituary is tucked quietly in the Star Tribune today.

As a World War II fighter pilot (Barry Goldwater was one of his flight instructors) , Dahlberg was one of the war's "aces," with 14 1/2 "victories." He won the Distinguished Service Cross for leading a flight of 16 P-47 Thunderbolts against 70 German Messerschmitts, shooting down four of them. He was shot down three times and spent the last months of the war as a POW, returning to Minnesota to eventually start the Miracle Ear corporation.

The remnants of the P-47 from Dahlberg’s last flight were recently unearthed by engineers inspecting a tract of farmland that was about to be developed.

Dahlberg was the Midwest finance chairman for the Committee to Re-elect the President during President Richard M. Nixon's 1972 campaign. A mysterious check, which later would be determined to be from the CEO of Archer Daniels Midland, was made out to Dahlberg, who converted it to a cashier's check. It was money from the campaign destined for the Watergate burglars.

When "Deep Throat" told reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to "follow the money," that was the money. And when Woodward called Dahlberg to confirm he handled the check, Dahlberg didn't lie. It was the turning point in the Watergate investigation, the first proof that the Watergate burglars were financed by a money laundering scheme that was tied to the Oval Office.

It ended up a critical part of the movie All The President's Men.

Back then, it was all legal. People could make secret campaign donations and expenditures. You can't do that anymore and this is why.

It's still amazing his life didn't end up as a movie. Here's an interview I did with him a few years ago.

Mark Spy gets TV love

2011-10-04T08:30:00.001-05:00

Another media look at homebuilt airplanes that you won't see people on Van's Air Force point out. That would disturb the "media is stupid about aviation and is only interested in destroying it" mentality.

Great job by Mark Spy in not adopting the bunker mentality.

Prayers for Rick Gray

2011-09-28T21:52:00.000-05:00

Rick Gray, one of the premier RV pilots and builders in the country, is in the hospital in fair condition, following the crash of an RV-10 he was test piloting last night.

According to the Marietta Times:

The plane caught fire during the crash and both men received serious burns. They were transported to Marietta Memorial Hospital and later flown by Life Flight to the Ohio State University Medical Center in Columbus.

A spokesperson at The Ohio State University Hospital in Columbus said Wednesday afternoon that Austin was listed in fair condition. Information about Gray was unavailable.

Back in 2009, I did an interview with Rick for an issue of the RV Builder's Hotline. You can find it here.

Clear!

2011-09-24T23:12:00.004-05:00

You never really know for sure when you're tackling the process of installing the engine whether you're doing it right or whether it's going to work until you try to start it.

The engine is the only part of the RV-7A project that I couldn't pay for as I went along, so the idea of maybe ruining it while starting it for the first time is always in the back of your mind -- in my case -- for the three years I've been working on it.

The closer I've gotten to the first flight of N614EF, the slower I've gone. The big noisy thing in the front simply isn't the area I want to zip along on.

Today, however, was the day to see whether I knew what I was doing. It turns out, I did, I just didn't know it.

Famed RV builder and pilot Pete Howell was kind enough to drive over from the other side of the cities (the ceiling was too low for him to fly over) to handle the photography duties.

It took awhile to get the oil pressure up. I cranked it for a good long time while keeping an eye on the Grand Rapids Technologies EIS 4000 engine monitor. The spark plugs, of course, were not installed for this process. I never did get a reading, so I took the oil line off where it attaches to the manifold transducer for the oil pressure sensor, cranked the prop a few times until it burped oil and reattached.

Once the engine was eventually started, the oil pressure indication on the engine monitor came up just fine.

There were no leaks -- RV pal Brad Benson was in charge of finding them. My son Patrick did the video work (there are two cameras above) and stood by for any injuries (he's a paramedic). Adam, whose last name I've never learned but who stops by every weekend to help, provided critical guidance on getting the electronic ignition squared away, Vince Bastiani was on the radio with me as I barked readings, Pete took the pictures, and Ami the hangarlord was Ami.

I didn't run it past 1200 RPM and I didn't remember to check to be sure that BOTH the electronic ignition AND the the mag RPM readings were similar; there'll be time to do that before first flight. And my attempt to videotape from the inside of the cabin didn't work out because I forgot to put the start button. I prefer to think my focus was on "flying the airplane."

The next steps are finishing the firewall (I'm adding a GPS antenna platform under the cowl, finishing the cowling (sanding and then priming), adding a little more baffling and sealing the baffling with RTV, gear leg fairings, intersection fairing, empennage fairing (mostly done), and adding the interior. I have a new wet compass to install in the panel, I want to add a power adapter and a traffic monitoring system and that should be all I need.

I've planned all of the winter for this work and maybe sometime in the spring, we'll take N614EF for a ride.

Find Pete Howell's album of his fine photographs of the event here.

Flying tight patterns

2011-09-20T08:30:00.000-05:00

I guess this video has been out for awhile, but it's the first time I've seen it. It's fabulous!

I usually observe the 45 degree entry to the base leg, but it feels to me as if I'm often still dragging the Warrior II in (is there any other way to fly the Warrior?).

Then I watch pilots at the airshows and notice they seem to make their base turn just a few feet from the end of the runway and seem to just pivot the plane around a point at somehow lose a lot of altitude in a hurry.

The key, I guess, is to be able to do that and still provide a stabilized approach that gives an average pilot the opportunity to evaluate the approach and the coming (hopefully) landing.

Jason Schappert, who does a nice job providing weekly flying tips via video, this week has a great video on the power-off 180 and how to practice it.

I'm standing between you and the terrorists

2011-09-05T19:01:00.000-05:00

You knew, didn't you, that the Department of Homeland Security's breathless warning of small planes and terrorism would spawn at least one local TV story about the evils that lurk behind a fixed-pitchprop.

I got in this one.

USA Today on experimentals

2011-08-29T22:56:00.002-05:00

There'll probably be the usual amount of anti-media braying about the media treatment of experimental aircraft following the weekend USA Today story (from the Detroit Free Press) about the NTSB probe into why experimentals are crashing at a greater rate than certified airplanes.

But did you notice how Detroit Free Press treated the story? They started it with the perspective of a homebuilder. A real, honest-to-goodness builder of airplanes! Someone somewhere was smart enough to develop a relationship with a reporter so that when a story came along, the perspective of the builder dominated it. (We know it wasn't you, AOPA!)

The hand-built biplane pilot Bob Richards brought to an air show in a neighboring county Sunday is the type of aircraft that has come under scrutiny by federal safety officials studying the accident rate among amateur-built planes.

Tom Vukonich of Metamora, Mich., tries to determine the best way to install a rod into the fuselage of the biplane that he's building.

Richards, 41, of Joliet, Ill., once glided another hand-built plane down after the engine quit because the person who built it wired the battery wrong.

Yet he doesn't worry about his safety in a hand-built plane. "There are a lot of accidents that don't have anything to do with how it was built," said Richards, noting pilot error, weather and the difficulty of flying high-performance planes.

I presume some people will kvetch that the paper did the story at all. But the truth is that the NTSB is looking into it, and homebuilts are going down at a fairly high rate.

We could save a lot of kvetching if we simply fly better and smarter because, it's true, they don't usually crash for structural reasons.

Finishing the RV cowling

2011-08-11T19:54:00.001-05:00

I'm kind of a neat freak and I don't care much for dust, so it's rather odd that I once considered building a GlaStar, a plane that is all composite with metal wings. It would have required lots of chemicals and lots of sanding. And lots of dust.

After I sent my deposit in on a GlaStar kit, the company went belly up, so I bought an RV airplane kit instead.

But there's plenty of fiberglass work on these things, too. I'm knee deep in it. I still have plenty of fairings to construct, but first I need to finish the cowling, which I actually started almost two years ago.

All the fitting is done now, of course, and the cowling is being prepped for an eventual paint job. With fiberglass, there are thousands of pinholes which will show up as soon as you finish that $5,000 job. You have to get rid of them first.

My technique worked well on the top cowling, so there's no reason to change the bottom cowling portion. The first step was to thin some epoxy with acetone and brush it on, after a good sanding with #80 grit sandpaper.

Sure, it looks all shiny and stuff, but don't let it fool you; it's full of pinholes. Some of them, hopefully, will be partially filled.

The next day -- yesterday, actually -- I sanded it all off with more #80 grit. Then I mixed up the two-part SuperFil, spread it on and squeegeed it off, except for the small part that filled in the pinholes.

Then this evening, I sanded that all off -- yep, #80 grit -- and opened up an almost-empty can of Super Prime, which is a VERY weighted primer filler that you roll on. It'll fill in, hopefully, most of the pinholes that are left.

I'll sand this all off, too, and then add three more coats and sand it with #180 grit and it should be ready, then, for a nice epoxy primer. Unfortunately, I probably don't have enough left, and it's $60 a quart. I got in the wrong business.

None of this will be done until September, apparently. We're heading out on a vacation back to New England.

Oh, I also installed the fuel overflow tube today. That should be the last item to be installed on the engine. We're ready to go through the process of starting the engine for the first time.

The Oshkosh video everyone waits for

2011-08-07T21:43:00.001-05:00

Oshkosh doesn't end until the guy who annually produces the finest video about it says it's over.

It's over.

Everything but a homebuilt

2011-08-05T11:39:00.003-05:00

I didn't get to Oshkosh this year and, frankly, I didn't hear a great deal of excitement about Oshkosh this year. In the weeks after AirVenture, you usually get a lot of complaints that the EAA isn't about homebuilders, anymore. This year is no exception. You can set your watch by the outbreak.

Personally, I don't much care. Oshkosh is big enough to find whatever interests you -- homebuilts included -- and what we're really talking about here is validation from the organization, an indication that homebuilders matter.

Here's a quarter. Call your therapist.

By the way, Slick Hutto, who produces the definitive Oshkosh video each year, says this year's version is only a few days away.

Safety wiring for dummies

2011-08-04T15:47:00.001-05:00

I posted this picture on Facebook the other day. It's the safety wiring of the bolts that hold the filtered air box top plate to the fuel servo. Pretty, eh?

When I was doing this, I was referring to AC 43.13, the so-called "bible" of building and maintaining an airplane (order yours today!), specifically this page.

In fact, I was holding the page up to the plate as I figured out how to properly secure it. Compare:

The problem is: I'm not seeing much of a difference there.

I mention this because one of my RV-building buds sent me a note on Facebook.

Take a look at http://scootermcrad.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-to-safety-wire.html for some great examples of what it should look like.

It is definitely an art to figure out how to safety stuff properly. It shouldn't take you very long to redo those 4 bolts since they are extremely accessible. I learned from a local builder showing me the tricks to safetying. It sure was a lot easier to get some tips and tricks from him rather than my method of trial and mostly error!

I know he's probably right because he's highly regarded as a good builder, but I'm not seeing what it is that's different in the photos above and I presume he hasn't been on Facebook lately to see my return query.

So I am missing something really important here. But what is it?

Update 8/10/11 It should've looked like this. Many thanks for all of the advice.

The Cowling Chronicles - Episode 4

2011-08-01T06:00:00.001-05:00

It's been quite awhile since I last produced a Cowling Chronicle, detailing the very long process of the fiberglass portion of firewall forward. In this latest episode, I tackle the final part of installing the filtered air box, the "tunnel" to create a smooth flow of air from the "snout" in the chronicle to the air box which filters the air into the fuel servo.

Once this process is done, and with a little wiring to be completed, I'm pretty close to firing up the engine for the first time.

In the meantime, I'm working on the cosmetic part of the top cowling, which is filling pinholes and sanding primer.

Many thanks to the people on Van's Air Force for helping getting me started on this particular aspect of the project. The directions are such that they make perfect sense once you do the project and go back and look them, but they're pretty to visualize when you're trying to get started. So I hope this helps builders who find themselves in this position.

The elephant man

2011-07-27T20:30:00.003-05:00

There was a time in airplane homebuilding when the finished product had its share of warts and flaws that stood out like a sore thumb. The goal was the challenge of building an airplane that flew. I wish I'd built an airplane in those days because I'm not sure this one fits me. As N614EF nears completion, I'm embarrassed for other builders to see it.

This era is about building flawless airplanes worthy of Oshkosh; functionality is important, but the lovely finished product is a statement about the builder. Sure, there are dings here and there, but nothing serious and certainly nothing embarrassing.

N614EF's nickname is Auntie Marge, named after a wonderful relative of my wife's who was all about enjoying life. After this evening, I'm thinking of changing it to Elephant Man.

Years ago, when I was originally fitting the frame upon which the canopy would sit, I misdrilled a hole -- one stinking hole -- that allows one side of the canopy to sit slightly higher than the other.

Note, for example, the spot at which the canopy meets the front skin. The skin is sticking up about 1/4" and will, no doubt, act like an air scoop (click any of these pictures for the full monty).

Which creates this gap you can throw a cat through on the side...

Oh, it gets worse. This is a tip-up canopy and when it lifts up, the skin at the base of the canopy moves slightly forward and if a shim isn't put under the canopy frame to raise the skin slightly, it catches on the the skin in front of the canopy. Guess who forgot to put the shim in when riveting the canopy skin to the canopy frame?

So when the canopy lifted up, it caught on the front skin and cracked the fiberglass fairing. The only way to solve the problem is to file away the skin so that it doesn't catch. Doing that creates one heck of a gap. Keep in mind the company says the gap should be 3/32" inch here. This is about a half inch. Functional? Sure. Embarrassing? Yeah.

Normally, it should look something like this:

Another RV builder stopped by the hangar tonight. "I'd redo it," he said.

Allow me to translate that from the polite Midwestern lingo. "You suck at this."

Which, of course, I already knew, but it made clear that for as long as I hang around other people who build airplanes, I'll be apologizing for this one.

And, by the way, starting over would require a $1,200 canopy, and a few hundred dollars for a new canopy frame. I can't do it; I work for a living.

"Are you still thinking of selling this?" he said.

I am, but his message was clear; nobody will pay much to buy it.

All of this, of course, is -- in the lingo of Van's Aircraft, "gumption robbing."

Those thoughts I've had this week about flying N614EF to Oshkosh next year? Yeah, let's stop those.

Perhaps I should have built a time machine.

Greg Poe

2011-07-27T07:47:00.002-05:00

Airshow performer Greg Poe died this week of a heart attack in Idaho. He used aviation to spread a motivational message to kids.

Feel-good aerobatics

2011-07-22T14:02:00.000-05:00

I've never had a desire to do aerobatics when -- or if -- the RV-7A is finished. I wouldn't know how to do an aileron roll even if I had. SlickHutto on YouTube is the guy who makes those fabulous post-Oshkosh videos each year and he can make any activity look inviting.

Here's his latest video, the soundtrack of which uses my favorite song from one of my favorite -- and long dead -- TV series: Eli Stone. The guy just knows how to make everything perfect in his videos.

Magneto mysteries

2011-07-11T21:20:00.002-05:00

I'm completely flummoxed by the wiring of the one magneto in my RV-7A and maybe you can offer some advice.

I have one Lightspeed electronic ignition in the RV, and one magneto. I'm not using the fancy and pricey rotary switch that is so common on airplanes; I'm using a simple toggle switch to activate the Lightspeed, and one to activate the magneto.

The Lightspeed wiring was pretty simple: run a wire to from the Lightspeed control box to a switch, wire through a pullable 5 amp circuit breaker to battery power.

The magneto is a little bit different. It doesn't use ship power, of course. It generates its own power and, thus, spark. Simple.

I've read Bob Nuckoll's discussion of the magneto; I'm not understanding its application.

Here's how I have it wired. Tell me where I went wrong. I made a so-called P-lead, which uses a single connector shielded cable. The conductor wire attaches to a post on the magneto. The shield is pigtailed to an 18g wire, which attaches to a ground stud. I used the construction practices as specified here, except that I soldered a wire to the shield, rather than crimp a connector onto the shield. I figured it would be more durable.

And so, here's how it looks on my magneto. You can click the image for a larger version:

My understanding is that when the magneto is grounded, it is, basically, off and when it is not grounded, it is on and capable of providing electrical power to the spark plugs.

I was under the impression that it is grounded when there is connectivity between the two posts/wires. The problem is from what I can tell there is always connectivity between the two posts and, subsequently, wires; at least there is when I measure it.

I ran this wire to a toggle switch on the instrument panel, figuring that providing connectivity between the two wires "grounds" the magneto, rendering it inoperative.

Here's the wires at the toggle switch:

So, under my theory, flipping the toggle switch upside down, the "down" position establishes a connection between the two wires which grounds the magneto, making it inoperative.

But because the two wires appear to be always with connectivity, because there's continuity between the two posts as I measure it, this would appear to make the switch itself irrelevant, which means I've done something wrong in my theory of how this works.

The problem is, of course, I don't know what it is.

Paintjob of the year

2011-07-10T19:28:00.000-05:00

We were out at KSGS (South St. Paul, Minn.) the other day when we stumbled across this beast.

Apparently, it's owned by the Kodiak company.

Spinner

2011-07-03T08:54:00.000-05:00

I'm still on track for an engine start this summer, and one of the critical components I wanted to get done is the spinner.

You know what? The spinner is sexy.

No Oshkosh this year

2011-06-20T11:54:00.000-05:00

I've tried to figure out how to be able to get AirVenture into my schedule this summer, but I've been unable to do so and have given up on the possibility.

Oshkosh has become mostly a social gathering for me, and the highlight of the year, but there are too many things that need to be done. I promised to paint my mother's house in Massachusetts this summer and I've also promised to take my wife on a vacation, something we haven't done since our great trip down to the southwest more than a year-and-a-half ago.

The only dates that work for me are to go up to Massachusetts during AirVenture than come back to work for a few weeks, and then take my wife back east for a few weeks.

Plus, EAA Radio hasn't invited me back this year for AirVenture and it costs too much to camp for 10 days now.

You know what makes all of this stuff easier? A flying RV.

The end of the Liberty Belle

2011-06-13T11:43:00.002-05:00

So sad to report that the B-17 I flew in just a few weeks ago, crashed today in Aurora, Illinois.

Planes in the heart

2011-06-02T12:32:00.000-05:00

One of the best parts about being a news blogger is hearing from people years after you've written a post, who have a personal connection with something mentioned in a News Cut post.

Meet John Fred Moore of Deland, Florida. He's a former freighter pilot and, from what I could discern from his phone call today, a character with plenty of swashbuckling stories to tell.

Moore, who can't fly anymore because of pulmonary disease, was spending time online last weekend, trying to find out whatever happened to some of the planes he once flew, when he came across this picture on this News Cut post.

"38-Charlie was a great plane," he said, as if he was talking about a long-lost love.

The plane crashed in Eden Prairie in August 2009, killing two people aboard. He called to try to find out what happened.

"Engine problem," I said. "And the pilot stalled it..."

"You can't do that with a Twin Beech," he growled. "If you lose one engine with the landing gear down, you're not going anywhere but down," he said, recalling the time off the coast of Bimini when a similar model developed engine problems. He had a parachute and jumped.

38-Charlie had a glorious life with Air Cargo Services out of Miami, he said. "That plane probably flew a few tons of dope in its career," he said.

"And were you at the controls when it did?" I asked.

"If I was, I wouldn't tell you," he said, shortly before telling me of the hazards of flying at night in the Everglades in the '80s.

"You had 20-35 planes flying overheard at any one time, and none of them had any lights on," he said. "It was pretty easy to get into a midair."

Moore is an old pilot with time on his hands, thanks to a lousy economy and cigarettes. "When I was a kid, John Wayne and Errol Flynn smoked cigarettes and I wanted to be like them," he said. He can't fly anymore and the flight schools around Deland are closed and the airport doesn't have much business anymore so there's no one to swap flying stories with now.

Like the one about the time he lost an engine while flying a load of PVC pipe and had to land in Cuba. "It was right after Grenada so I was pretty concerned about what reception I'd get," he said. "But the Cubans were great. Better than the Jamaicans, he said.

But it was 38-Charlie, he said, that still holds a place in his life.

"I got my Mile High wings in that plane," he snickered, "if you know what I mean."

Bob's big birthday present

2011-05-31T07:32:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, the Liberty Foundation brought its B-17 -- the Liberty Belle -- to Saint Paul for media flights in advance of next weekend's appearance to the general public.

I was assigned to ride the 1 p.m. flight but when I showed up with my AOPA hat, the crew asked, "are you a pilot?"

"Yes, sir," I said, thankful that they didn't ask if I was a good pilot.

"We need a third crewman to be sure people are buckled in and to help them tour, can you handle two flights?" they said.

Sure, let me think about this: Can I handle two flights in a B-17?

It was great fun sitting in the jump seat, on the headphones so I could hear the guys chat as they flew. Even better, it turned out that one of the pilots -- Jeff Hess -- is an RV-4 pilot from Falcon Flight.

He was kind enough to invite my wife on the second flight. She was hesitant. "You're only going to get one chance in your life to do this, " I said. She jumped aboard.

I love Planet RV!

I made a video about it for my day job.

It's my birthday today; I got my present yesterday.

Update: Vern Darley sends along these additional notes. Vern's name came up during our flight, by the way.

The Falcon RV Squadron-Vern Darley

The Falcon RV Squadron is an informal group of airplane builders and flyers based in Peachtree City at Falcon Field Airport and headquartering at Hangar D-30. The Squadron has over fifty members who are either building Van's RV aircraft designs, or have already completed or purchased one. The RV Squadron roots began as builders helping one another in their garages and basements around town. As planes were completed, hangars were needed, and soon the community of builder-flyers had formed.

Since many RV Squadron members are former military pilots, formation flying and aerobatics were a natural transition. For added safety, squadron standards and training was established. Some RV Squadron members have maintenance skills and their skills added to the safety and soundness of the homebuilt aircraft.

Each plane is carefully inspected before its first flight by an FAA designee and a flight test period of either 25 or 40 hours in a test area is required to shakedown any discrepancies. After that, the RV aircraft are able to fly most anywhere. An RV-4 flown by an Australian pilot has circled the globe over both poles and around the equator.

Besides helping one another while building and learning to fly these marvelous aircraft, the Squadron gathers weekly at the Mellow Mushroom on 74 N in Peachtree City every Tuesday at 11:30. Visitors are welcome. Unscheduled formations are flown each week based on weather and pilot availability. Fly-outs and Squadron socials are regularly scheduled.

For more information, contact Vern via email at or 770 310-7169. More info on the planes is available at www.VansAirforce.net and www.Vansaircraft.com

Ted's plane and 'the voice'

2011-04-27T13:51:00.000-05:00

RV-building acquaintance Ted Chang had his first flight last week in the RV-10 he built.

Today, Ted reported on Facebook, he had an in-flight fire, four miles from the airport and had to make an emergency landing.

It's a testament to Ted's flying ability that he was able to land safety. But as a builder it sure gives me pause. Am I up to responding to a similar emergency? Am I building properly? Is that fuel line too close to something?

There's still a long way to go before my plane is finished, but there is a creeping doubt that is making its voice heard.

Roadblock

2011-04-18T07:45:00.001-05:00

The baffle project is like driving in traffic: Stop and go. After about 70 hours of work, it gets pretty tedious.

But the baffle work is primarily done on N614EF and over the weekend I cut the oil cooler bracket out and fabricated all the strengthening mechanisms on the outside corner, which seems to be the area that cracks. It took many hours to get it just right, so I was excited on Sunday when I fit it all back onto the plane.

Rut-ro...

As you can see the bottom nutplate is hitting the cooling fins on the cylinder. This is not good, and certainly not acceptable. Moving the cooler higher isn't an option because it'll impact the cowling and the engine mount tube.

I've made a lot of good progress on the plane lately, but this has stopped everything in its tracks while I figure out what to do. Griding some of the cooling fin away? No, I don't want to do that to a perfectly lovely engine.

Move the cooler? Maybe, although I don't think the firewall has a lot of options to it at the moment.

One idea I'll consider is maybe adding another spacer -- it'd have to be almost .250 I would think -- to the outside corner, cutting the flange of both the oil cooler baffle and the baffle it attaches to, rivet in some angle, rivet some .063 onto that and re-drill the connecting holes, effectively moving the oil cooler back 1/4", but I'm not sure that will do the trick on a vibrating engine. And, it's a major pain in the neck since it means ordering a bunch of new parts.

Building an airplane is fun.

Update 9:21 p.m. 4/18/11 - On the advice of both Mahlon Russell at Mattituck Teledyne and Ken Scott at Van's, I drill out the lower nutplate and covered the hole and will go with two bolts on the right side.

The Van's instructions with the baffle kit are very contradictory here, so I'll pass this along for people who haven't go this way before.

The main problem in this location is the pre-punched parts that come with the Van's baffle kit and the optional oil cooler doubler. The doubler is prepunched and has three holes for the bolts on the right side. OP-27, the drawing, shows only two.

There's also a brace that goes in the front of the oil cooler doubler/baffle area. This is also pre-punched and is supposed to match the pre-punched holes across the top of the oil cooler cutout doubler.

If you do as I did -- take Van's advice and wait to do the oil cooler brace until the baffling is done -- you'll likely end up in trouble, at least if you do the oil cooler cutout and drill for the doubler. You'll have to drill out the top row of doubler rivets because the brace's holes won't line up with them. The brace can only go in one way, but the location of the oil cooler could be any number of places.

So do the oil cooler cutout, match drill the oil cooler doubler with the exception of the top row of rivets, fit the brace, backdrill the five or six holes through the the brace, the baffle, and the cutout doubler.

You'll also want to leave the most-aft rivet hole unriveted on the horizontal angle/stiffener on the #4 cylinder baffle because if you rivet this, you'll find it hard to fit the brace for final drilling.

Also if you use a .125 angle to beef up the corner, you'll probably have to abandon one of the holes in the doubler since it will interfere with the angle.

It's still for sale

2011-03-26T10:33:00.000-05:00

You've now got about 150 hours less work to do on N614EF as I've been working on it for the last six weeks in the spiffy, heated hangar. I'm stuck on the baffles at the moment but trying to work through it. The electrical is just about done (have to make up the mag P-lead and get cranking on the Grand Rapids EIS 4000 engine monitor. Still have wingtips to do. But it's nearing completion.

Why don't you buy it?

With friends like these...

2011-03-05T18:39:00.000-06:00

For a time today, it was like American Chopper at Ami Sela's hangar, where N614EF is getting more attention than she's had in quite awhile.

(Left to right:) Brad Benson, Adam Youngman, Pete Howell, and Devin Pearcestopped by today to help. Pete made the large oil cooler fit around the engine mount and beefed up the aft baffle. Devin, who knows engines, solved the Lightspeed controller problem by fabricating a new bracket and moving the existing location forward one hole. Adam was able to get the prop extension off (which I need in order to put the prop on), and Brad fit the tail empennage fairing. I, meanwhile, took about 9 hours today to drill a stinking pass-through hole in the firewall (for the filtered air box emergency air cable). I really hate drilling stainless steel.

With today's accumulated hours, the project passed the 2,400 hour mark.

Moving day

2011-03-02T18:39:00.001-06:00

Since the plane project went on sale, there hasn't been much interest, while there has been much interest in seeing it sold -- if it has to be -- as a flying airplane. So some RV friends stopped in a few weeks ago and said we should move it to a heated hangar, and it might be easier to get people to pitch in to get it flying.

So we found a heated hangar in the next row over at South St. Paul. Today was moving day...

That's my son, Patrick, doing the honors.

I'm in the process of coming up with a "to do" list. It's far from complete, but here's what I've got so far.

ELECTRICAL
~~Order shielded 18 AWG~~
~~Order insulator boots (3x small 2x large)~~
Install left MAG switch
~~Install right LIGHTSPEED switch~~
Fabricate left mag P Lead from switch to mag
Run 18 AWG wire from mag switch to ground tabs
Run 16 AWG Alt. field wire and spliace to Vertical Power (wire coming from VP)
(Follow bottom upper motor mount turbe, between engine cylinders and intake tube)
~~Install insulator boots as required~~
Adjust alternator to proper belt torque and safety wire
~~Double check to be sure you used a doubler at the engine ground nut plate on firewall.~~
Mag switch off: Test for 0-10 Ohms between wire terminal and airframe
Mag switch on: Test for infinite resistance
Starter button activate: Hear start relay activate and +12 volts at end of DISCONNECTED starter cable.
Lightspeed Install details to follow

GRAND RAPIDS EIS-4000 CONNECTIONS
~~Check to make sure there’s no problem running probe wires in same penetration as P Lead~~
Figure out how to tap into tach on Lightspeed or use tach drive on engine.
Fuel pressure gauge line to firewall. Connect to EIS
Oil pressure connection to firewall
WINGS

Install left and right Whelen nav/strobe lights in tips
Install tips
Find and order close tolerance bolts for rear spar attach point (GATCO?)

FAIRINGS ETC.
Order intersection fairing from Van’s
~~Empennage fairing~~
Gear leg fairing
Main Wheelpants
Nose gear intersection fairing
Nose fairing
INTERIOR
Install canopy and replace the stupid quick-release
Fabricate guides on roll bar into holes L/R
Install upper canopy lock/secure mechanism
Install struts (All hardware already installed)
Reinstall canopy forward limit stops
~~Figure route for FAB emergency air cable and install to panel.~~
Replace cheap plastic vents. Add screens to vent inflow.
PROP
~~Remove prop extension.~~
Install prop on prop extension (Mike Hilger might be able to help here)
Install on engine.
Check prop extension to crankshaft gap (within 1/16“).
Torque prop bolts properly
Safety wire prop bolts.
Check for proper prop track
Spinner assembly and installation

ENGINE COMPARTMENT
~~Baffling~~
Calculate route for servo-to-flow divider line, order or fabricate line.
Order fire sleeve to install on oil pressure gauge line. Change Adel clamps accordingly.
Figure out manifold pressure line install.
Engine breather line.
Install and secure heat ducting.
Oil cooler install. (Current hoses may be too long)
Fabricate tray on firewall for GPS antenna
Purchase and install antenna firewall passthrough for GPS.

WHEELS AND BRAKES
Safety wire calipers
Install brake fluid and test
Consider replacing nose gear axle “puck”
Think about “jack points”

COWLING
Oil door installation
~~Install inlet ducts~~
~~Glass around front corners for better fit~~
Finish surface for painting.

Plane for sale

2011-02-09T12:27:00.012-06:00

On a wall in the hangar of the RV-7A project, a dry-ink board indicates the number of hours I've worked on it so far -- ~~2,339~~ ~~2,429~~ 2,742. Another 30 or so hours, and the plane will probably fly.

I need you to put that 30 hours into it. N614EF -- the RV-7A project -- is for sale. I no longer have the means not only to finish building it, but to fly it when it's done. I'm hoping you do.

This has been a pay-as-you-go project with the exception of the engine, but I now need to pay down the debt on it, and sock some money away for anticipated medical bills that continue to increase in the family at a particularly alarming rate.

I put the kit up for sale years ago -- around the time I was working on the wings -- but I pressed on in the hope I could get it done, increase its value, and sell it as a flying airplane, getting my investment into it back. That no longer is an option.

This is what I call a "working man's" airplane. It's not a show plane by any stretch of the imagination. But I believe it's well built and its progress has certainly been well documented.

Here are the particulars on the plane, which is very much built to plans (update 10/14/11 - updated to reflect recent work):

RV-7A
- wings attached.
~~- Canopy completely finished but not presently attached.~~
Engine: Mattituck TMX IO-360 - vertical updraft (New: $24,000)
Configured for fixed-pitch prop by plumbed for constant speed ($2600)
Plane Power 60 amp internally regulated alternator
One mag, one Lighspeed electronic ignition. ~~Wiring not done~~.
(Update 11/14 - First engine start here)

Instrument panel - VFR (About $10,000)
- Dynon D100
- Vertical Power VP-50
- Grand Rapids EIS 400 engine monitor
- ICOM A210 radio (antenna installed on belly)
- Garmin 327 transponder (antenna installed on belly)
- 406 mhZ ELT (antenna on top)
- TruTrak wing leveler - servo in right wing
- Backup altimeter and airspeed indicator installed and plumbed
Interior: Flightline interior seats and interior package (not yet installed)
-- Hooker Harness 5-point belts
Prop: New Sensenich fixed-pitch prop. ~~Not yet mounted.~~
Vetterman exhaust
-- False floors with soundproofing

WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE

~~- I've started installing the fuel lines but haven't finished.~~
~~- The engine monitor connections~~
~~- Oil lines~~
- ~~I've started on the baffle kit but I'm only on page 4~~. Done.
- ~~I have an oil cooler but I'm not sure it's compatible~~ Oil cooler fit ~~but not yet mounted.~~
~~- The cowling is fitted and drilled but I haven't done the oil door or done the cosmetic work.~~ Pinholes filled. Ready for primer.
~~- The wing tips need to be installed. The wires for the Whelen strobes are already run and panel connections made.~~
- Wheel pants and leg fairings and ~~empennage fairing not completed~~.
- Soundproofing of the firewall (I've made rough templates but all the conflicting information on VAF has made me wait)
~~- Filtered airbox mods and installation for vertical updraft (a blank .063 bracket is already cut, in order to move it slightly to the right)~~

There are no used parts anywhere on the airplane.

The plane is currently housed at KSGS -- Fleming Field Airport in South St. Paul.

I don't really have a set price at this time, though I'm thinking around $70,000.

Please, no tire kickers or people who want to look at it just because you think you might someday want to build an airplane. I don't have that kind of time to waste.

(Want to help me? Please print out this flyer and post at your FBO)

Update 12:34 p.m. Aug. 30 - It's official! My wife has lost her job and, yes, the plane is still for sale. I've actually put another 250 hours of work into it since this was posted, so my original estimate of how much was left to do was off by a few hundred hours. Now, there really is not much left to do and it's about ready for an engine start. The price is the same but once the engine starts, it jumps to $75,000 and once it's got an airworthiness certificate and its test period is flown off, it goes to $80,000.

Stuck in flyover country

2010-12-23T13:07:00.002-06:00

I haven't posted much lately. It's winter in Minnesota. You have almost no chance of getting a good day to fly. My currency at the FBO expires on Sunday and while I have a plane reserved for tomorrow, it appears to be too crappy to fly.

It's too cold to work at the hangar. I'm too broke to make any progress on the plane.

I need motivation. This new video is a start. Just a start.

Fun with fuel lines

2010-12-01T20:23:00.001-06:00

Some years ago, I wrote an essay on determining when "good enough" is good enough on your RV airplane-building project. In matters of firewall forward, however, it's very difficult for a novice airplane builder like me to know when good enough is good enough.

For the last week, I've been building a couple of fuel lines for the RV-7A and I thought things were going OK until I asked a question on Van's Air Force regarding firesleeves. That's when someone noticed that I'm using aluminum fittings.

We went back and forth and I learned that:

-1- Aluminum fittings shouldn't be used.
-2- Aluminum fittings can be used.

Then today came the question about the route my fuel line is taking. See, the problem is I'm building a nose-gear airplane and there are extra "tubes" on the engine mount for a nose gear plane. You people with tail draggers have it easy. See destination, route to destination.

I, on the other hand, have an additional maze to get through.

Anyway, once the aluminum fitting vs. steel fitting debate petered out without a declared victor, the route I took for the fuel line is faulty because my original plan to clamp it to an engine mount is faulty.

Perhaps it doesn't matter in the short term because once I put the firesleeve on, a lot of the slack I depended on to allow me to clamp it (a fuel line needs flexibility because the engine is going to be shaking) disappeared.

So regardless, I've got to build a new fuel line and, frankly, the money is used up and that pretty much kills progress until spring. God love ya, Christmas shopping season! Oh what the heck! It's too cold to be building airplanes anyway.

Here's a video that shows how things are:

Making your own fuel lines for your RV airplane

2010-11-28T10:20:00.000-06:00

If you've not yet worked significantly on the firewall forward portion of your RV airplane project, let me warn you: fuel and oil lines are unbelievably expensive. I learned that lesson the hard way: Buying the stock fuel and oil lines based on Van's drawings.

There are too many engine combinations (mine is an IO-360 from Mattituck with vertical updraft) to make buying stock fuel lines worthwhile. Even if you could get them to fit on your engine, you'll likely be making some concessions to efficiency -- and maybe even safety -- to get them to fit.

It's possible, of course, to have your fuel and oil lines custom built, and certainly there are plenty of RVers out there with enough money to build their airplanes merely by writing checks. I am not one of those people, however, and I strongly believe in the basis for building your own airplane: recreation and education. I've learned so much from building my RV-7A so far, that I enjoy the challenge of understanding how things work.

(Read more on RV Builder's Hotline)

Test flight videos

2010-11-23T08:36:00.001-06:00

It seems like an eternity ago, but it was only a few short years ago when the sight of an RV-related video online was the sort of thing to make me drop what I'm doing. There were few of them.

Now, they're everywhere and the thrill is mostly gone. They're not that great to begin with and seeing a shaky out-the-front-window view of an RV simply isn't enough to provide substantial builder motivation for me anymore.

There are exceptions, and this week Matt Dralle, who runs the RV List (still the best place to get good archived RV-building information, because the search engine actually works), has uploaded a couple of well-done videos from his RV-8 test flights.

Here's part one:

And here's part two:

Well done, indeed.

Does it motivate me? Sure, it does. The problem is it's 17 degrees out at the hangar this morning, and I'm in one of those stretches when every task runs into some roadblock.

I got a bunch of orders from Van's (baffle kit and hose-making kit) and Aircraft Spruce (hardware) the other day so I thought I'd finish up getting the starter cable secured around the engine as it makes its way to the firewall.

That ended when I realized I didn't have the right sized Adel clams (DG-5) to secure it to the aluminum prop oil line (I don't have a controllable prop, but I've got the system configured for one to preserve resale value). Last night I started creating "fake" fuel lines (using plastic tubing from Ace Hardware) only to realize that I need a straight fitting instead of a 90 degree fitting. I bought some steel fittings for the engine to connect the oil cooler hoses but when putting one in, I accidentally bashed the threads for the flared fitting nut on one. So now I have to order another 45-degree fitting.

I ended up taking a bathroom break and walking up to the terminal. Both bathrooms were out of toilet paper.

That's a sign to go home and watch football.

RVator's Log - December

2010-11-22T11:00:00.002-06:00

Doug Weiler, who heads the RV builder's group in the Twin Cities, is a fine writer and does a great job of issuing the group's quarterly newsletter. It's been more than 10 years since I joined the group and, you know, there really aren't a lot of newsletters -- including EAA chapter newsletters -- that are so consistently published, let alone continuously published while maintaining high standards.

You can find it here.

How to build your own airplane

2010-11-16T06:52:00.001-06:00

The RV airplane's baffling kit arrived in the mail yesterday, along with the fuel lines and tools I need to build my own fluid lines in the airplane. But it's 36 degrees out there and I don't have much heat in the hangar and I'm having a hard time getting motivated to work on the airplane.

If only I had a book to read in the meantime:

Running AOPA is a pretty good gig

2010-11-08T20:01:00.000-06:00

I work for a non-profit whose president is regular skewered for making too much money, so I bring a different perspective to the question of reasonable compensation for a president of an advocacy organization.

That said, 14.5% pay increases for AOPA's top executives, including more than $1.8 million for the horrendous Phil Boyer, before he mercifully retired, is stretching the bounds.

AVWEB has the story, but unfortunately buried new president Craig Fuller's salary deep into the story. It's about $500,000, which is a lot of money, but is not unreasonable for a CEO.

Still, it will be worth popping some popcorn and watching the AOPA membership reaction, given that annual dues were just raised to $45.

The salaries of Washington are simply too incomprehensible for "normal" (that is, outside of the Beltway) people. Yesterday, for example, I found out the very excellent airport manager at South St. Paul airport (KSGS) has been laid off by the city council, in order to "save" $40,000.

I doubt the City Council considered what's involved in running a small airport, including managing fuel sales and keeping tenants happy, especially on a field that houses both Wipaire and Ballistic Recovery Systems. They're going to divide up his duties among three city departments, none of whom -- as far as I know -- knows anything about running an airport.

Yesterday, I heard some old-timers grousing about the move. A week ago they were grousing about government getting too big and needing to cut taxes.

I doubt they've made the connection yet.

The engine in earnest

2010-11-07T12:48:00.000-06:00

I hung the engine on N614EF more than a year ago, but now that the cowling is -- mostly -- done (structurally speaking ), I'm trying to get going on serious work to get the engine all hooked up.

Yesterday I spent a ridiculous amount of time getting the ground strap from the engine case to the firewall hooked up. I wanted to make the power line from the contactors to the alternator but two things cropped up -- I can't find any of the paperwork (or wiring) for the alternator (which I put up last winter), and I've noticed some builder sites are running a #8 wire, and the instructions call for a #2. I'm going with the #2, but don't have the connectors for the wire. More ordering. More delay. More shipping.

So today I'm adding on some fittings for the oil case which will attach hoses to and from the oil cooler. And, of course, I ran into problems.

Here's one:

This calls for a straight fitting, but I have the right angle oil filter adapter on this IO-360 engine from Mattituck. What should I do here? A 45 degree fitting?

I also installed this 45 degree fitting on the other oil connection. But it's unclear how I "clock" it. Which way should it be pointing?

I also looked some more at the fuel line from the pump to the fuel servo. On a 7A, there's VERY little room to run the thing, especially with a vertical updraft engine. I need to figure out how close to the heat shield on an exhaust, the fuel line can come.

Start. Stop. Start. Stop.

Slowdown season

2010-11-05T08:56:00.002-05:00

Building an airplane in flyover country, I imagine, is like the exchange rate for the dollar. I've put 2,315 hours into the project so far, which I started in July 2001. I'll bet 2,315 hours in other parts of the country are equivalent to half that.

Part of that is my refusal to adjust too much of the rest of my life to the demands of building -- lately my vice is season tickets to the Minnesota Timberwolves because I can hang out with my adult children, which beats airplanes any day -- but part of it is the reality of the seasons, especially in an unheated T-hangar.

From the moment the hangar door opens for the first time in April (usually), an airplane builder in the north hears the clock ticking. Winter is coming and there's lots to get done before it does.

I was fortunate this year that it stayed warm fairly late into the year, so I was able to get most of the structural work and some fiberglassing accomplished on the cowling.

But this morning it's 28 degrees and my building list includes things like "pack up all the paint, epoxy, and fluids and move them back to the warmth of the house," lest they be destroyed by freezing.

My hangar has a bit of a problem with flooding, because of the way the city graded the ramp. In the winter, the melting snow on the roof ends up flowing back into the hangar and then freezing. Fortunately, we have the American Reinvestment Act doing its good deed. Because of the "stimulus," there are road-construction signs everywhere, each weighted down with sandbags.

So I liberated a couple from the clutches of big government the other day and put them along the bottom of the hangar door. Sadly, this mean that I can't open the hangar door until next spring.

For the first time in months, I sat in the hangar (I stop on the way home from work each day) and wondered "what can I do?" There was nothing to do because I'm now transitioning to engine plumbing and orders from Van's and B&C hadn't arrived yet, and I also haven't ordered the things I need to start making the various hoses I need to make. This is the transition period when one switches from "airplane building stuff that you should do in the warm weather," to "airplane stuff you can do in cold weather" mode.

I also failed -- again -- to pick up 5 gallons of diesel that powers the kerosene heater. A builder's workshop needs to be comfortable, especially when it's mostly metal and cement.

Eventually, I'll get back on an even schedule and a good list of things that can be done when it's cold at the hangar, but this usually takes a few weeks of re-evaluating where I am in the project.

So here I sit in the warmth of Casa Collins, pouring over increasingly frayed airplane plans, coming up with that list.

This weekend I hope to attack the project again. But first I have to get the snowblower ready.

The interior

2010-10-28T08:46:00.001-05:00

A sure sign that the great airplane-building project is almost done is the arrival of the final touch -- the interior. Yesterday, the interior arrived.

I had the seats covered a few years ago but now that the inside of the plane is mostly done, it was time to get it gussied up. Abby at Flightline Interiors in Wisconsin did the work. As with so many other purchases on this project, I selected her because she consistently gets high marks from other RV builders. I trust the RV community and haven't been steered wrong yet. I certainly wasn't this time, either. She's delightful to work with and her expertise is outstanding.

Word of mouth is a pretty effective way to keep a business going in bad times. What don't you get about that, big American corporations?

It doesn't look like much sitting in the box, perhaps, but I'm looking forward to getting it installed.

And therein lies the problem, I suppose. It's a real motivator to get the inside all put together. But before the plane can fly, it needs an inspection. And in the final inspection, anything that can be uncovered needs to be uncovered. So while it might be great motivation to get the inside all put together and looking great, it doesn't make a lot of sense.

This weekend, I'm going to get the inside all put together and looking great.

For the love of flying

2010-10-14T11:09:00.001-05:00

I've been building my airplane for almost 10 years. This guy has been working on his for one year. I fret about whether a 1/8" gap between a cowling and a firewall is too much (it is). He, umm, doesn't.

But which one of us loves aviation more? Good question.

I don't know whether that thing is going to fly or not. In his column today, James Fallows points out that it almost doesn't matter:

But in my experience -- mainly In Ghana and Kenya during the 70s, in Southeast Asia in the 1980s, and in China these past few years -- there is a cumulatively very different and very powerful experience that comes from meeting person after person like the Kenyan aviator-aspirant. That is, people whose material circumstances and range of experience are vastly different from a typical person's in London or high-end Shanghai or San Francisco, and who objectively have nowhere near the same opportunities -- but who take their own life drama and possibilities just as seriously and can dream just as ambitiously. For instance, I am thinking of a man in his 70s in a village in western China whose consuming project is a handwritten history of life in his village, from his boyhood during the era of war in the late 1930s and 1940s, through the Great Leap Forward of the 1950s, to the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, and onward. He is someone who wears the same pants, shirt, and jacket virtually every day, because that's what he has. He is part of "the rural poor," but he has a plan and a dream.

The Cowling Chronicles - Episode 3

2010-10-04T10:04:00.002-05:00

Since last we met, I've seen the light on the finagled installation procedure of the cowling on my RV-7A project. Enjoy. Or not.

The landing slump

2010-09-27T07:38:00.003-05:00

It feels like years since I've made a decent landing in an airplane. I'm in a slump. I can't tell you for sure when it began, and now I can't tell you when it's going to end.

This is one of the problem with being a renter: It's too expensive to get out and keep one's skills sharp. Yesterday, Carolie and I flew along the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers to check out flooding that hit last week after some areas got 10 or more inches of rain in 24 hours.

Carolie usually doesn't fly with me, so it was nice to have her along. It was a little bumpy down low and she probably drove up the stock of Benadryl a fair amount, but she's a trooper:

And before the flight, I perform the traditional toast to the airplane.

Actually, I'm checking the fuel sample I just took out of the wing tank.

Then we flew...

The actual flying skills were fine -- better than fine, actually. I held altitude at 1,000 feet AGL in steep turns over Pine Island. While filming.

What else went right? Situational awareness. We flew well, we spotted the traffic (including birds) we needed to find, we did a great job of communicating through some busy airspace around Mankato, keeping everyone alert for us, and helping them navigate around us. We got a great view of tow plane, cutting its tie to a Civil Air Patrol glider over Mankato, and then diving for the ground.

There's just this landing thing to overcome.

We headed over to Red Wing for a bathroom break and a check of the Vikings score. Red Wing is a huge runway (5,000 feet), along the Mississippi, below bluffs on the Wisconsin side. And, sure, it gets a little squirrely, but it shouldn't have been as poor a landing as it was, especially given an incredibly stabilized four mile final.

But it was a bad landing, partially because the size of the runway makes you think you're lower than you really are, and partly because I'm not focusing on the far end of the runway, I'm looking ahead of the nose. I know this is the problem, I'm just not getting out enough to practice it.

So as we bounced down the runway, I firewalled the throttle and executed a go-around, which couldn't have thrilled Carolie, who rarely flies with me and didn't know what I was doing.

The second landing was a little better, but I still dropped it the last 10 feet or so.

And back at Flying Cloud -- a more familiar runway -- I had a better landing, but still not great.

As the RV-7A project nears its conclusion, I always think immediately after landings, "What would have happened if you were flying an RV?" I don't like the answer.

(If you're reading this via Facebook, you'll have to go to the "original posting" to see the video and Flash slideshow)

Near mid-air over Minneapolis

2010-09-23T15:08:00.001-05:00

From time to time I write here about aircraft accidents and, in particular, near misses. I usually hear pretty quickly -- at least at my day job -- from commercial pilots who say it's no big deal. This shouldn't be one of those times.

The National Transportation Safety Board has issued this news release on what it classifies as a "near midair" over Minneapolis St. Paul.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating a near midair collision between a commercial jetliner and a small cargo aircraft that came within an estimated 50 to 100 feet of colliding near the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport

On September 16, 2010, about 6:49 a.m. CDT, US Airways flight 1848 (AWE 1848), an Airbus 320, was cleared for takeoff on runway 30R en route to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, carrying five crewmembers and 90 passengers.

At the same time, Bemidji Aviation Services flight 46 (BMJ46), a Beech 99 cargo flight with only the pilot aboard, was cleared for takeoff on runway 30L en route to La Crosse, Wisconsin. Weather conditions at the time were reported as a 900-foot ceiling and 10 miles visibility below the clouds.

Immediately after departure, the tower instructed the US Airways crew to turn left and head west, causing the flight to cross paths with the cargo aircraft approximately one-
half mile past the end of runway 30L. Neither pilot saw the other aircraft because they were in the clouds, although the captain of the US Airways flight reported hearing the Beech 99 pass nearby. Estimates based on recorded radar data indicate that the two aircraft had 50 to 100 feet of vertical separation as they passed each other approximately 1500 feet above the ground.

The US Airways aircraft was equipped with a Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) that issued climb instructions to the crew to avert collision. The Beech 99 was not equipped with TCAS and the pilot was unaware of the proximity of the Airbus. There were no reports of damage or injuries as a result of the incident.

NTSB and FAA investigators conducted a preliminary investigation at the Minneapolis airport traffic control tower on September 18th and 19th and are continuing to review
the circumstances of this incident.

In the past, when I've forwarded these reports of near mishaps, some pilots have suggested it's much ado about nothing. This is different. Fifty-to-100 feet in the clouds? That's a big deal.

To help you visualize these things, both planes took off on parallel runways, heading in the same direction. That happens all the time. Turning one plane into the path of another is highly unusual.

Update 11:55 a.m. - Here's the audio of the conversations that morning. The controller ordered the left turn -- to the south -- for the Bemidji flight as he gave the flight permission to take off. Normally, that turn would begin when about 500 feet off the ground, probably before the end of the runway. The turn would send the plane away from the parallel runway, where the US Air jet was also taking off.

A few minutes later, the controller asks the Bemidji flight if he's "in the turn." The pilot doesn't understand the question and asks for it to be repeated. It's not repeated. A minute or so later, the pilot asks to change frequencies to the departure controller and is granted the request. From the sound of things, that happened after the near miss. The controller asks, "why didn't you start the turn after departure?" The pilot's radio is nearly unintelligible, but I think he says, "forgot to go to departure," meaning he didn't change frequencies to the departure controller, which would have put him on the same frequency as the US Air flight.

Update 12:17 p.m. - As suspected, there were two planes on two different frequencies here. Here's the tape of the "departure frequency" when the US Air pilot (Known as "Cactus" because it's an Air West flight operating under the US Air colors) reports the near miss. The controller says he thought the Bemidji flight was going to go straight.

As with most disasters -- and near disasters -- this looks like the typical "chain of events," the breaking of any one of which -- repeating a question, repeating an instruction, knowing what each plan was for each airplane -- would've prevented it.

Of course, an investigation will take place, but this one isn't going to be hard to figure out. (Audio via LiveATC.net)

By the way, weather at the time was 0900 overcast and, of course, it was dark.

So what could have prevented this? File this under speculation but let's call it "informed speculation." On the tower tape, I did not hear either a request to change to departure frequency or an instruction to change to departure frequency. I don't know if that's even required (although I believe it is). But the tower controller asked two minutes after the La Crosse-bound flight took off whether the pilot had made the turn? That would indicate that the controller knew the guy was still on his frequency, wouldn't it?

The departure frequency indicates another problem. This incident occurred right at that moment when a pilot makes a transition from tower to departure. In fact, as you can hear, the US Air pilot asks "what's this guy doing off our left" before the departure controller confirms that he's got the US Air flight on his radar. That's a really icky time for things to fall through the cracks.

Update 5:30 p.m. - Here's my interview on Minnesota Public Radio's All Things Considered:

McClellan to EAA

2010-09-20T16:50:00.000-05:00

I'm sure Mac McClellan is a terrific guy. The former editor in chief of Flying Magazine is joining Sport Aviation, and that's the problem. I dropped Flying Magazine a few years ago because it no longer was aimed at guys like me; it was aimed at guys like McClellan, guys with big bucks and twin-engine airplanes loaded with tens of thousands of dollars of avionics.

It's tempting, I suppose, to lament that Sport Aviation would do anything -- anything -- to become more like Flying Magazine, but the fact of the matter is, experimental aviation itself is becoming more like Flying Magazine. Spend a few minutes on Van's Air Force anymore and you're looking at images of guys with their $100,000 panels.Our sport is more Cirrus than Cub these days.

If I had to create the perfect magazine, it would be full of articles by Lauran Paine Jr., who of course writes for Sport Aviation too. Unfortunately, it would probably have a readership of only a few hundred people. There aren't many of us left.

Here's the news release from EAA:

      EAA AVIATION CENTER, OSHKOSH, Wis. — (Sept. 20, 2010) — J. Mac McClellan, former editor-in-chief of FLYING Magazine and one of aviation’s most-respected journalists, is joining EAA and will share his insights through EAA’s publications and electronic communications beginning in October.

      McClellan, an extremely active general aviation pilot, will provide his aviation expertise to EAA with his popular “Left Seat” column and other features for Sport Aviation magazine. He will also contribute to EAA’s e-publications and websites. His focus will be on EAA’s pilot community, encompassing flying experiences, flying techniques, weather, technology, and aircraft ownership. McClellan’s writings will interest all readers, including those EAA members and aviation enthusiasts who fly more complex aircraft for personal and business transportation.

      “Mac is a most welcome addition to EAA,” said EAA President Rod Hightower. “His expertise across all of aviation will help us build on the success of the “new” Sport Aviation magazine that was launched in January 2010. Mac is certainly no stranger to EAA, having participated at Oshkosh for decades and has a thorough knowledge of EAA and AirVenture. His unique understanding of EAA’s mission and role within the aviation community will help us better serve and add even more value for all EAA members.”

      McClellan has logged more than 10,000 hours as pilot-in-command, flying everything from a 1946 Cessna 140, his first airplane, to the Cessna 162 SkyCatcher and virtually all general aviation airplanes that have been in production over the past 30 years. He holds an ATP certificate for multi engine airplanes with type ratings in several business jets, has a commercial certificate for helicopters, and is a CFI-I.

      “I plan to share information on a number of topics monthly, each designed to inform, educate, and entertain the broad spectrum of the pilot community, plus those who want to be pilots, with an emphasis on using an airplane for fun or travel,” McClellan said. “It might be new equipment, airplanes, or services, or it might be the basics of flying technique that helps all readers enhance their skills in the cockpit.”

      Sport Aviation magazine is EAA’s flagship publication and is sent to all EAA members. It is part of the organization’s suite of five monthly publications and nine electronic newsletters, designed to meet the needs of the diverse aviation interests of EAA members.

       EAA embodies the spirit of aviation through the world’s most engaged community of aviation enthusiasts. EAA’s 160,000 members and 1,000 local chapters enjoy the fun and camaraderie of sharing their passion for flying, building and restoring recreational aircraft.

Don't let facts get in the way of a good story

2010-09-14T17:29:00.000-05:00

I guess this column in the Austin American-Statesmen about the death of an RV-7A pilot is supposed to be a testament to the willingness of a wife to let her husband go fly those danged experimental airplanes. But, geez, it's based on an ignorant premise -- that a plane crashed because it was homebuilt and experimental. The laws of physics could give a damn.

I don't know how my life will end. But I know how it won't. I've vowed that my obituary will not include the phrase "experimental airplane" or "home-built airplane."

I had that in mind yesterday when I spoke with the widow of a man whose did.
"Charles William Miller, 66, died tragically when his experimental, home-built, private airplane crashed August 19 in El Dorado, Arkansas," said the recent obit for the Georgetown resident.

What kind of man goes up in an airplane he built himself? What kind of wife allows that? Chuck Miller was that kind of man. Suzy Miller was that kind of wife. And they combined for a 43-year marriage marked by triumphs and tragedies, as well as adventures sparked by the greatest of those tragedies.

#360

2010-09-12T20:50:00.001-05:00

#360 An airplane you built yourself is a poor substitute for a happy spouse.

More cowling chronicles

2010-09-12T15:20:00.000-05:00

I don't have a big video presentation for you but I do have another installment of the process of figuring out how to fit the canopy on the RV-7A. After some fiddling and the 35th and 36th reading of the instructions, I at least have the order of fitting figured out.

Once the top of the cowling is where it should be, this -- as near as I can figure -- is the process.

1) Cleco the front of the bottom cowling to the top cowling behind the spinner. By the way, it's a real pain in the next to fit the bottom while the spinner back plate is on. I had to cut an extra three or four inches on the nose gear slot.

2) Drill the top cowling to the top hinges. Today I changed out my shims from .020 to .032 because I added some fiberglass to the aft edge for strength when I put some fiberglass back on from the original trim.

3) Mark the aft bottom edge of the bottom cowl and cut. I did this last week but decided to put fiberglass back when I cut 1/4" off the top of the front to make it fit better. I retrimmed the back bottom today. I still have too big a gap -- I think -- at one point. But I can put more fiberglass back later.

4) Drill the bottom aft of the cowling to the hinge.

5) Mark and cut the side edges (after sanding a straight edge on the top cowling). I'll be cutting the top of the bottom cowling. There's an "indented" molded edge on the top of the bottom half of the cowling. The top cowling does not mean this edge at one point on the left side so I'll be adding some glass there soon.

6) I think at this point you drill to the horizontal hinges connecting the top and bottom sections.

7) Trim the aft side edges of the bottom and drill to hinge material.

I may have #6 and #7 reversed; I'll have to see.

One of the things that's been delaying me is rather than just get this thing fitted and sliced, I've been messing around with gaps and adding glass etc. I'm pretty sure this is something that can be done after everything is drilled to hinge material.

We'll see.

More as it happens

#361

2010-09-09T20:32:00.000-05:00

Continuing the airplane building maxims:

#361 The law of physics does not care that people on an Internet building support group told you to "build on" when you turned to them for crucial structural decisions.

#362 Larry flies

2010-09-08T21:22:00.002-05:00

Like you, I read the first-flight reports on VAF and elsewhere all the time. While I'm happy for the builder-owner, they all tend to sound the same and I don't usually know the person.

Every now and again, however, a friend of mine completes his RV and goes flying. When it's someone who's been building for quite awhile, it's all the better.

I first met Larry Frey at one of the RV BBQ's at Oshkosh. He was always ready to help, usually with his patented beans and unabashed enthusiasm. He's as good a guy as I've ever met and one of the draws that keeps me going back to Oshkosh.

So I'm thrilled to point you to this article in the newspaper in Larry's hometown near St. Louis.

Larry went flying!

And a quote Larry gave to the newspaper is the Maxim of the Day:

"You will find out in the first 100 hours if you will finish or not."

#363

2010-09-07T07:37:00.000-05:00

Continuing the airplane-building maxim of the day:
#363 As you build your airplane, you will have fewer parts around your workshop. You will spend more time looking for those that remain.

#364

2010-09-06T17:05:00.002-05:00

Continuing the one-a-day plane-building maxims:
If you have a pneumatic rivet squeezer, you will oneday mow your lawn sitting down.

The Cowling Chronicles - Episode two

2010-09-05T17:48:00.000-05:00

One of the most interesting things about building the cowling for the RV-7A airplane is that when you change something somewhere, the effect shows up somewhere else. That's what I'm doing in episode two -- chasing the somewhere elses. Apparently, that will also be the storyline for episode three.

Airplane-building maxims

2010-09-05T10:42:00.000-05:00

It occurs to me that since I've taken so long to build my RV-7A, I have more "airplane-building experience" than most people. I've got 10 years; they've got, say, three. That's my story, and I'm sticking with it.

So I'm starting a new category on the blog -- maxims. If I can get 364 more of them, maybe I'll publish one of those one-a-day calendars. Some will be truthful and insightful. Others will be humor only. But you'll have to determine for yourself which is which.

Let's begin:

#365 - The best part about building an airplane is you meet some great people. The down side of taking 10 years to build is you constantly increase the odds of meeting some real dicks.

The power of an engine

2010-08-28T10:13:00.000-05:00

A lot of people say once you move your airplane building project to the hangar, the progress you make on it tends to slow down since it's not living arm's-length away from you. There's some truth to that, although when you're working at the airport, every plane that you hear taking off on a distant runway provides a fair amount of motivation to keep plugging away.

It's even more motivating to have the guys who've been building the RV-7 one hangar down, to push it out and see if the engine starts. That was the case last night. I was on fire-extinguisher and videographer duty.

After a celebratory beer, I went back to work on the stupid cowl, adding some fiberglass so that I can sand down pieces of it to make the damned thing fit.

From what I can tell, it'll take about four or five more first-engine starts to get me to finish this aspect of the project.

The Cowling Chronicles -- Episode One

2010-08-26T22:27:00.001-05:00

If you've been following me lately -- and even if you haven't -- you may know that the airplane project has hit a big snag because I've worked my way up to the dastardly fiberglass cowling. The instructions I've been using have been awful. They basically say, "figure it out for yourself."

This evening, I thought, "I wonder if there was an update in the instructions since I started this project in 2001?" And, indeed, there was and it appears to answer some of the questions about why some people have been offhandedly citing instructions that weren't in my instructions.

They're still not great, but they're more informative than the dinner napkin I've been trying to read off of.

So maybe this will be the only episode of The Cowling Chronicles. I'm betting not. Enjoy.

It's the cows... still

2010-08-26T17:38:00.000-05:00

One of the great marketing elements of Oshkosh is Aeroshell's "cows" posters featuring Amoolia. More than once I've thought, "maybe this is the year I'll skip Oshkosh," only to catch myself and say, "but what about the cow poster?" I think every homebuilder's garage or hangar has at least one cow poster. So I've updated last year's slideshow to present a decade of Amoolia. It might be easier to view these in the full-screen view.

Cowardice and cowling

2010-08-21T17:47:00.001-05:00

It always seemed to me that when RV airplane builders started working on their cowling, they were near the end of their project. This week, a little more than nine years after I started building my RV-7A, I started working on the cowling in earnest.

Don't get me wrong, I've still got plenty to do on the airplane -- there's the little matter of plumbing the engine, for example -- but other than the wing tips, this will be the last of the "outside" parts of N614EF that people will see when they walk around my airplane. And therein lies the problem, of course.

I don't want to screw it up, and yet, this is the part of Van's airplanes that everyone says has directions that are not very good. Indeed, I've spent two weeks starting at the plans, and reading the instructions and it was only today that I noticed that the instructions basically say, "make it fit." Swell.

Last week, my building pal, Warren Starkebaum, flew over to South St. Paul to give me the once-over on how this is done, so I started on the top of the cowling and after three or four days of being fairly finnicky, I got it to fit as good as I think it will.

So today, I started on the bottom of the cowling, after reading several Web sites with some tips. The problem with almost all of them is they are taildragger models, whereas mine is a nose-gear model. That means you have to cut a slot for the nosegear leg to fit through.

The problem is there's really no knowledge that I've come across that tells me -- exactly -- what I need to do next... and after that... and after that. It seems to me there's money to be made here somewhere for someone in a particular region of the country to be a "cowling coach," working with a builder for an afternoon until they get past the point of no return. These things are expensive, and there's no desire to have a cowling coffee table.

Anway, I found a new use for the wing stand (which I don't need anymore because the wings are attached to the plane now).

The instructions say the bottom cowling should match the radius of each bottom corner of the firewall -- and mine does. And now I need to trim the back end to make the front end match, I guess. But this is kind of crazy.

Still, I can see how it will end up looking like an airplane.

All this fitting seems to be a two-person job. So I think I'm going to wait to do anything more until I can find someone in Minnesota who's done this before, who's willing to spend a few hours helping me get it to a final fit. After that, the sanding and then the filling and sanding of the finish, can be done solo.

Any volunteers?

Update 8/22/10

I've been sanding and grinding away at getting the two halves to fit. So far, this seems to be the best I can do. I don't want to sand too much off and make the two parts that overlap brittle. But, geez, ugly or what?

Here's the front left

Front right:

From what I've found on other people's sites, the plans call for you to drill the two halves together in the front. But I'll be darned if I can find that mentioned anywhere in the plans or on the drawing. Time to get a break, methinks.

High-speed taxi tests

2010-08-17T12:00:00.001-05:00

A line in a news story about the death of RV-6 builder Alan Clark caught my attention today.

Nampa Fire says Clark was high-speed taxiing and testing his plane when wind lifted it and sent him hopping up and down before it flipped over.

I wrote an article -- or rather pieced together submissions from pilots -- on the practice of high-speed taxi tests for RV Builder's Hotline a couple of years ago.

Van doesn't like them:

We expect that the motivation for such testing is often
the eagerness to “see how it works” while waiting
weeks for that final inspection. We assume that there
are many successful, thus unreported, high speed taxi
tests and “down-the-runway” lift off flights made in new
RVs. But still we wonder…what do pilots hope to learn
from fast taxi tests and brief lift-offs that they cannot
learn from sedate taxi speeds and actual take-offs?

Well, there’s theories and there’s facts:

THEORY: It is desirable – even safer -- to perform
high speed taxi tests during the pre-test flight phase of
homebuilt aircraft development because nothing can go
wrong at speeds less than stall/take off speed.

FACT: There is little to be learned from high speed
taxi tests, other than that RVs accelerate faster than
expected, and may take flight at lower speeds than expected.

An RV is capable of flying, particularly in
ground effect, at very low throttle settings. Even at far
less than full throttle, an RV can quickly accelerate to,
maybe, 40 mph. The pilot then pulls the throttle back a
bit to hold that speed while he exercises the ailerons
and elevator a bit, to "feel it out". But that retarded
throttle position, maybe only 1/3 open, is still too much
and has, within seconds, accelerated the plane to 60+
mph – enough that in the hands of an inexperienced (in
RVs) pilot, unanticipated flight is probable.

What's at the end of a rainbow?

2010-08-13T20:43:00.002-05:00

An almost-finished RV-7A:

The next step

2010-08-12T14:26:00.000-05:00

With the RV-7A nearing completion -- sort of (I still don't have a solution to the fuel line problem) -- I've found myself wandering, and dreaming about what I might build next for an aircraft. Then I saw this video that's been posted about powered parachutes, specifically an air tour around the gorgeous landscape of southeast Minnesota.

I'm not wondering anymore. A powered parachute it will be.

(h/t: Statewide blog)

Things that go bump in the night

2010-08-10T08:03:00.002-05:00

If it weren't 1,000 degrees in the Twin Cities with ridiculously high humidity doing so, it'd be the engine on the RV-7A project that keeps me up at night.

As regular readers know, I've been working my way from the tail of the airplane to the front for final assembly. With the avionics now -- mostly -- done, the only things left (other than fairings) to get the airplane flying is (a) the engine (b) the cowling and (c) the propeller. All are pretty important, from what I've been able to understand.

Over the course of the coming winter (which can't get here soon enough), I'll be working on the various lines for the engine.

I'll start with the the fuel line from the engine-driven fuel pump to the fuel servo. And, because this is me, I've already run into a problem. See if you can spot it.

Give up? Look closer.

Pay no attention to the black hose, that's simply a support hangar for the Vetterman exhaust. It's the brown hose. As it comes out of a T-fitting at the fuel pump and winds its way forward, it's striking the engine mount. Angling the T-fitting doesn't change anything, because the engine mount is parallel to the longitudinal axis of the plane and it'd keep hitting.'

I suppose I could clamp it -- somehow -- but the engine is going to be vibrating and don't I want the hose to be free enough to "give" from the constant vibration.

Also, I'm looking for anyone who has a good Web site documenting the installation of the Grand Rapids Technology EIS 4000 in an IO-360 engine. The instructions aren't bad, but they're not as good as they could be, and I learn by seeing rather than by reading and guessing.

Update - It occurred to me that perhaps I could swap the two ports out of the fitting that goes into the fuel pump. Alas, no dice. They're separate fittings.

False floors for an RV-7A airplane

2010-08-08T17:30:00.001-05:00

Last year, when I was interviewing RV building expert Tom Berge on the RV Builder's Hotline (download here), he mentioned the value of false floors in the forward fuselage. Ideally, I would have accomplished at the beginning of the fuselage building process, rather than at the end of the RV-7A project, but I'm pleased to finally have gotten around to it. Tom said, and others confirmed, that putting the false floor in dampens vibration, and heat, and changes the "sound" during an RV airplane flight.

There is a price to be paid; it adds about 7 pounds of weight. But it's a much cheaper addition for flight comfort than items that cost a lot more. (Read more)

Oshkosh 2010: He did it again

2010-08-06T11:19:00.004-05:00

I'll be damned. He did it again. The guy who put together the best video in the history of Oshkosh in 2009, has put one together in 2010.

As good as it is, though, it still doesn't capture what Oshkosh is. It's so much more than what's flying by at a given time. But he's sure come closest over the years.

Oshkosh Diary: Doesn't anyone want to fly anymore?

2010-07-31T08:18:00.001-05:00

At the tail end of a segment on our being a nation of dreamers on MPR's Midmorning yesterday, I did a short interview with host Kerri Miller on the week at Oshkosh. It starts at 45:48.

Kerri asked whether kids are still interested in flying and so I relayed an anecdote from a friend who flies Young Eagle flights at Oshkosh (Young Eagles takes kids for their first airplane ride to try to get them interested in flying). He called me Thursday because he had a seat available and wanted to know if I'd like it. I couldn't because I had an interview scheduled but how is it with so many kids around Oshkosh this week, no enough wanted to go flying? And what does that say about the future of general aviation?

My interview was with Ray LaHood, the U.S. secretary of transportation. He was giving me the usual rote answers that were uninspiring, if not borderline patronizing.

"Did you ever want to learn how to fly?" I finally asked.

"Me?" he said. "Oh no!" He then relayed all of the aspects of general aviation that are stereotypes of why we shouldn't fly -- he was too old, too risky etc. All of them, of course, are wrong. But it's hard to have confidence in a transportation vision and a secretary who says "the administration is 100% behind general aviation" who has never harbored the dream to take flight and look down.

Kerri also asked about the DC3s at Oshkosh. A lot of them didn't show up, I told her, because of the conditions of the field. But look at this beauty that was at Aeroshell Square. This is why I bought a little aluminum polish at Oshkosh (I spent a total of about $20 on airplane stuff this week, a record low for me, even for me).

Click on the image for a larger and more beautiful view. There are reasons not to go with polished aluminum on my RV airplane -- paint hides mistakes, they say -- but when you look at a plane like this, it's hard not to think about the option.

Oshkosh Diary: Ardy and Ed's

2010-07-28T23:18:00.000-05:00

It's not really Oshkosh until we've stopped at Ardy and Ed's drive-in for lunch, which was today's mission. That's Darwin Barrie and me. Glenn Brasch took the photo. I don't know why son, Michael, isn't in this.

Ardy and Ed's sits on the approach end of runway 27 at Oshkosh. As we waited for our food, sitting outside, we saw a B-17 approaching from a distance and it went directly over us.

There is, probably, no place else in the world where people today waited for their root beer floats while a B-17 passed directly over head.

Tonight we had the annual RV gathering. It was great to see Mario Nolte from Germany, and Linda and Terry Frazier from Nevada, and Bob Kelly and his wife from Indiana, and Ben Schneider did a great job putting it on. Also attending was Brad Oliver (who took some unbelievable night shots which I'll get a link to soon), and Chad Jensen and his dad, Jeff. And Bill Wightman of Terminal Tool fame. And Jeff Pointe, Darwin, Glenn, Michael, Don Hall, Rich Emery, and it's always great to see Larry Frey, who's coming up to Minneapolis after Oshkosh for some transition training with my pal, Tom Berge.

Tomorrow, I have an interview with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, and then it's probably time to come home.

An Oshkosh wedding

2010-07-27T21:15:00.001-05:00

I've seen some cool things in the years I've been coming to Oshkosh, but I haven't seen anything as outstanding as tonight's wedding in the North 40 of Michael Regen and Karen Benitez.

The search for an alternative to 100 LL

2010-07-27T13:19:00.002-05:00

If you're a general aviation pilot, you know that the days of 100 LL (low lead) are ending. Though it's called "low lead," it's not, and environmental concerns, coupled with the reduced demand, are making it increasingly difficult to find an alternative. Many aircraft engines can't handle auto fuel; it simply doesn't provide enough power in many cases. And ethanol is not good for aircraft engines.

Today, the President's Fuel Coalition, which is trying to come up with an alternative that won't make our aircraft engines paperweights, is holding a briefing. I'm providing details as they're announced.

The technical working group is:

Rob Hackman - Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association
Doug MacNair - Experimental Aircraft Association
Walter Desrosier - General Aviation Manufacturers Association

<p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=d39dc863db" &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Live-blogging: The future of 100LL&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>

Oshkosh Diary: Meeting the neighbors

2010-07-27T09:25:00.005-05:00

So far, this has been an "uncomfortable" Oshkosh, not in the sense that there's a lot of mud and all, but that it feels like it does when someone has moved the furniture around. While the AirVenture grounds feature the usual "been there, done that" vibe (I'm seeing very little I'd describe as remarkable for the homebuilder), out here in Camp Scholler, things are chaotic.

The grounds have dried out fine, but if you come here for years at a time, you usually end up in the same spot. It's comfortable. You know where to find people and people know where to find you. Not this year.

Fortunately, I've been able to connect with buddy Glenn Brasch and his son, Michael, and RV pal Darwin Barrie, who I'm pretty sure is now convinced I'm building a ghetto RV-7A. He's probably right, which is one reason I've decided never to fly it over here.But lots of other people I usually visit with are scattered to the wind.

In the meantime, Camp Scholler always offers an opportunity to meet the neighbors. This morning, for example, I met Alex and Benny, who are from "west of St. Cloud." Benny is a homemade wine afficianado so I've been invited to stop over this evening for a glass of his 2008 vintage. We'll see.

HEY BUDDY, WANT TO BUY AN RV?

I'm not sure what the significance of this is, but I passed a display in one of the exhibit halls of beautifully carved airplanes of every model. The only one that's been cut to rock-bottom, is the RV line. The RV-8 models were also on sale. (Update: Gary Sobek e-mailed to tell me the vendor sold him one last year for $15. Now I remember this part of Oshkosh!)

RVs EVERYWHERE

There was a time when if you ran into someone wearing a Van's shirt or some other signal that they've built an RV airplane, you could instantly strike up a conversation. There weren't that many of them. Now, because of their popularity, they're everywhere. And the RV community -- singular -- has got pretty fractured. The RV-10 is for the monied, family crowd (not that there's anything wrong with that), the RV-12 seems to be for the older gen (getting there), and the RV-9s and RV-7s and RV-8s in between are for a very diverse crowd.

In other words, there really isn't an RV community anymore. It's no longer unusual to run into someone else building their own RV airplane and when you do, it isn't any more (or less) special than if you run into any of the other hundreds of thousands of people who live here for a week. What the community has in common -- building RV airplanes -- isn't really that significant as it once was. Sure, it's great to put faces to names of people you run across online; no doubt about that. And it's always great to see old friends, but there's 6,000 flying RVs now and probably another 20,000 under construction somewhere. As any city that grows past a certain point knows, larger communities split into smaller ones, and it becomes more and more difficult to maintain the larger group.

Like a corporation that's spinning off, it will be interesting to see how the transition occurs.

WHERE DID I PUT THAT?

I'm using my son's old bike during Oshkosh. Fortunately, it's a mountain bike so it's good in mud. But here's a tip: Keep a detailed note of where you parked your bike at Oshkosh.

Oshkosh 2010: Top signs you haven't left your real world behind you

2010-07-26T08:53:00.000-05:00

You not only bring a lawnmower, you use it to mow the grass around your campsite.

Oshkosh Diary - Getting back to normal

2010-07-25T18:58:00.004-05:00

Anybody who has ever brought their little kids to Oshkosh recognizes this picture. It's Oshkosh in the campground. Kids doing what kids to; parents doing what parents do. Sure, the adults -- some of them -- are kvetching about the conditions here, but they're actually getting back to normal.

The main roads around the campground are now in pretty good shape, and the side roads -- through the fields actually -- no longer present a squishy "I'm crossing the Delaware" sound. True, they're still a mud bog, but all those pictures you've been seeing are starting to create a somewhat exaggerated pictures. Yes, there are still long lines of campers that can't get in. Yes, there are still rich people's toys who are camping on the roads. But there was a goodly amount of dust being generated around the campground today.

You watch, in a few days, some people will be complaining about that.

I have no idea -- and don't care that much -- what the situation is with people flying in. Jeff Point, who handles parking for RV airplanes, has been doing a great job of keeping people up to date on that on Van's Air Force.

My good friend, Warren, was supposed to fly over here from Minneapolis today. But the information about who can land here and who can't has been wildly inconsistent. He says he listened to the controllers at Fisk telling people nobody was landing. So he landed in Necedah and called me. I told him "you don't want to be here." Not with an airplane, and not sitting on the ground somewhere with the sun going down.

So he's opted to fly back and spend the evening with better company and a bottle of wine. Good choice.

Meanwhile, the biggest likely tragedy is that the porta-potty trucks aren't able to get to some parts of the campground. Guess which two they can't get to? In a couple of days, that's going to be a real problem. Meanwhile, we can ignore the one with the beer bottle and the vomit in it, I suppose. That one is, apparently, for the moose hunters from Kansas camped nearby. Awesome job, fellas. Awesome.

THE WIFI SITUATION

The EAA has wisely -- in my opinion -- given up on the idea of providing roaming wiFi around the campground. Instead, it's built small shacks all around AirVenture where people can connect. This is a good thing. Yes, it's a bit of a pain in the neck -- in a 2010 way of thinking -- to ride a bike to a hotspot. But I admit to being discomforted by seeing so many people last year sitting in their tent in the evening, playing on the computer. The place to be is outside meeting people.

EAA RADIO

The radio broadcasts began this evening and continue through AirVenture. My guess is more people listen around the world than at Oshkosh. It seems like a great group of people, all of whom could be my son or daughter. Many are students at St. Cloud State.

I've done a few interviews, as previous posts have shown, and for the most part I'm opting to dump them onto the kids, so they can write and produce the material. That's what they're hear for. I don't need my name plastered on a piece, although I do intend to do one or two.

The young journalists are part of a class at St. Cloud State University. It's nice to see that people are still interested in the art and the sooner they can get into the business, and the sooner the people predicted its demise can get out of it, the better off the world will be. I'm just glad they're letting me play along with them for a few days.

As I type this, they're one minute away from beginning the broadcast of tonight's program at Theater of the Woods. Throughout AirVenture -- and beyond -- you can listen here.

NO CAMERAS

Canon, the camera company, has lent out huge cameras to just plain folk in recent years. It was a great promotion, and the cameras the size of Montana are the only way just plain folk will ever take great pictures. A sign on their building door today, however, said something like "due to worldwide demand, we're not handing out cameras this year." This, of course, is the type of gibberish that earns a public relations student a good grade.

Love and the airplane builder

2010-07-25T17:00:00.000-05:00

All love starts in France. Or aboard the Ford TriMotor.

Just ask RV-7 builder and RV-4 owner Michael Regen of Maryland, who proposed to Karen Benitez a year ago on a flight aboard the Ford TriMotor at AirVenture 2009 in Oshkosh. "As we took off and I was able to get out of my seat, and propose to Karen."

She said yes. "I was actually looking out the window when all of this was going on, because I was somewhat irritated with him before we got on the Ford Trimotor and it almost didn't happen. I was staring out the window, grumbling to myself. I turned around, and there he was."

The two actually met as kids, thanks to their parents. "Our parents were stationed together in France before we were born, and they always kept in touch," Karen says. "We always saw pictures and what everyone is doing. I come from a family of three girls and he comes from a family of three boys."

"We always used to fight over who got to sit next to Karen when we were kids," says Michael.

The two will be married in the North 40 on Tuesday under a tent put up by the Bonanza airplane group.

"It's vacation time. It's relaxed, and you can't be around a greater group of (mostly) guys," according to Karen, who had the idea of getting married at Oshkosh. She figured most of the couple's friends are in the area, although when we talked on Sunday, Michael was trying to find a workaround to a canceled Delta Airlines flight that was to bring two of his children to Oshkosh. They'll fly to Appleton instead.

"We've been sweating for the last few days because there was a chance the Bonanza people weren't going to be able to fly in," Michael said. "Fortunately, things worked out."

Regen built an RV-7 a few years ago but has sold it in favor of an RV-4. "They both have their little nuances, but I couldn't pick which one I like better. The 7A was a great airplane."

But he says his soon-to-be bride tops any plane. "Karen's wearing half an RV-7 on her finger," he said.

Brazil to Oshkosh

2010-07-25T16:10:00.001-05:00

Three RV-10s are sitting at show center at this year's Oshkosh. Their pilots have earned the honor. They flew from Brazil to attend their first AirVenture. It took eight stops and six days, according to Victor Yancovitz, right, a former airline pilot.

None of the airplanes was made by the pilots. In Brazil, companies are allowed to make kit aircraft, and then sell them to customers, Yancovitz says. "Brazil is very strict about homebuilding. In the United States, you can make your aircraft, and go fly. There (Brazil), it's very restrictive. You must be approved by an engineer."

Antonio Nallin's RV-10, which was made in Sao Paulo, features extended fuel tanks. Three 150-liter tanks

Extended range tanks installed increased the size. Three 150-liter tanks (about 39 gallons) give the RV-10s a range of about 6 hours and 30 minutes.

Nallin says he likes to upgrade airplanes but doesn't like the idea of flying a light-sport category plane. He previously owned an RV-9 which is considered an ultralight in Brazil. He was the first Brazilian pilot to cruise over the Andes Mountains in an ultra-light five years ago. "It was a great adventure," said Nallin.

"He's a crazy man," counters Yancovitz.

Yancovitz says he's excited about the RV-12 and other light airplanes. "I've flown for 45 years," he said. "Boeings, DC8 , Airbus, everything. I love flying. When I retired I stopped flying commercial in 2001. I have to keep my medical every six months. With the ultralight, it's every two years. All of my licenses have expired -- commercial, ATP, private, they've all expired. Now we have a license to fly ultralights. For me, the smaller aircraft is enough."

Sloshkosh

2010-07-25T10:26:00.009-05:00

I awoke fairly early this morning, looked out the tent and saw this...

The line from yesterday afternoon was gone; I don't know where it went, I've seen no indication anyone was allowed into the campground at AirVenture. But it was replaced by another line that stretches about a mile down the road. It's not moving and it doesn't appear it's going to move anything soon.

After breakfast, I went out and talked to some of the people.

Nate Gifford, from Worthington, Mass., and he flies for Continental. He and a couple of friends from the Berkshires (who didn't want to be identified but we exchanged some Berkshire County connections) drove all night from Massachusetts, and pulled into line at 5:30 this morning.

Nate was in pretty good spirits; he's been coming here since the '80s and didn't seem to mind waiting in line much. His colleagues are on their first trip to Oshkosh.

This gentleman is from my neck of the woods -- Oakdale, Minnesota. Kirk Martenson is ex-Army where he flew helicopters and he's looking forward to evaluating some of the kit helicopters. He says EAA could've done a better job of posting signs that say "go home."

As he understands it, EAA is going to organize a caravan to the parking lot at at the University of Wisconsin Duluth, where they'll drop their trailers. What happens after that, I don't know, and this isn't official so don't quote me.

From looking at some of the shopping center parking lots, however, it appears that EAA is trying to line up space for these people to put up shop. Various parking lots along S. Koeller Ave -- the frontage road -- now sport mini-neighborhoods.

This group is from St. Louis, the president and vice president of EAA Chapter 32 in St. Louis (on the right). David Doherty and his son, William Doherty. David proudly points out he was born on the day the EAA was formed in the basement of Paul Poberezny's Wisconsin home.

The people on the left are all from Australia. Dave Looten and Rae Percival are here for his 60th birthday. They've been traveling in the states for seven weeks and are now taking in Oshkosh and all its, at least for now, inaction.

I asked David -- Aussie David -- for his favorite flying experience and he reports that it came just a few weeks ago when he flew over the desert in Australia and found everything to be green, which apparently rarely happens. Everything's green in Wisconsin, too. I told him if he got tired of making camp on a frontage road, the biggest ball of twine in the world is but a few hours away. He seemed appropriately unimpressed.

Last night, I had dinner with Darwin Barrie, and Glenn and Michael Brasch, and the pal I know only as "Tom the Camp Locator Shack Guy," and Jeff Point, who is the master parker of RV aircraft. Jeff says the "phrase that pays" this week is, "I've never seen anything like this before," and describes the situation as a "Biblical flood." He says at this point, organizers are just "making it up as we go." There's no long-term plan, because people are just trying to figure out what to do in the short term.

They can't even park cars for people coming in today (although AirVenture officially opens tomorrow) because the fields they use for the parking lot are too wet.

EAA officials have fanned out around Camp Scholler, telling people they can't drive their cars once they set up camp; they have to walk the half mile or so to a shower or the store or wherever. The cars are simply carving up the field.

That wouldn't be such a bad thing if the camp shuttle buses were running, but I haven't seen them yet and if they are running, they're going to have a difficult time because of all the big land yachts parked along the road.

And the owners of those rigs aren't sacrificing much. Even though people need to use the road, those that have living rooms that extend out the side, are deploying them, carving up more of the road. Thanks for taking one for the team, rich folks. Stay classy.

I did hear this morning from my favorite vendors -- Jerry Hansen and the gang from Trio Avionics, who were driving in to set up their shop. Hopefully, we'll be able to get together for dinner as we always try to do.

My friend, Warren Starkebaum, is due to fly over from Crystal Airport (Minneapolis) today. I left him a message saying "you don't want to be here."

Normally on Sunday, one can pass the time pulling up a chair by the runway and watching the mass arrivals. But there are no mass arrivals because there's simply no place to park them. There will be soon, Jeff hopes, but there are going to be large sections that simply won't hold the weight of airplanes this week.

The big fly-in of DC-3s has been canceled. They take up too much parking space on the ramp, space that has to be reserved for smaller planes.

(Click on the images to see larger ones and to see what's cut off from the smaller ones posted here.)

Oshkosh Diary - July 24, 2010

2010-07-24T19:11:00.001-05:00

It's a lovely evening in Camp Scholler at AirVenture 2010 in Oshkosh... as long as you're looking up. Glance anywhere else, and you're looking at a looming disaster, at least for a few days until things dry out.
They've had over 10 inches of rain here since the beginning of the month and it shows. The little creek where I usually camp is running like the Mississippi.

Out on the frontage road, at least a mile long line of RVs (the kind on wheels) are stalled. They're not letting them in and some EAA people are going RV to RV handing out water. Inside Camp Scholler, only tenters are setting up. The RVs and other big units are mostly parking on the roadways and setting up there. It's a nightmare.

I looked at the EAA Radio compound where I was going to set up and decided that -- at least for tonight -- I'd head for high ground. I'm out on Second Street, which is a healthy stone's throw from the highway. But it's not standing water and my standards for comfort got lowered considerably. Tomorrow, perhaps, I'll move in with my broadcasting friends.

As for airplanes, I've seen very few fly in. Michael Regen is here. I'll be doing a story on him and his soon-to-be bride. He's parked his RV on the tarmac near the FBO until they start parking planes on grass.

His wedding on Tuesday will be in the North 40. Here's what the North 40 looks like right now.

And here's what it looks like in the campground:

The spot I'm at is working out fine for now. I'm half-deaf so maybe the truckers blowing their horns in the middle of the night won't bother me as much. But I come over here mostly to socialize and there isn't much of that out here. People don't walk by on their way to somewhere else. Out here, you've got a golf cart or a car to get where you need to go.

Glenn Brasch, his son Michael, and Darwin Barrie were setting up their site across from where they used to be near the camp locator shack. I almost got the car stuck when I stopped to say "hello." I now have a generous coating of mud on it.

There's no working wiFi yet. This year, EAA has built small buildings around the area as wiFi hotspots, which I presume means you won't be able to sit in your tent and watch Hulu this year. Good. But it doesn't appear to be turned on yet.

So I'm down at Starbuck's where a barrista who used to live on St. Paul's East Side asked me if I'm in town for the air show. "Do I scream 'air show'?" I asked.
"No," she said, "it was your TCF Bank card. But, you know, you fly people are pretty well dressed. Usually we get beer guts and sandals in here. I was wearing muddy sneakers and a T-shirt. I chose not to show here my beer gut.

I suppose I could've pursued it and ended up at the point I dread ("you pilots are all rich."), but I'm tired and I still have to work up the energy get over to WalMart and navigate around the -- apparently -- Starbucks customers.

Drop a note if you have questions or comments and we'll be conversing here during the week.

On to Oshkosh!

2010-07-23T20:54:00.000-05:00

Got in from a quick trip through Boston this afternoon and immediately headed for the hangar and packed the car for the trip to Oshkosh. There was quite a bit of activity with amphibs -- more so than usual, since Wipaire is on the field -- but driving out I saw this beauty.

I'm not one of the people who can identify every airplane out there on sight, I just know that that's a mighty fine job of polishing aluminum.

Anyway, I'm not sure what to expect at Oshkosh this year. It's been raining -- hard. They got about 7 inches of rain yesterday, I understand.

I hate mud.

One more autograph

2010-07-18T12:23:00.001-05:00

I've written several times before about the number of "autographs" that are hidden around N614EF. As people would help, I'd ask them to "autograph" the part they helped on. It's fun to be working around the airplane and see an autograph from eight or nine years ago, documenting a day I'd forgotten about.

Today, I added another autograph because the "helper" wasn't able to.

Jennifer Helen Collins, my niece, died this morning.

Jennifer was born with Spida Bifida, the oldest of my twin brother's four children. She could walk with crutches, but for the most part, the wheelchair was her constant companion.

I looked around the airplane this morning looking for the perfect spot to add her "autograph," finally settling on the inside of the right wing, in honor of my brother's love of politics.

Jennifer Helen Collins
12/1/78 - 7/18/10
She couldn't walk, but now she flies

Countdown to Oshkosh

2010-07-17T11:12:00.000-05:00

At this time next week, I'll be at Oshkosh, spending Saturday with a tape recorder in one hand, a camera in the other, putting some stories together for EAA Radio and also getting some pieces together for Letters From Flyover Country.

As in previous years, I'll be posting several times a day here and I hope you'll follow along. I tend to look for the comedic or at least slightly off-the-beaten path anecdotes so I'm probably not going to be a good source for the last technology that's unveiled at AirVenture.

Besides, there are plenty of other places to get that. But nobody else has written about the Porta Potty Prayer (Which you can find in this classic post).

As always, it's a lot more fun doing this if I know you're out there reading it. So please comment often.

What's the code?

2010-07-17T09:02:00.010-05:00

While I'm building my own airplane, I don't fly that often. Truth is: I didn't fly that often before; only enough to keep 90-day current at Thunderbird Aviation in Eden Prairie. But last evening was the night for some practice.

I took the rusty bucket -- err, N4337V -- out to Glencoe for some landing practice and for reasons I still can't explain, I bounced almost every landing. The sun was setting and I was landing on Runway 31, so visibility wasn't the best, but it wasn't the worst either.

My airspeed and approach was perfect. Attitude good. Altitude proper. Airspeed dead on: 64 knots "over the fence." Bounce...bounce.

You can learn a lot even when things aren't going well. You can evaluate and work on your judgment, for example. On one landing, I bounced once....then twice, which was two times more than was acceptable. So I "firewalled" the throttle, dropped a notch of flaps, lowered the nose to pick up airspeed and executed a pretty fine go-around, if I say so myself.

That, actually, is a talent few pilots practice. When people get into trouble, it's often because they don't want to admit they're in a bad spot and take action to set up for another try. They try to "save" the landing. So that's a positive.

On another time or two, I reacted to the bounce with a touch of throttle to ease the plane -- more or less -- onto the runway rather than have it "drop." On every landing, I consider "what would happen now if this were my RV?"

If this were my RV, I'd be able to go back out this morning and get it right. But an hour and a half of rental time is $180 and, well, it'll be cheaper just to think about it while mowing the lawn and folding the laundry today.

As I was coming back into Flying Cloud -- I was just south of Waconia -- another problem developed. "Flying Cloud Tower, Warrior 4337V is 10 miles out, with Bravo, inbound landing." Silence. Ruh roh.

A moment later, another warrior announced his intentions to land and he was two miles behind me. A moment after that, a third Warrior announced he was in the general vicinity. So I reannounced my intentions. Nothing.

"This isn't good," I thought. I've got two planes around me somewhere, a tower that I can't talk to, and a setting sun messing with my visibility.

As you pilots probably know, the mantra here is "fly the plane." And I did, though I admit my altitude decayed from 2500 to 2200 as I circled to avoid getting any closer to Flying Cloud's Class D airspace without being in radio communication. I peeled off to fly south, away from where I figured my two new friends were.

I tried to diagnose the problem, checking cables, frequencies, volumes etc. I could hear the conversations taking place -- none involving me -- but I couldn't participate. As I circled, I'd be blinded when I turned toward the west, a most uncomfortable feeling.

I finally decided I was going to have to go "no radio," which involves changing the transponder code to a discreet setting that tells controllers that my plane is unable to communicate. They then use a red and green "light gun" from the tower to give me instructions (although I'm pretty sure the tower would've radio'd me to see if I could at least hear them, in which case there wouldn't be a problem.)

All I had to do was change the transponder to the appropriate squawk code which was.... ummm... 7700.... 7600.... 7500... oh, shoot, which code is it? I knew it's not 7700, because that's the setting for an emergency (I remember that for some reason by remembering the first two numbers are Ray Bourque's uniform number when he played for the Boston Bruins. Hey, whatever works!).

So it's either 7600 or 7500. One is for loss of radio, the other is to signal a "hijack." Since the horizon has big skyscrapers of a major American city (Minneapolis), I didn't want to get it wrong, because the response was going to be decidedly different.

My kneeboard has a "cheat sheet" on it which tells me the light-gun signal meanings, but it didn't have the proper codes. So as I circled in the blinding sun, my altitude decaying slightly, I went through my flight bag, looking for anything that might have the proper code. Of course, papers were flying everywhere by now.

I finally found it. 7600 (Which I will now remember by associating "76" with the year I graduated from college and didn't call home enough. Get it? Communications failure. Hey, whatever works!)

I switched the transponder and hit IDENT which, presumably, lit up the controller's radar screen, but I didn't hear him saying anything to anyone else flying near me. So I as I turned toward the field, it occured to me that I had changed the PS Engineering 4000 intercom early in the flight to give me "sidetone," the ability to hear myself in my headphones when I transmitted.

Sure enough, I had flipped an extra switch and somehow prevented transmitting. Of course, this also meant that all of my radio calls for the last hour out at Glencoe weren't going out either.

"Flying Cloud Tower, how do you hear 4337V?" I radioed.

"Warrior 4337V, loud and clear, sir. Confirm that was you squawking 7600?"

So I did, and got squared away from the approach and landing. Other than another bounce, I landed uneventfully, taxied back to the FBO and shut down the plane (by the way, nobody parks a plane better than me. Nobody.)

It was a pretty good workout that identified more areas to work on the next time I scrape together $180 to find out I need to be better at flying airplanes.

Meeting Miss Mitchell

2010-07-15T12:38:00.003-05:00

Julia Schrenkler, interactive producer for Minnesota Public Radio, time traveled to the exotic land of South St. Paul yesterday, from where she filed this report.

There's history in Minnesota. Some stories are undiscovered, and others can be found if you're willing to visit Hangar #3 at Fleming Field in South St. Paul.

The Minnesota Wing of the Commemorative Air Force tends and flies some of the aircraft that shaped history. The goals: preserve and educate. They restore, maintain and show the planes. The Quonset hangar a short distance from the Twin Cities International Airport is the home base for the flying machines and the people who love them.

The planes dominate the aircraft entrance area while maintenance tool chests are scattered around the edges. In the back are historical displays (complete with propaganda and a collection of unopened rations) and where the men in uniform were waiting.

These men aren't pilots. They're not a functional flying crew. They're re-enactors and they were willing to deliver a crash course on their passion for history.

The pursuit of historical truth

"We're research geeks," Eric Cheever said, "I've always been obsessed with history, and I read as much of it as I could." Cheever seems to favor researching mid 20th century events and explained his father's friends were WWII veterans, "To sit and hear this history from a participant - you can't get that from a history book." He explained that once he started re-enacting, his understanding of what these people did "took a quantum leap in understanding."

But you may get it from someone willing to research it, experience it, and expose you to it.

The search - and perhaps rescue - of lost information is a first focus for the group. Troy LaFaye has ten years of reenacting experience. He simply stated, "If we are not historically accurate, it defeats the point of the hobby." LaFaye carefully elaborated that this activity isn't a glorification of war, but to demonstrate the people involved in the war and life at that time suffered. It is also LaFaye's goal to share that knowledge, "A lot of people that join think it's like playing airsoft or paint ball, but the whole point of reenacting is not to go out and 'play Army' by shooting blanks - although that's fun - the whole idea is to commemorate the men and women who were involved. The purpose is to teach history to other people, like a live version of a history book."

Gearing up to be living history

Eric Cheever suited up, gives a gear lesson.

It comes across as an intense hobby. While Michael Wells recorded the video of Cheever (above) re-enactor Darren Byrnes showed me some of his aviation gear. One piece, the packed parachute, looks like an overstuffed and unwieldly heavy messenger bag. I picked it up to get a sense of its weight and Byrnes laughed a little, "It's stuffed with a pillow." The parachute container is a mass of clips and webbed handles, designed to be quickly attached to a crew member. Byrnes showed me that they were actually stowed within arm's reach or loosely clipped at chest level, unlike the backpack-style system most people associate with parachutes. His next project relates directly to that life-saving device: working with Cheever to create their own parachute harnesses to complete their period-correct aviator uniforms. eBay was a source for the harness webbing, and the men will stitch them from scratch. Eventually a parachute equivalent will be in the pack, although Byrnes noted it would clearly not be safe or functional equipment.

Going to market

Not everything is hand-sewn or perhaps a family hand-me-down, there are collectors and sellers actively trading in historical pieces. Steve Shumaker tells me that the cost varies. "It depends on the market." He explained that a wealthy or avid collector can quickly and perhaps unwittingly create demand and drive up prices. Culture and media can affect cost, as even history has trends and fads. Shumaker gave an example, "'The Pacific' came out on HBO, and the Marine stuff is really big now!" Shumaker also notes that authenticity is expected, and that the group was onces called to task about their uniforms,"'Line up and let me see what you got wrong' the WWII vet said. After looking them over for a couple minutes, the vet shrugged and said 'Not a thing.'"

Meeting the Miss Mitchell

The group eventually moved towards the big plane, the main draw, the Miss Mitchell. A B-25 bomber, she looks big from a distance but surprised me with her actual size in the hangar. Aside from wing span, the plane actually seemed... small. I bet her main body couldn't be more than 12-15 feet longer than an average city bus. Although her physical size surprised me, her solidity didn't. Her panels are heavy under hand and riveted at consistent distances, giving her an armored appearance at certain perspectives.

I saw the re-enactors gravitate to her. LaFaye couldn't seem to resist looking at the plane or keep from smoothing the panels. They kept moving around the aircraft, explaining the crew's experiences and different roles between quiet gazes at the plane.

Boarding the plane is done alone. There's no jet bridge on a bomber, but multiple drop ladders that allow for one person to get into place at a time. We took breaks between entering the different assignment seats. Everything is a tight fit. Shumacker is 6'4" and broad-shouldered, but he showed no hesitation moving into the pilot's seat. I gamely tried to be graceful in the tight spots like the steel tunnel to the bombadier's position, but compared to the light and open space in the hangar the B-25 is dark and almost counter-intuitive inside. Everything seemed at odds with my perception of where I was actually at in the plane.

For example:

The mid-gunner's seat, shown here currently stowed perpendicular to the body of the plane. During flight, the seat ratchets up to 90 degrees. (Independent video of the turret in operation) It probably tested the best stomachs during banked turns.

It wasn't until I took the tail gunner's position that the re-enactors' messages finally clicked for me. Sitting on the equivalent of an old bike seat, with a 280-degree view but a small gun sight, trigger handles close and only one small constructed exit in an odd and difficult spot behind me... I got it. The vulnerability and violence in such a small space was overwhelming.

The crew member that staffed this position was likely half my age at the time of the war. He straddled a small seat with steel under him and clarity to the sides and above, seeing the entire flight mission move backwards away from his perspective. At any moment he could possibly be the first to spot enemy fire coming directly towards him. His tools were two machine guns mounted to the frame but practically in his lap, their workings literally zipped-in with nothing but heavy military fabric to the tail of the plane so they could be maintained without removal. I remembered the plane's enormous engine and exhaust noise from a different visit to Fleming Field, I considered what it would have meant to think about that fabric barrier but a foot or so away, and the threat of a forceful wartime death at so young an age.

Those impression aren't in this slideshow, but are a direct result of this history visit. I owe that moment to the re-enactors.

The Minnesota Wing of the Commemorative Air Force has open hours and hosts events at the hangar, such as charity open houses and food & drink events, like "Hops & Props."

He's living my dream

2010-07-14T18:09:00.004-05:00

There are worse ways to spend the day, I suppose, than the way my son got to spend his today. He's a paramedic and he just moved up in his company to critical care work in western Wisconsin. On his orientation today, he familiarized himself with the evac helicopters.

The company also has at least one Falcon jet (he had ridden in one of these months ago for a patient transfer).

He snapped this picture in the company hangar.

It looks like the perfect job for an aviation buff, if you take away all that blood and such.

Bright lights, little airplane

2010-07-05T16:00:00.010-05:00

If nothing else, any time you can get a full instrument installed, wired, and powered up in one session of work, I think you've done OK.

Today I checked off another item on the big dry-ink board in the hangar: Install fuel level indicator.

The Electronics International fuel level indicator has two separate power wires -- one to power the instrument and one to to power the backlight, and a wire for each ground, then you run wires out to the fuel tanks.

I ended up following the headset wires to the left and right, then tie-wrapped to the fuel vent line to the floor and then out the fuselage. Because the fuselage is double-walled, the snap bushing doesn't extend out of the fuselage. I'll put a dab of RTV in to cushion things.

Here's one side at the fuel tank:

And here's the other:

To keep vibration to a minimum, I ran the wire through a couple of inches of static tubing, which is a very hard plastic, and secured the line to the fuel line.

After checking everything, I powered it up. My family, which occasionally recalls when I was kid, my riding my bicycle five or so miles to watch traffic lights in Newburyport, Mass, will understand why I like this instrument so much.

I actually don't remember that much of the installation process, which took about three hours; I was thinking of my niece, Jennifer, and my twin brother, Bill. Jennifer's in the hospital and isn't doing well. I called Bill who was on his way to the hospital to let him know I'm thinking about them both and hoping for the best. If I could trade this damned plane in to make it so, I would in a second.

There a lot more items on that list on the dry-ink board. But I think for now I'll pull up a chair by the hangar door, and watch it rain for awhile.