Wings Over Wisconsin

Fly-in season is in full force now and it's hard to believe GA (general aviation) is in trouble; I've never had a more difficult year trying to keep up with all of the shows.

WiscNews.com has a story this morning about Wings Over Wisconsin, which was held last weekend. It mentions Dick Martin and his RV-8. Dick was the poster boy for the very first RV Builder's Hotline more than a year ago.

I didn't do any airshow work last weekend. I did take in Saturday's meeting of the Minnesota Wing of Van's Air Force. I've written a blurb about it for this week's issue and will add some photos sometime today... if it's not too busy at work, that is.

Rob Riggen is out of town this week and it originally looked as though we'd skip an issue this week -- it happens during fly-in season -- but I've got time on my hands and it's just like the "old days" this week, me just sort of perusing Planet RV looking for stuff and -- surprise -- finding it.

I've got some fabulous new photos from Don Neuberg, a great photographer and presumably even better commercial pilot. He was at Peachstate Aerodrome for a gathering of RVs last weekend. Look for that.

This week's column: Making progress

This is my column from this week's RV Builder's Hotline, which is due out sometime today.

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I've been trying to remember that old saying about the theory of relativity this week but I can't recall is precisely. But you probably know it. A perfect example of the theory of relativity is an hour with a beautiful woman vs. an hour in a meeting at work. One is fleeting, the other goes on seemingly endlessly; both last an hour.

Progress when building an RV is like that. Quite often, the feeling of real progress is as much of an illusion as the feeling that you're getting nowhere. But in both cases, progress is being made at the same rate -- one step at a time. But I'm convinced you need those "beautiful woman" periods on your airplane project to help you get by the "endless meeting" period.

It's a been a 'beautiful woman" week on my RV aircraft project. I understand this is mostly an illusion but a builder needs illusions.



I started off last Friday night helping Warren Starkebaum (above) hang his engine (from Mattituck, as mine will be) on his RV-7. Warren and I started our projects at roughly the same time and he's been ahead of me thoughout, but our progress has been steady and if he's hanging an engine, I'm a day closer to hanging an engine too.



Last weekend I finally made the first cuts in my canopy, and I did not, in so doing, accidentally launch a photon strike on Toledo. I survived those "practice cuts" on the plexi. I also survived riveting the canopy frame (although mine moved inboard rathre than outboard as most people have experienced).



On Tuesday, I finally reached the top of the hangar waiting list at South St. Paul airport. I now have my own hangar. Sure, there's nothing in it (got an RV you'd like to stick in there? Contact me), but I have a hangar now. So I must be making progress.



Also on Tuesday, I visited SteinAir, where Marc Ausman of Vertical Power was demonstrating his new product. I'd already made the decision to buy one, but now I really have made the decision to buy one. I'm filling up panel space and starting concrete actions for an electrical system. I must be making progress.

At mid-week, Doug Weiler flew Paul Hove's RV-7A for the first time. Like Warren, I started my project a little after Paul started his. His is a QB. If he's flying, I must be making progress.



On Wednesday, I cut the long slices off the side of the canopy, and I put it on the fuselage where it looked like a thousand other pictures you've seen of badly fitting canopies on fuselages. But this was different. This is my badly-fitting canopy on my fuselage. The canopy isn't in my son's former bedroom anymoe. It's reached the workshop. I must be making progress.

Of course, I am making progress. I was making progress when nothing was happening to the naked eye. Gaining some knowledge by reading and browsing forums and reading builder sites is as much progress as anything that's above.

But you know when I really started making progress? When I stopped worrying about how much more progress other builders are making. It's impossible to ignore if you spend time on the forums. And every night, Doug Reeves posts, I'd guess, three or four more first flights from builders with really high builder numbers (compared to my really low one). Good for them, I say. They've made progress. Too. I'll see them in my plane, somewhere, sometime (unless the FAA medical folks say otherwise).

Now if only I could look at my bank account and see some progress -- or at least progress in the right direction -- this thing might eventually fly.

NTSB cites formation flying in RV crash report

The Norman, Oklahoma crash of an RV-7 last December has been blamed on a stall/spin accident, with an attempt to fly in formation cited as a contributing factor. Here's the narrative.

It was one of five RV crashes settled by the NTSB on Thursday.

I'll have all the details in this week's RV Builder's Hotline, which will be out on Friday morning (instead of Saturday this week).

Vertical Power firsthand

There was an ad on TV a month or so ago, I think for Comcast, where this buxom woman mumbles some sort of HDTV specifications and then says, "I totally don't know what that is, but I want one."

That's me and the Vertical Power product I've written about recently in the RV Builder's Hotline, except that I know what it is... sort of. But since I'm an electrical system disaster waiting to happen, I haven't quite grasped all of what it can do yet.

Today, I got to see it firsthand:



That's Vertical Power's head cheese Marc Ausman demonstrating his product at Stein Bruch's SteinAir facility in Farmington, Minnesota this afternoon.

Stein gave me a call so I skipped work for a few hours to go meet Marc and generally hang out. I love this product. Stein is going to be one of the authorized dealers, so I'll buy it from him.

Why? Because Stein Bruch is, perhaps, the world's greatest RVer. He's collected some funds to help with the RV Builder's BBQ (Marc, by the way, is one of our BBQers). And he bought us a huge event grill (shoot, I meant to take a picture of it) for the event.

He reports he and the folks at SteinAir have been testing it out and it works really well.

In other news, I got a hangar today!



It's a T-hangar at South St. Paul. I'm looking for someone to share it with since I don't have a plane.

A terrible week for RVers; and the week has just begun

This has not been a good week for RVers.

This morning comes word that an RV-6 has crashed in Greeley, Colorado, killing one person. The aircraft apparently struck powerlines while landing. According to the FAA records, the manufacturer was Arthur Schwarz. The current owner is listed as a corporation LPV LLC out of Denver.

On Sunday, an RV-4 crashed near Wallkill, New York. Two persons aboard were killed. It crashed in a field. The builder is listed as Victor Syracuse and the present owner is James Whiteford of Monroe, New York. Here's a news story.

Just one word: Plastics

There won't be many posts this week. Why? Because the temperature is hitting 90 every day here and I'm cutting plexiglass. I can't believe I've gotten to this part of the project this fast -- 6 years and 1,800 hour. Yes, I know, that's laughable, as some people would have 500 hours on the old bird by now.

I can't explain it, although I'd like to claim it's because I'm slow and deliberate, painstaking in my attempt to get things "just right." I'll give you the "slow" part, but as I'm slicing each piece of plexiglass, I'm about spent after one cut. It's nerveracking; perhaps unnecessarily so, but it is. And even on these small slices off the front and back of the canopy, I use a bandsaw (just bought it Saturday) with 80 and then 150 grit sandpaper, then 220, then 340, and then 400 to make it nice and smooth. The edges are better than the edges on the canopy as it was delivered.

I'd like to thank the Web sites of Dan Checkoway, Walter Tondu, Dave Parsons, and Richard Horan for providing me with so much valuable information on working with plexi.

Walter and Dan are both coming to Oshkosh and will be at the barbecue. Dave was hoping to be there but he's just been hired by Dynon Avionics to work on some spiffy new piece of equipment. How great must it be to combine aviation -- a hobby-- and a profession?

Hanging out I got an e-mail from the folks at South St. Paul airport. They've got a T-hangar available. I'll visit it this morning. I don't really need a hangar yet, but maybe this would help me get airplane parts out of my son's former bedroom, which my wife would rather have as an office.

This weekend: It's impossible to keep up with all the fly-ins. But on Saturday, the Minnesota wing of Van's Air Force, is holding its quarterly meeting at South St. Paul. Then we're visiting David Maib's RV-10 project.

Hotline Update: Rob Riggen is heading out of town, and I'm busy with airplane building. So this week's issue -- such as it is -- will be out on Friday, instead of Saturday. And there will be no issue next week.

Too much, too late

Is it me or the natural order of things that the information I need the most, I often acquire after it's too late?

In building my RV, I am falling into the same mantra that so many other RV builders have fallen into: WhenIBuildMyNextRV-itis. When I build my next RV, it'll be much better than this one, because I'll be much smarter. I'll know what mistakes not to make.

Sure, except there'll be a whole bunch of new mistakes to make.

There are many "D'oh" moments when building an RV, and despite all of the Web sites and forums and the attempts to collect these "gotchas" in one place, we still miss that piece of information that will prevent problems -- even though we're following the directions.

I have been working on the canopy frame for a few weeks now and -- as befits my puttering ways -- I've read all the usual Web sites looking for just one more grain of knowledge. But, as usual, I missed one.

It being a slow day at work and all, I visited more sits. Dignity is one of the better sites out there. And today, I found one of those bits of knowledge that I desperately needed.

Here's another internet saver. I drilled up the side spice plates, but left out this hole on each plate (they're handed). This is because the very back rivet of the canopy top skin comes through the plate and lots (aka nearly all tip-up builders) end up catching any rivet located here, or running out of edge clearance. Taking the wise advice of many other who have gone before me, I'm leaving this one rivet out, the rivet that goes through the skin will do the job instead. (See more)

Well, now. Guess what part I drilled last night?

This won't happen when I build my next RV.

Our Daily Thread: Any article by Tim Olson is bound to be a good one. And there's a good one on the RV-10 List (which, by the way, is one of the best bulletin boards out there, just in case you think I had a thing against Matronics forums in general).

The subject is instrument calibration.

It's frustrating for me to see people who don't do diligence in their avionics calibration and flight testing. I think we all owe it to our hard work to get flying to make our systems as good as we can, and I really can't fathom some of the lack of follow-through that I sometimes hear. Let me give you 2 examples that are even RV-10 specific...

If only there were more Tim Olsons.

From Nirvana to Neanderthals

I've been thinking a bit more about the various forums and bulletin boards that are out there following the "spat" that broke out on the RV List within the last week, and the comments I made it about it the other day. The more I think about it, the more I think it comes down to the question of the meaning of "community," a subject about which I've also written extensively, and one in which I dabble in my day job as an Internet news site editor, which believes in giving people a voice.

Simply stated: just because everyone should have a voice, there's nothing logical about believing that everyone needs to hear it. And while we salute the concept of "citizen journalism" and all the potential it has (and it does), we also have to recognize that there are a fair number of people out there willing to puke on a plate and call it dinner; except that everyone knows it's really just puke on a plate.

There were a couple of interesting comments in that thread, each designed to show how much smarter the poster was, I guess, than the person they were trying rebuke.

One went like this:

Arguing on the internet is like being in the Special Olympics...you may win, but you're still a retard.

Well, gosh, how do you adequately put a reaction to that into mere words?

I pointed out that sometimes you just have to shake your head and acknowledge that it can be a big stupid world out there from time to time. But ignoring it is about all you can do. You certainly can't convince a neanderthal not to be a neanderthal.

That was met with this from a different person:

Censorship and expulsion do nothing more than quell discussion and decrease participation. There is at least one list on this forum where the moderators acerbic responses and condescending attitude to the simplest of questions and responses has effectively censored the list causing a loss of input from many valuable contributors. Spend your time and effort on the barbecue, life is too short to develop an ulcer over someone else’s behavior

Yes, by all means, let's do something about the condescension problem. Let's be, oh I don't know, condescending, and see if that works.

You know, the more I thought as I read that prose, I kept thinking about this: The "N" Word.

I did that because sometimes, common sense to throw neanderthals into the great vacuum of indifference is met with charges of "censorship" or "political correctness," or any other word meant to trivialize what is a very serious matter. There are times when people should have a rag shoved into their mouths.

While, it's true that you just can't fix stupid, you can stomp on its head, beat it with a 2 x 4, pull the rug out from under its feet, banish it to an island, or run it over with a whirring propellor, because otherwise it'll breed, and the next thing you know, there's more stupid in the world. Sometimes, you just have to point out that something is, well, stupid.

What happened on the RV List last week was stupid. The comments of a small number of people, were stupid.

But it's also a fine example of a community at work. There are voices worth hearing, and then there are others who, while they have a right to use their voice, shouldn't have any access to a megaphone.

This is complicated by the fact that all of these lists have morphed from mere repositories of information, to social communities. And, as any cop can tell you, anytime you get together for a social occasion in large numbers, there'll be a fair number of people -- or conversations -- that make you look at your watch and send "signals" to your spouse that it's time to leave.

What is interesting to me, is how different all of the various groups are. All of them have the capacity and history to provide valuable assistance to builders. But each has its own personality. The RV List is the Old West, to me. It's a lawless, never-ending gunfight surrounded by nice scenery. Nice to visit, but you wouldn't want to breed there.

I like the Yahoogroup because it's small and while not terribly active, I think I've met most of the folks who post there. It's like a small school in an idyllic town -- almost quaint in its approach. Van's Air Force is like a Big 10 university. It's where all the best and brightest are, but you're still one person in a big, big classroom. Still, it's as wonderful as an all-night grocery store with a friendly person at the checkout. Rivetbangers is a Sunday barbecue. Only your friends show up. RVSQN is, well, how can you not like a place with a thread on "wheel spats?"

I've always been fond of considering this notion of community, but I always fall into the mistake of thinking about it in monolithic terms, because we're all building this one company's airplane. But when you think about, few communities are actually monolithic. They eventually splinter into communities within communities.

And that, I think, is where the RV "community," is. There are communities within communities -- some people are in the building community, some people are in the flying community, and some people are in the "I like calling you a retard" community.

There's also another community. The "I'm not online and don't want to be" community. Sometimes, especially when we see the same names from forum message to forum message to forum message, we begin to think that's the RV community. Then a Sport Aviation issue shows up and you see the "What Our Members are Building" section full of RVs, and you don't recognize a single name there. You go to a fly-in, and you've never heard of the pilot. Why? They're not online -- or don't post. Why? Well, have you read that RV List thread?

Communities come. Communities go. Communities change. When one doesn't fit anymore to the point it's not really about the RV brand of homebuilt airplanes, you really have to move to another community.

Because you just can't fix stupid.

Ditching 101

When I'm doing my "armchair flying," I think often of flying back East, or at least to other sections of the country. However, because I'm tucked around the Great Lakes, there's really no way to do this without involving water.

If I wanted to go east, I'm probably going to over Lake Michigan, or at least go around Lake Michigan (which defeats the point of having an airplane, if you ask me). And then there's Lake Erie to worry about.

Of course, what keeps people from going over the Great Lakes is the fear that their engine will quit and they'll go into the water.

So I was intrigued to read an interesting article in EAA Chapter 27's June newsletter today: Ditching 101.

Fuel starvation examined

There are two reactions to most aircraft accident reports when other pilots review the data. It's either (a) "there but for the grace of God go I" and there's (b) "what an idiot."

Fuel starvation qualifies under the second category and this week, Bob Miller tackles fuel starvation issues in his very excellent newsletter, "Over the Airwaves," the new issue of which is out today.

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I got a nice note a few minutes ago from old RVer friend Bill Swaim (well, OK, I met him at the RV BBQ a year ago, but he seems like an old friend).

"I know Minnesota Sue.......(the airplane I posted a picture of yesterday on the Yahoogroup) Greg & Sue are based right here in Moline, Il
I've been to the Boone fly-in several times. It's always a good one. Would have been there this year, but then would have had to turn down a trip in this;"

Good choice, Bill.

The only time I've been in an open cockpit of any kind was a few years ago when Minnesota Public Radio reporter Dan Olson was working on a story about Jim Grist, a builder of a Skybolt. He asked me to go to Lake Elmo to see him and Jim was gracious enough to give me a lift. I loved it! It was a short flight (we circled the Stillwater power plant and back), but I was struck by the maneuverability and turn radio of the little plane.




You can read the whole story here.

* * *

Boone RV Fly-in

It took a little while to get ourselves launched out of Lake Elmo because of the weather but we finally made it out about 3 hours later than planned. The weather cleared just enough for us to get out and then we ran a little scud across Woodbury before finding a hole to get up and over the a thin East-West front that extended across southern Minnesota.

I've put pictures up in the Photos section of the RV Yahoogroup. Also, this morning, I notice there are photos up on the fly-in Web site.

Our Daily Thread: I've been on the RV List for a long time. Many of the same people that are on the RV List are on the Yahoogroup site and Van's Air Force and Rivetbangers. So will someone please tell me why the RV List consistently is the spot where you'd expect stupid, off-top, flame wars to break out? Is it that it's not well moderated?

The cause of this one, isn't really the issue. Because some of the participants are the same ones that are usually involved in flame wars. You know, the ones that never use their names and tell you that they're 10,000 commercial pilots who build software on the side and have built 20 RVs.

As one poster who posted today said...

I think the useful life of the list has come to an end for me. I built my RV-6 and made the first flight on July 14 1989. There are so many beautiful airplanes and neat ideas now that were not thought of when I was building, and the kits have changed drastically over the last twenty years. My RV-6 would be considered archaic by today's standards so for me to have helpful hints for today's
builders as a previous builder is not as feasible as it use to be. I have probably stayed longer than I would have if I did not have so much respect for Matt Dralle and the tremendous amount of work he puts into these lists.

Crazy stuff.

This week's column

I didn't write a column this week for the RV Builder's Hotline, but I did write an article. This one is on the new Vertical Power electrical systems product. I also uploaded the audio of the interview with Marc Ausman.

Find it here.

I do plan on writing a column next week on the RV Hall of Fame. It's a little virtual idea I've been kicking around for giggles. If there were a Hall of Fame, who would be in it? OK, sure, Van is in it. But who else? I think Bob Avery of Avery Tools would be in it. I think Stein Bruch of SteinAir would be in it -- there's so much he does behind the scenes. I think Doug Reeves of Van's Air Force would be in it. I think Sam Buchanan would be in it. Dan Checkoway? Of course he's in it!

Who else? C'mon...comment! Maybe you'll make the column.

The vicarious thrill off flying

Flying stories; I have a fondness for blogs where pilots just talk about simple trips somewhere for some good food and conversation. Here's one I stumbled on today.

Dave Gamble calls our attention to this blog.The top item today is about living with MS. It's surprising how many people I know have MS now.

I skipped right over the politics on the rest of the blog -- nope, no comment one way or another -- and found items by selecting the category, "flying."


Speaking of Dave Gamble, no tour around my RSS reader -- subject "airplane building" -- in a quest to be taken somewhere in an airplane vicariously is complete without a stop on his blog. I could be a Kennedy: My own personal taxpayer-provided lakeside airport is a real sigh-maker.

BBQ over the top

This evening we reached 352 in reservations for the Oshkosh BBQ and that's that. We're capping it there. We can't handle more than that, and, frankly, I need some time to do other stuff. My wife is out of town this week and I had big plans for working on the RV, but it's been non-stop envelope-stuffing and I need to have a period well before Oshkosh to get everything together. Capping the attendance allows that. I hope you understand.

Now then, I haven't been able to write much because this week I'm working on a column for the RV Builder's Hotline on Marc Ausman's Vertical Power gizmo. If you haven't seen it, I'll introduce you to it this weekend. I'm also putting together a podcast with a full 48-minute interview I did with Marc.

I've often thought it would be cool to do more audio work but it takes a lot of time. That's why I marvel at what Doug Reeves does. He sets up phone and people call in and leave "reports." "Citizen Journalism' at its finest.

Tonight, he has a nice piece with Mark Stewart on an Angel Flight in Georgia, the only place, from what I understand, where an experimental airplane can do Angel Flights. The audio is here, but you should really go to Doug's site, which -- if you're into RVs -- you undoubtedly do. Who doesn't?

I'm putting the volunteer duties together now for the BBQ, and Doug is getting beer-hander-outer duties. I figure that makes him the most popular person at the BBQ, which -- it seems to me -- is wholly appropriate.

This morning, I think it was this morning, someone was kind enough to send me a picture of Cleveland, following up on my post of last week. It's on my other machine so I haven't gotten a chance to look at it or post it here, but I will tomorrow, I promise. Maybe. In the meantime, there is a COMMENTS section here, so feel free to use it.

This Saturday, I hope, fellow builder Warren Starkebaum and I are flying down to Boone, Iowa for the Boone RV day. Hard to believe in 7 years of building -- or is it 6? -- I've NEVER been to an RV fly-in. C'mon weatherman! One of my favorite stories from Boone was this one, written by gifted RV drivers -- and writer -- Mark Navratil.

Our Daily Thread - It's actually this one on Rivetbangers. You know Smitty of Smittysrv.com, right? He plays up that whole Texas hick thing even though he lives in Plano. Plano! He might as well live in St. Paul. I laughed by empennage off with the picture of his BBQ grill. Scroll down and you'll find it.

Ya hear?

Aviation miscellany

Most of the RV community, as near as I can tell, is still talking about that nose-over in the U.K. over the weekend. The video (very small, done in QuickTime) was distributed by the rsvqn list this morning and at first it appeared that the nose-over happened shortly after touchdown. That would've given rise to the "bad piloting" aspect of the usual debate that starts after these things. But upon further review, it happened well into the rollout.

What scares me is how fast the deceleration is. It caught the hole -- or whatever caused the collapse -- and that was it. VERY rapid deceleration. I'm beginning to think the flipover is what saved people because if it had just stopped and nosed in, I don't think the human body could withstand it.

There is a thread about this on VAF but for some reason the thread has been closed. You don't see that everyday.

BBQ Update - We're really close to 300 attendees so given our 350 limit, we should be closing reservations within a couple of weeks. This is turning out really well so far. I got home today to find a donation from Teledyne Mattituck. Coupled with what Stein Bruch has collected, looks like it'll be an expense free night for RVers.

Newsletters: This is usually a big weekend for getting EAA chapter newsletters published. One of my favorites is Chapter 1414 which came out with theirs today.
There really are very few great newsletters being produced -- I'd guess 12-18 nationwide. And I check the chapter Web sites every week. It's surprising -- and should be embarrassing to the chapters -- how often you go to an EAA chapter site and the newsletter was from 2 years ago and the big headline says, "join us for the fly-in, 2 p.m., July 4, 2002!"

Our Daily Thread: I can't decide how I want to fasten the canopy to the frame and rollbar. On VAF, there's yet another thread about silkaflex. But I posted a thread on the RV YGroup based on an old article in RVator I read the other day from Amit Dagan in which a small plastic bushing is used. I really like this idea and Dan Checkoway posted some thoughts on this that were enlightening.

Temperatures are in the 90s in Minnesota this week. I've got to get moving on this.