The Maibs' 'flying' RV-10

I wrote a few days ago that David Maib received his airworthiness certificate for the RV-10 he's been building. Now it's a rootin' tootin' airplane.

David writes:

First flight happened at 4:20 this afternoon at Fleming. 50 minutes later I landed at Airlake after a great flight. All I can say is, keep working on your airplane. The reward is tremendous. The most gratifying thing I have done in a 42 year aviation career.

Interesting. David is probably one of the last people who'll be allowed to make the first flight from Fleming Field in South St. Paul (KSGS). The FAA is concerned that it's too busy an area now for first flights. That crash in Las Vegas in September probably didn't help much.

So I presume the "box" the FAA gave him for 40 hours of flight testing is over Lakeville, a much less populated area, but still a pain in the neck for someone like me who's got a half-built RV-7A in a hangar at KSGS. The thought of having to disassemble it and truck it down to Lakeville is mildly upsetting, but it's just another challenge for a homebuilder.

David and Mary's RV-10

I'm pretty sure that the RV-10 you see above was but a gleam in the eyes of David and Mary Maib when David stopped by to see my RV-7A project several years ago. But today, David reports, he was given an airworthiness certificate by DAR Tim Mahoney (who is obviously shown here).

It's a gorgeous airplane, hangared just across the field at South St. Paul Airport from that RV-7A project which, if you ask me, probably doesn't look that much further along than when David checked it out back in my garage. By the way, it's got not one, not two, but three Vertical Power 200 units!

The chances are pretty good that you've never met anyone who worked as hard on the RV-10 as David and Mary. If you want an example of dedication, they're it. They were out at the hangar all of the time.

Up until a month or so ago, David was the chief pilot for Target Corporation. But he's cashed out, they've built a home in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. They've sold the hangar to Wip at Wipaire, and after David flies off the -- presumably -- 40 hours, they're blowing this popcorn stand called Minnesota and will live where you don't need to plug your car in at night unless it's an electric vehicle.

So my joy at today's big moment is tempered by the bittersweet awareness that the birthing of the RV-10 will soon be followed by a "goodbye."

By the way, David, are you taking that engine hoist with you? If not, I know a guy nearby who'll buy it.

RV Builder's Hotline for 11/22/08 is posted

The most recent issue of the RV Builders Hotline has just been posted. This week's feature is about airparks and the people who live with their airplanes. You can find the issue here. If you've subscribed to the Hotline, you'll find it in your inbox shortly.

RV Builders BBQ - AirVenture 2009

I've been waiting for my enthusiasm to return to bring back the annual BBQ at Oshkosh for RV builders, pilots and their families. After spending the weekend putting together the latest RV Builder's Hotline, and then spending most of last evening working on the RVator index and reading old issues, I think it has. I'm ready to start planning. (Here's a slideshow of the last BBQ)

Right off the bat, though, we've got significant challenges. First, we have no donors. A few years ago Stein Bruch of SteinAir was kind enough to solicit some of the RV-related companies (or is the phrase "shake down") and surprised me with enough cash to keep the prices down, add a big tent (we'd always held our breath that our $3,000 investment in food and drink wouldn't get washed out, since we didn't do tickets in advance), but in this economy, I'm not sure that's a realistic expectation.

Last year, Van's Aircraft wanted to combine their homebuilder's dinner with the BBQ and we were on our way to doing that, but then that Kitplanes article appeared, there was some pushback at the YahooGroup when I objected to it, and I realized that a few people who had eaten my food, sat on my campsite, drunk my beer decided that there was "friendship line" that I didn't care for. These BBQs consume hundreds of hours of my time before Oshkosh and most of my time during Oshkosh (that picture above is me cleaning up the grounds the next day, which took most of the day), and it seemed like an ungrateful exercise which sapped my enthusiasm. And I'm not sure Van's would want to cast their lot with me again, anyway.

Add to that the fact that a lot of my BBQ friends weren't going to be at Oshkosh in 2008 and, well, it just didn't seem worth doing again.

So we -- I -- have some things to think about before committing to it.

• Where do we get a grill? Stein, bless his heart, purchased a Coleman Event Grill for us, hauled it over to Oshkosh and back. No charge. That grill has now been donated to EAA Chapter 25 and even if I was allowed to use, I have no way of getting it to Oshkosh. Stein and his gang now rent their luxury waterfront villa. AndI have a Subaru with no tow hitch and no trailer.
  
• How do we solve the problem of too many people attending? I think we had over 500 people last time and I don't think it was too many people (except for that one who came referenced earlier; you're not invited this time, fella!), but that's about as far as we want to go and that was with something like $5,000 in donations. We don't have that this time and I no longer have the cash to front thing (actually, I never did, but I have even less of it now).
• Can the BBQ compete with AirVenture's new strategy of providing night events? Do we have enough people to give up an evening with Jeff Dunham? Or the concert with whatever over-the-hill rock group Ford can rope into coming?
• Can we round up the old gang of cooks and volunteers?
• Will the rennnovations at the AirVenture grounds disrupt the ability of people to get out to the campground? It's not like it was easy for them previously.
  

These aren't exactly the things that keep me up at night, but they are the things that need to be answered before the end of 2008. It really does take that long to put this together.

I'm open to any suggestions. If if you're a big company that wants to write a check for nothing more than a "thank you" (we had already agreed after 2007 that we wouldn't do door prizes; we want people to come because they want to come, not just for the chance to win something), I'm all ears.

I don't post much to the bulletin boards anymore so if you'd like to circulate this, please be my guest.

Update 11/17 - In kicking this around on the YGroup, it seems what we need are some co-chairs. Specifically, the most important would be someone to solicit sponsorships from some in the RV business community as Stein has done in the past. We would need about $3,000 total to accommodate tent and campsite as well as cost of ticketing etc., and that would give us the downpayment for food.

We also need a "facilities" person to help round up grilling equipment, propane tanks, coolers and ice. And maybe find an in-kind sponsor to donate generators for the evening only.

RV Builder's Hotline posted

Thanks to the miracles of pharmaceuticals and the snowy/drizzly weather of Minnesota, I was able to crank out an RV Builder's Hotline this week afterall. I've been suffering from a terrible pinched nerve in the neck, which made my arms quite painful. But the pain has subsided and the weather put me in the mood to write. Enjoy. And tell a friend.

Closing up

It snowed in Lake Wobegon this week. The geese started flying south -- or at least over to the next lake -- and Minnesotans who are lucky enough to have one, closed up the cabin for the last time. For those of us who have unheated, uninsulated hangars, we "closed up" our getaway spots, too.

The international sign of the end of the RV building season -- at least for me -- in Minnesota is shown above. The whiskey barrel that serves as a rain barrel at the house, gets loaded into my wife's car, and taken to the hangar. This is also the time of the year when I get to apologize to my wife for making her car smell like bourbon.

At this time of the year, a lot of the lawn furniture and other flotsam that occupies my garage in the summer, heads for a corner of the hangar. This year, with an engine arriving and the RV-7A project going up on its gear, and the tail surfaces mounted for the last time (I hope), there's a little less room.


The RV-7A was moved from the side of the hangar back to the middle. I'd moved it earlier this year when James W. French's Acro Sport honored my hangar by staying overnight last summer. Soon the barrel will be surrounded by lawnmowers, and boxes, and whatever other junk needs to get out of my garage so that the car can scoot in for the winter. One of these days, I'd like to figure out how to use all of that wall space there. Rumor has it the airport management will supply all the material if I'd like to drywall things. But I have absolutely no idea how to put drywall up in corrugated aluminum hangar.

But it wouldn't bother me a bit if the management fixes the leak in the roof. The fine cement floor is the same kind used in a hockey arena, and when the rain comes, and then the cold, I've got better ice in the hangar than the Minnesota Wild have at the Xcel Center.

Unfortunately for my neaten-the-house plan, as much stuff ends up coming back from the hangar as goes to the hangar.


Anything that can freeze up -- it'll get to be 20 below in January if history is any guide -- needs to depart the hangar. The fiberglassing season is over until spring, because the epoxy resin needs to come back inside the house. Same with the rattle cans and other touch-up paint bottles. The rear "window" of the RV-7A, which never got touched after it took it to the hangar last spring, is heading back to its perch on a shelf in the former family room, too. There's no reason to leave a piece of acrylic hanging around in a hangar where it might get bumped during the winter.

To be sure, I'm not done working on the RV-7A until spring, but my options are limited. I won't touch the canopy again until spring, but I've still go an electrical system to design and some wires to run. I've got an engine sitting in a crate and a few more holes to punch in the firewall before I mount it -- and, in fact, I'm not really sure at this point what to do next on that front. How much stuff needs to be done on the firewall before you hang an engine? Anyone?

I've purchased a Vertical Power 50, so my electrical system will be a little different. But it's not ready for delivery yet and, presumably, neither are the other components I've ordered from SteinAir (Garmin 327, Dynon 180), and that's OK, because I'm clearly not ready to install it anyway. I don't know if there's a VP-50 installation blog out there yet, so maybe this will be it.

I've got a propane heater in the hangar, but in an uninsulated hangar, that's mostly good for rethawing frozen fingers.

I'll be out to the hangar to "futz around" a little bit here and there, but for the most part the RV airplane building season over the winter will be like other winters: Me sitting on the couch reading AeroElectric Connection again, and wondering what the hell it's talking about.

Spring can't come to Lake Wobegon soon enough.

Temporary hiatus

The RV Builder's Hotline is going on temporary -- hopefully very temporary -- hiatus, but not for the usual reasons. I've developed a very painful nerve problem in my back, which is radiating tremendous pain down both arms. It's a struggle just to type at the computer, especially at home -- which is where the Hotline is written each week.

I'm hoping it'll clear up within the next week or so but there's no way I can get a Hotline out as scheduled this Saturday. My apologies.

However, you can still help. If you see any RV-related items, have some pictures, have tips, please send them to me. You can help lighten the load a bit.

Aerobatic video proven a fake

This is a video that's been making its way around the Internet, in which a plane that lost a wing lands safely. It's fake according to this YouTube video, which appears to be real.

Getting current

My 90-day currency was going to expire in the next few weeks, it was a nice day out, and I wanted to get away from the ridiculous campaign nonsense on all sides. The only way to go is up. I rented a Warrior and flew around the southern edges of the Minneapolis St. Paul Class B, landing over at Fleming Field to check in on the RV project and do a few touch and gos. Here's some images.

RV Builder's Hotline is posted

This week's issue of the RV Builder's Hotline is now available here. The main feature is a look at fiberglassing.

The Martin Jetpack

Why I didn't do an extensive story on the Martin Jetpack when I saw it at Oshkosh last summer is beyond me. But this week I'm filling in for Jon Gordon on the American Public Media program Future Tense and it struck me as a good idea to marry my job with my hobbies, if only for a day.

So I called Glenn Martin in Christ Church, New Zealand this afternoon and talked to him a bit about his product. For you Oshkosh enthusiasts, he acknowledged that some people were disappointed at AirVenture that they "didn't see James Bond." So Martin told me his team will be back at Oshkosh next summer and this time "we'll bring some James Bond."

The short 5-minute program I produced will run on Monday, but if you'd like to hear the raw tape of the interview, here you go.

And here's a video from the EAA of the Martin Jetpack.



Incidentally, I know this Saturday is the day I'm supposed to have an RV Builder's Hotline delivered to those of you subscribe (it's free, you know!). But because I've generally been goofing off and also doubling up duties at work, I haven't gotten around to writing the main story for this issue -- fiberglass. So if you don't have a Hotline this weekend, please don't hold it against me too much.

T-6s say "hello"

Alan Henley, a pilot with the AeroShell team, is paralyzed after an accident just prior to Oshkosh. His wife has been keeping a journal on Caring Bridge that is hopeful and heartbreaking at the same time.

But the other day she posted this:

I was just feeding Alan his lunch and he was laying in the bed and all of a sudden we heard this very distinctive rumble in the air, we both knew what it was. I ran out the front door and all of a sudden four red and white T-6's in tight formation buzzed the house treetop high. Some of our neighbors came running outside and I told them that's just the way the team says hello!

When I came back in Alan was smiling so big. We talked to the guys on the phone and he said if he had the money he'd pay for the gas and have them do that again. :) He said he didn't realize how loud they are! He's usually the doer not the doee.

Thanks so much guys for doing that! It was awesome just to see Alan's smiling face! We love you!

SMOKE ON!!!!!

Love,
Jen

I was hoping my enthusiasm for the RV builders BBQ at Oshkosh would have returned by now, because I'd really like to do it again. But now I'm thinking perhaps there's something the RV community can do at Oshkosh for Alan Henley's family.

The finished fairing

I don't know how you spent your summer but it seems as though I spent mine making this one stupid part of the RV airplane project -- the fiberglass fairing that creates a transition between the top skin and the bink hunk of plexiglass that forms the canopy of the airplane.

I started in July, I believe. Most people do this in one week but when it comes to building, I'm not most people. Everything is a struggle with a complete lack of confidence that what I do is the right way to go.

Tonight, I finished the fairing when I removed the line of electrical tape that I used to mark the top edge of it on the canopy. The result is a very nice edge that thins nicely to the transition, where the fairing is just the thickness of the tape.



In the 1,806 hours of building so far, this part, I think, is the first one to be completed that really is quite visible to the outside world when the plane is done. The rest of the airplane will eventually be covered with paint, but a bad mistake on this part and everyone will know forever.

And so I spent almost three months working on it. Is it perfect? Oh, hell no. There is one spot where two pieces of tape joined that is quite rough on the edge that is slightly chipped. I'll reinstall the tape in that spot, add some more epoxy filler, and sand it out. The sides -- where the compound curve comes around to meet the side skirts -- cam eout better than I thought it would, but it's still a somewhat ugly spot. On the skin itself, near the center, you might spy a flaw, but it's just a spot where a small part of the top layer of primer came off when it stuck to the electrical tape as I removed it. Easily fixed by sanding and repriming.

But the feathered edges of fiberglass on the skin came out wonderfully, thanks to lots of filler, and lots of sanding.

Tonight, I sanded down the filler primer I added the other night, and continued to sand it down to an 800 grit, then added a final layer of primer, and sanded them down to an 800 grit.

There are a couple of small spots where some rivets show that I'll fill and resand. But for the most part, the fairing is finally done.

For the heck of it, I went back to my builder's log to see how much time I've spent on the canopy construction since I started it in February 2007 with the beginning assembly of the canopy release mechanism. 235 hours. The fairing itself? Sixty hours.



I walked away from this part of the project a number of times, but kept coming back to wrestle it to the ground. Here's how it looked when I started on August 2nd. Here I had just finished making a rough mark of where the fairing would go.





Now, here's why I love RV building. During the course of documenting the fairing project, a friend of mine -- Tim Rowell -- looked at the blog and saw what I was up to. Tim is one of the smart 3M people around here and someday he'd like to build an RV. When the project was in the garage, he'd stopped by every now and again to see how I was doing, but I haven't seen him in a year or so.

Last week when I got home from work, there was a shopping bad on the front porch. Tim had gone to the 3M employee store, and filled up the bag with respirators and sandpaper, and some material for working with sanding fiberglass. And last night he brought by some 3M finishing pads.

So now I call this "Tim fairing." Everone who works on the plane, has to autograph a piece of it. The next time he's by the hangar, I'll have him add his signature.

By the way, for those of you building RVs, two tips for you: Once you shape the fairing, consider using the 3M sanding sponges and pads. They work really great and can be bent to the form of the fairing radius and compound curve.

The second tip: Remove the electrical tape very slowly. Go to fast and it's easy for the edge to tear, embedding a small piece in the edge which will give you a rough edge. When removing the tape, pulll it off into the edge. Basically as you remove the tape, you're folding it over into a triangle and pulling down toward the canopy skin.

I've finished this part of the project just in time. Temperatures tonight are heading toward the 30s and it's time to put canopy work away for the winter in this unheated hangar. I didn't come all this way to crack a brittle plexigasscanopy in the cold. So now I'll work on reinstalling the canopy release mechanism, add the heaterbox and doubler plate to the firewall, set the breakout force for the nose gear, and then get started with electrical runs and avionics.

The quest for perfection

I got no takers on my request for someone to take this canopy windscreen fairing project off my hands, so I had little choice but to plug away.

It's almost done and it's come out OK, I think, but not having another RV handy to doublecheck, I'll just have to go with my gut.

Last night I put some filler primer (actually, it was advertised on Aircraft Spruce as being filler primer, but when it arrived, the rattle can said nothing about the "filler" part of primer) on the canopy skin and fiberglass, preparing it for a final sanding before I remove the tape and, hopefully, end up with a good edge.

I've been working on this a few hours at a time for two months. My work schedule being what it is (blogging is hard work, especially if you have to come up with 7-8 items a day!), I usually only get an hour an evening and a few hours on the weekend at the hangar.

The point (literally, a point) at which the top edge disappears into the side skirts isn't a good as I would have hoped, but at this point, it will have to do. The temperature hit 80 over the weekend, but is back into the 40s now, and it's getting pretty cold to be working around plexiglass.

Is the end near?

I'm watching another meltdown of the financial markets today and while I understand the "don't panic" mantra that leads to the "do nothing" approach, the "do nothing approach" does nothing for the future when you get to be my age. Retirement isn't that far off, or so I thought.

So far this year, I'm down $80,000 in the retirement account. I know for a lot of you pilot-types, that's walking-around money. For me, it's real dough. Coupled with the losses of the last few years, and the fact that since this particular administration took office the economy has been a disaster, some of its own making, some not -- I'm now faced with the very real prospect of not being able to retire in anything near a comfortable level.

In this environment, how can I justify soaking money into an experimental airplane project?

My RV-7A has 1,800 invested in it. A new IO-360 Mattituck engine is sitting in the box. The canopy is about done. There's little wiring done yet. STrobe system, a PS Engineering intercom (the four-place simple one), Artex new 406 mhz ELT, ICom A-210 are sitting in boxes. The TruTrak one-axis autopilot is installed. It's up on the landing gear although I haven't set the breakout force of the wheel yet.

I've probably got $45,000-$50,000 invested in it with the engine and as you know, I've loved this project like a child.

But given the events of the last few months, I don't see how I can't listen if someone is interested in making an offer.

However, if you're just bottom-feeding looking for a sucker, move along. I'm really looking at mere survival here.