Living the dream

I'm still intrigued by J.W. French's odyssey. This week he spent time in Texas with Bruce Bohannon and has provided a slideshow of images.

I'm thinking of featuring this in the RV Builder's Hotline this week, even though it's not about RV airplanes, per se. But, then again, it is. Isn't it?

Here is Mr. French's Friday morning update:

I have had several people on the trip ask who RON is. To clear that up, RON is a military term that means "remain over night." I really don't know how it became a part of my vocabulary, because I am a career civilian, having never been in the active duty military.

Choir practice at Flying Tiger's Field of Dreams was a spiritually uplifting experience. Bruce, Freya, Ernie and the whole group were in fine voice, and the fellowship was wonderful. On top of that Bruce's resident electrical genius, I believe it was Alan, diagnosed and fixed the gremlin in my electrical system in short order.

Flying Tiger's Field of Dreams is a hard place to leave. The people involved are the kind that make any organization great. I hope Bruce's dream for a museum, camping and nature area, and learning center becomes a reality. It is people lilke Bruce, Freya, Ernie and the rest of the gang that will keep grass roots aviation alive. I had a great night's sleep in Kathy and Craig McDonald's guest quarters, with the heavenly sounds of "choir practice" ringing softly in my ears.

This morning thunderstorms were already forming and heading for Waco, TX so I had to scrub the visit with the Waco Chapter Thursday lunch bunch. I missed getting to meet Jeff and Lynne Stoltenberg in Brenham, TX where I stopped at the airport and had their highly publicized $100 hamburg, but I got a call from Jeff after I landed in San Marco, TX, and we had a nice visit on the phone.

It is great to visit with the family here. I haven't been here to see them since the SBMJ 2005. I will be in San Marcos, TX till Sunday morning when I will leave for Alpine, TX to visit with Woody and Mary Haston. Woody was one of the fellows that helped look after Sam in this final days. He also built one of the finest Hatz biplanes every built. He did it in German WWI markings with a scalloped trailing edge on the wings, and wire spoked wheels. It is a beautiful airplane.

I'll report again when I get to Woody's.

Today's J.W. French update

8 a.m.
Folks:

I had a great lunch meeting with a group from the Lufkin, TX chapter on Tues. Landed safely at Liberty, TX and was meet and royally entertained by a group of members from EAA's newest chapter. You cannot beat Texas hospitality.

I will be leaving for Bruce Bohanon's Flying Tiger's Field of Dreams this morning.

J.W. French
EAA #266844

The Sam Burgess Memorial Junket 2008

If you read Sport Aviation this month, perhaps you saw the story of J.W. (James) French, in the "Chapter Hopping" article (as long as we're onto EAA pet peeves, why not make the whole magazine available digitally, as long as you're making all of the archives available to members?). He's set out on the Sam Burgess Memorial Junket 2008. He is stopping at EAA chapters along the way. He's not presently scheduled to be in the St. Paul area, but I sent him a note anyway to let him know that I have a hangar available to him -- as well as company and a spare room -- if circumstances should change.

I was also interested because he's going to end up in my hometown -- Fitchburg, Massachusetts -- at some point.

He's been sending me (and I presume others) e-mail updates and I'll be posting them here. The latest one is at the top.

Wednesday 5 p.m.
I landed at Flying Tiger's Field of Dreams (81D) south of Houston, TX about 11:00 AM today. Freya Shiller, who has been my contact for this RON landed several hours later. She had flown here two children in her Mooney to the Bahamas for a vacation. What a treat to be in the land of Texas hospitality. Freya is an airline pilot for Continental.

I am being hosted in grand style by Kathy who was her training pilot when she started with Continental. Kathy and her husband have beautiful horse farm with a nice grass strip not far from FTFOD's. The guest quarters are magnificent. Bruce Bohannon, who owns FTFOD's, kept talking about having choir practice tonight, and whether of it would be held in his hanger or someplace else. I was beginning to think this was not my kind of crowd , if their ideas of showing me a good time was to take me to choir practice.

Fortunately, Freya explained to me that "choir practice", is Bruce's code word for the boys to get together and drink beer, tell lies and talk flying. Now I am looking forward to this evenings festivities. Turns out that Freya, Bruce and I have several mutual friends we have made through our flying activities.

Bruce has a fellow who is going to trying to find the little electrical gremlin that has bugged me the last two days. If all goes well I will be meeting the Waco EAA Thursday at noon and then proceed to San Marcos, TX to RON for several days and visit with three generations of family I have there.

Monday 7:24 p.m.

Landed safely at Pineville, LA 2L0, and will RON with Jim and Patsy Hidalgo. Jim was a long time friend of Sam's and was one of the group that helped look after Sam at the end. Will overnight here and prospects look good for meeting the EAA group in Lufkin, TX for lunch and the on to Liberty, TX for an RON with the newest EAA Chapter.

The XM weather was indispensable again today. Two large thunderstorms in progress between McComb, MS and Pineville, LA but a large 20 mile wide opening between them made for a pleasant flight. A lot of turbulence on landing, but the wind was right down the runway. I still haven't discovered any shortfield qualities in the Acro Sport. Under 90 mph it has all the aerodynamic qualities of a number two grain scoop thrown from a hay mow. Wheel landings are fine but it doesn't like full stall three point landings.

Aviation's dirty little secret

You know, the dirty little secret of aviation is it's one of the last remaining places where men get to pretend it's a man's world.

I look at the occasional list of EAA Board of Directors or some inductees and it's very, very rare to find a woman. (Side to my friends at EAA: I love you guys like a son, but could you make it any more difficult to find a list of your board of directors?)

I look at the National Aviation Hall of Fame and I see plenty of men, but I don't see Janet Christine Dietrich (the death of whom was announced today).

In fact, I only see 12 women in there. What a joke!

At least in the world of aviation, it's still 1950.

Hotline this weekend

The new Hotline may -- or may not -- be out this weekend. I'm not committing to an every Saturday morning schedule, just as time and events allow.

I'd hoped to hitch an RV ride to Boone, Iowa this weekend but it didn't work out. By the time I connected with someone, it was late in the week and I'd already made alternative plans.

But if someone is going to Boone, how about sending some pictures and information? See, the Hotline is a reflection of your experiences, not mine.

Or if you've got other RV things on your mind, you can still contribute. Or not.

Update I started putting a Hotline together this morning, and then realized there really wasn't much interesting material this week.

This week's RV Builder's Hotline

A few hundred of you (assuming you subscribe) received this week's Hotline in the e-mail before Comcast decided I was a spammer and suspended my account for 24 hours. Apparently I'm limited to sending only 1,000 messages a day. I think they've also blocked access to the Web site that has the Hotline posted on it as well.

Next week, I'll adjust things so that we're only sending out about 700 a day and we'll just send them on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday instead of all at once.

Sorry for any problems this may have caused.

Update - I've purchased the use of an smtp relay server outside of Comcast to send the Hotline. This costs $20 per month. As there is no advertising in the email newsletter, I'll be depending on contributions to break even. That's not much. Alternately, if you have an RV-related business and you'd like to sponsor the Hotline for a year, $240 will do it.

Because it's a relay server, some ISPs will automatically identify it as SPAM. Please make sure rvnewsletter@comcast.net is listed in your mail program as "allowed" and not "blocked." However, some ISPs -- AT&T for example -- will reject the Hotline before it reaches you. There's nothing I'm going to be able to do about that. Plan on reading the Hotline online.

By the way, this week's Hotline is now available here.

Field trip to the hangar

Eat your hearts out, Annie Leibowitz. With the exception of the fact there's nobody naked in this picture, there's something cover-photo about this picture. Or album-cover. Or late-night TV knife-salesman-like.

In any event, we've had a lot of bad news at the day job this week, the possibility of layoffs and all. So we're looking for ways to take our minds off things, even for a little while.

An invitation to the hangar where I'm building the RV-7A was extended. And these folks responded. The rest of the staff went on the layoff list. Who knew?

These are my colleagues at Minnesota Public Radio. There's two folks there from the news department and the rest from New Media.

If you're like most people in America, you have more than a passing thought about what would happen to your project if you were to lose your job. There are a lot of "wealthy" RV builders, to be sure. A glance around the RV corral at Oshkosh tells you that. But there are a lot of working stiffs building airplanes, too. These endeavors are not only leaps of faith in terms of one's ability to follow directions, stick to it, and, of course, pay for it. They're also leaps of faith that circumstances will not change significantly enough to dash a dream.

When you're 54 and in a dying business, it's impossible not to be be very careful about taking the large steps one needs to take along the way. As I am at the "spending big money stage," and since I'm aware I'm in a dying industry (Newspeople are the 2008 version of the 1960s steelworker), there is a fair amount of uncertainty over the project right now.

So it shouldn't have been a complete surprise when my employer announced earlier this week that by the beginning of the fiscal year on July 1, there will be few fewer of us working for it.

I wasn't surprised. What did surprise me is after 7 years of a combination of building an airplane and worrying about being an aging cog in a dying field, when it was announced that cutbacks were coming, I didn't much care. In fact, I didn't stay in the meeting long enough to hear most of it.

Instead, I headed downstairs to another department... where my son works, to try to let him know what was coming before he heard it from his own bosses. I know recessions; I've been through a few of them, lost my job in one of them, moved to Minnesota during another. But the younger generation has never been through this uncertainty before, and they're scared. I know that because several of them have been coming up to me this week asking me what I think will happen. What they're really asking is, "Will I lose my job?"

The answer I give them, of course, is "I don't know." In my son's case, he hasn't asked, but knowing him as I do, I'm guessing he's pretty concerned, and trying to hide it. As any father would, I hate that far more than any possibility my RV won't end up being finished. In short, as much as the RV project means to me in the big scheme of things, it's remarkably irrelevant in ... well... the big scheme of things.

I am not by nature an optimist, but I try to remind everyone of one reality: Even in the toughest times of recession, most people do not lose their jobs. Still, that doesn't stop the worrying or the uncertainty.

This is the new American economy and despite all the intellectual, pointyheaded analysis we see on TV, despite all the lying political nonsense on both side of the aisle we hear everyday, America is made up of people worried that they're next. And, for the most, their voices aren't being heard.

In our group of highly talented people, some are building airplanes, some are trying to hold onto houses, some are trying to send kids to college. None deserve to be the victims of the greed and thirst for power -- not to mention the stupidity -- that set in motion the chain of events that has led to their worry.

And so what can we do about it? We pile as many people in cars and we head to the airport, we throw open the hangar door and we give ye olde project one more role besides the many she's had: an opportunity to forget about work for awhile, and remind ourselves that there's simply more to our days than.... our days. The worst rarely comes true, and our jobs -- as much as we think they are our lives, are not our lives.

The RV project is, in many ways, a metaphor for coping with the uncertain times. Small projects rather than the big picture. You do the best you can. You ask for help when you know you need it. You stick to it even when you're sure it's not going to work.

It is our nature to take leaps of faith. There's never been a better time to jump.

Is the Hotline back?

I started writing an RV Builder's Hotline again, the weekly RV-building newsletter I used to produce. I got it done, and posted it at its old address, but unfortunately I found out the hard way that Rob Riggen's content management system is out of date and no longer functioning, so I can't e-mail the issue to the subscribers. Nor can I get the subscriber list out of Rob's system.

In the meantime, it's available online.

Update Sun. 6/1 - I've got a bulk mail program installed and I think the bugs are worked out of it. I'm sending it out via email over the course of the day (some folks may get more than one. Sorry.) and as "user not founds" come back, that'll allow me to update the subscriber database. Your patience is appreciated.

Vroom!

In the building of any airplane, the acquisition of an engine has to be among the most important moments. Today, I bought an engine.

The history -- if not the tradition -- of homebuilt airplanes is scrounging old barns in the country looking for dilapidated planes, finding an engine therein, and then through the guile and guts of the builder, figure out a way to make it work on the airplane being built.

Screw that!

I don't know anything about engines, frankly. If the car breaks down, the only thing I really know how to do is open up the hood and stare, occasionally fidgeting with stuff for no other reason than if I were to be kicked out of the American Society of Guys [tm], I'd have to start watching Ellen on a regular basis.

And screw that, too!

So I called Mahlon Russell at Teledyne Mattituck Services on Long Island.

I'd previously decided -- generally speaking -- on what sort of engine I needed, when I ordered the finishing kit from Van's Aircraft. I needed to have that decision made because a specific motor mount is required.

And so this is where we started today's conversation:

A 180 hp engine (360)

Fuel injected

Parallel valve

Vertical inductioin (Ah, you also have to have this decided when you order a finishing kit because it requires a little scoop on the engine cowling that comes with the finishing kit.


Granted, I place myself at the mercy of a business when I say, "Hello, I'd like to buy your product and I don't know what the hell I'm doing!" But, Mahlon (that's him over there on the right with me at the RV Builders BBQ last year that I put on.) has a reputation for service and helpfulness (not to mention: honor), and as I've written before, I've generally placed myself in the hands of fellow RV builders whom I respect and followed many of their recommendations blindly.

So here's what you need to do to buy an engine after you get to the part described above:

Constant speed or fixed pitch. For non-pilots, propellers can be made to change pitch in flight (constant speed) or made to be only of one pitch. The advantage of the former is more performance when taking off, the ability to slow down faster for landing, and the ability to set a more efficient setting in cruise. The down side is it's one more cable to install, it's much more weight to carry and, oh yeah, it costs a hell of a lot more.

As I'm building what I call "a working man's airplane," and since I've never flown a constant speed prop, and I figure I can save fuel just buy keeping the plane light, and I fly out of nice long runways, I went with fixed pitch. However, I ordered an engine (after Mahlon described the options) for an engine that is set up to work with a constant speed prop with a number of tweaks, but comes ready for fixed pitch. My rationale: Even if I decide never to convert to a constant speed prop, the fact the engine CAN be converted gives it more resale value. The cost? $200. Deal.

Ignition system. Standard is magnetos. Again, for non-aviators, it's a time-honored system that doesn't require an electrical system to provide sparks to your spark plugs, which make the crankshaft turn, which turns the propeller, which keeps you in the air. But electronic ignition can be more efficient, though it does, then, require some dependability on the electric system in the aircraft.

Other folks I know have gone with one mag and one Lightspeed electronic ignition system. There are other options out there including E-Mag (they're really good guys but the sense I have is that the product just isn't quite dependable enough for an idiot like me) and a full FADEC system, which costs about $8,000 and computerizes everything -- pretty much like your car.

The cost alone eliminates the FADEC option, my stupidity eliminates the E-Mag, and those other RV builders that I mentioned early, made me lean toward a Lightspeed Plasma and one Slick Magneto approach.

"What kind of flying are you going to do in this plane?" Mahlon asked.

"I'm a go up and look down kind of pilot," I said. I fly pretty much around Minneapolis-St. Paul, underneath the Class B airspace and I plan to take an occasional cross country trip back East or Texas or Florida or the Bahamas or San Francisco.

"So would you say for every cross country, you'd fly about 25 hours local?"

"Yep."

"At what altitude?" he asked.

"Probably an average of between 3,500 and 4,500 above sea level," I said.

He then said that a Lightspeed doesn't give you a lot of efficiency at those altitudes and doesn't really give you anything until 6,7,8,000 feet, leaned out and then you can get 10 or 15% efficiency.

But, again, there's no penalty -- except a little bit of weight -- for using the electronic ignition other than the $655 additional it costs, and I figure that's still a small price to pay for both the option of me doing a different kind of flying, and the resale value of the plane. Deal.

Roller tappets vs. standard tappets. OK, remember the part about me being stupid? Good. Just read that section again. Roller tappets (pdf)are a fairly recent attempt by Lycoming to addresssome problems with camshafts. They basically heat up and break -- see above about what a camshaft is connected to.

The roller tappet eliminates the sliding motion between the cam and tappet,improving wear and allowing the introduction of more advanced materials. Adding to its durability, the tappet’s body and crankcase are designed to maintain proper alignment, ensuring the roller tappet cannot loosen or turn during engine use.

OK, great, but we don't really know how great they work, the word "beta" was used, too. That one always scares me.

Mahlon outlined some methods Teledyne Mattituck uses with sliding tappet system in which oil is squirted onto the cam, and the problem of "dry starts" (engine sits for awhile, then you start it, now you're grinding metal on metal because the oil has drained to the bottom somewhere) is reduced. There was consideration of a 3 year vs. a 2 year warranty (from first engine start) here but the added cost made a 2-year selection with standard tappet technology.

The only other question was color. Huh? What do I care? It's under the cowling, and I'm parking on the other side of Oshkosh from the show champions section anyway. Burgundy or yellow/black? Well, I just got the maroon seats and seat belts so make it burgundy.

So here, then, is the description of what I bought for a grand total of $23,855:

Your standard tappet TMX IO-360 engine will include, propeller governor drive adapter , propeller governor drive gear, propeller governor plumbing and attaching hardware,( however you engine will be setup for fixed pitch use) New Titan Nickel Carbide cylinder assemblies, pressure camshaft lobe and tappet face lubrication, o-ringed thru studs; LSI crank sensor mounting holes, front crankshaft thrust lubrication, relieved cam bearing bores, 1 new Slick magneto, ignition harness and 4 AutoLite spark plugs, single Light Speed Engineering Plasma II Plus ignition system with 4 automotive style sparkplugs and ignition wires, 12V Sky Tec lightweight NL high torque starter, Precision Airmotive Silver Hawk fuel injection system, new fuel pump, inter-cylinder baffles, customizable dipstick tube and dipstick, easy access angled oil filter adapter and oil filter, new dynamically balanced VAR crankshaft, static bay balance to within 2 grams, vacuum pump drive adapter and drive, starter gear support and ring gear, engine logbook and operator’s manual.

Your TMX engine will be covered by a comprehensive Parts and Labor warranty on the engine and accessories for 2 full years from first start up. It is the owner’s responsibility to maintain the engines preserved status after six months from delivery, if first start up should not occur within the six month initial engine preservation timeframe.

Your engine will be painted dark grey metallic with burgundy accents.

We look forward to receipt of your $1,000.00 deposit check.

As Tim Taylor would say "aarg aarg aarg!"

Oh, by the way, how am I financing this baby, you ask, knowing that I'm a pay as you go builder? Simple. I'm driving the cars longer. I had calculated when I started the project that if I simply skipped one "car buying" cycle (or two), I could afford to "home equity" the engine purchase and not increase the budget in the house. I rejiggered the home equity line of credit to 4.49% which changes the whole nature of things. Plus, I'm not going to be soaking money into the BBQ at Oshkosh this year, though it would help if you'd click on an ad on this page, I suppose.

Carolie's final car payment on her Subaru was made two weeks ago and I paid cash for my low-rent Cavalier a couple of years ago and between the two cars, we should be able to go another 4 or 5 years without picking up a new car loan, still be able to put money away for their eventual replacement, and have a paid-for engine very close to the time the plane flies for the first time. This assumes, by the way, that you contribute and become a member of Minnesota Public Radio. Bobby's gotta eat!

It's due to be delivered in the fall, which should give me plenty of all-winter-long-fun.

Seats arrive

It must be cool to be Abby at Flightline Interiors. You get to design upholstery for RV builders and then listen to them tell you how great you are. It's no fluke. She's great and she's another example of why I didn't bother checking around when it came to upholstering the very cool Oregon Aero seat foam. Enough RVers I respect said nothing but great things about Abby. That was -- and is -- good enough for me.

As I understand it, Abby used to design interiors for yachts, and when she left the company, she had a non-compete clause. So she did some work for an RV airplane builder or two and it caught on and she started her own business.

I picked out the fabric to be used and Abby came up with several designs. The interior of the RV is a Rustoleum hammered finished grey. There's a lot of grey. So I wanted the seats to introduce maroon into the scheme.

Making them even better will be the solid maroon Hooker Harness 5-point seat belts (Yeah, I'm not really scrimping in these particular areas) with the black trim.

Lots of cool things are showing up these days. If I could just get someone to take my money for a new engine now, we'll be in great shape.

EAA articles online

A lot of pilots and builders pick on the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA), but not me. If there's one check I don't mind writing every year, it's the piddling amount EAA charges.

And now -- and this will probably only be of value to builders -- the EAA has made an excellent decision. It's put its entire collection of articles from 53 years of publishing Sport Aviation online (although it is for members only).

Of course, I needed access to it this morning and their server is down.

Baby steps.

ELT arrives

I have mixed emotions about the arrival of the new Artex 406 MhZ ELT (emergency locator transmitter). What luxuries I'm putting into my plane, mostly involve safety. At $992, this is one of them, although if I ever need it, it pretty much means I've crashed the airplane. Still, Steve Fossett being "out there" somewhere is a sobering thought and I guess I wouldn't want my family wondering whatever happened to me.

I could've, I guess, gotten a much cheaper ELT that broadcasts only on 121.5, but the monitoring of that frequency is being phased out, and it's not as good in pinpointing a location. Nor, I believe, does it broadcast aircraft identifying information as the new ones do.

This will probably be one of the first pieces of electronics I'm going to install, and I'm coming up empty on where to put the antenna.

Especially with the old 121.5 ELTs, a lot of RV builders put them on the aft side of the rollbar (See VAF thread), but that ignores the requirement that it be within 15 degrees of vertical. I've seen folks mount it horizontally along the spars in the horizontal stabilizer. And that, of course, also doesn't qualify. I've seen people stick it forward from the bulkhead in the baggage compartment and that just looks like a great way to start your trip with a poke in the eye while stuffing stuff in back there.

Personally, I can't see a good reason not to stick it out in the breeze, on the top of the skin, perhaps just forward of the vertical stabilizer? I realize some people would be concerned about knocking 1 knot off their speed, or it might not look good, but why would you spend $1,000 on something, and then half-ass the installation with something that has a good chance of not working?

That's not a rhetorical question, by the way. If there's an easier and effective way, I'm all ears.

Just another pilot

My buddy, Glenn Brasch, sends along a link to this video on Harrison Ford, who is -- of course -- getting a lot of attention right now with the release of the latest Indiana Jones movie. Ford, as you may know, is a pilot -- just another pilot, as it turns out.


A few years ago, the former editor of EAA Sport Aviation, Scott Spangler, did a fabulous story on a group of pilots who went on a "backcountry safari" across the northwest. What made it great -- and why I respect Spangler's work so much -- is that he resisted the urge to identify one of the people as Harrison Ford.

By contrast, Lane Wallace, who is an aviation writer that I also enjoy, was on the same trip and couldn't resist.

Garmin rules the world

Avidyne has lost its biggest customer. Cirrus Design has decided to go with Garmin for its glass panel.

You have to love Phillip Greenspun, though, for the way he gave a shot to Garmin:

The one big thing that Garmin was missing was synthetic terrain, a feature offered by Microsoft Flight Simulator for $39, in experimental airplanes for $2,000, by Chelton as part of a $90,000 retrofit system and as of a few weeks ago by Garmin as a $10,000 option.

Tribute to the dambusters

They flew Lancaster bombers ... at night... 60 feet above the ground... into the teeth of enemy fire. Now, there's only one "dambuster" left.