The elephant man

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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'

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

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

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...

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

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.