Apr 29, 2024     Transition Training! - (7.4 hours)       Category: misc.

I had e-mailed Mike Seager a week or so back about scheduling transition trying and hadn't heard anything yet. So on the 21st I sent a follow up email and as luck would have it, he'd had a cancellation and had a slot available 4-24 to 4-26.

After a slapdash schedule shuffle, I found myself scampering out to Vernonia Oregon on the 23rd for 3 days of transition training in the RV7.

My insurance company required 5 hours in type before they would insure me for all risk, but since I'd never flown a tail wheel RV before, I scheduled 3 days/6 flights, with the hope of getting a bit more polish.

I got there mid-day Tuesday and had time to drive down to Aurora (pop. 700-ish) and tour the Vans factory, which was pretty cool.

Vernonia is about a hour drive north of Portland, and is so small it doesn't really have a chain hotel/motel. Mike Seager recommended a couple of B&B solutions, and the one I picked - Carpenter's guest house- had a theme room for aviators and a discount off the nightly rate for people doing transition training, sweet!

The way my schedule was set up, I was wrapping up my second flight around 1500, so on day 2 I drove out to the coast and spend a little time being a tourist in Seaside Oregon. Super cool little town and I'd like to take Kriya back for a long weekend.

We cancelled one flight due to weather, so I ended up with 7.4 hours total in the RV7. Holy cow, what a fun little airplane.

  Apr 26, 2023     pre-closeup inspection - (3 hours) Category: misc.

It won't be long before I'm ready to rivet on the upper fwd fuselage skin, so I asked my old college friend Robert to come over after work to lay a second set of eyes on all the stuff behind my panel.

a second opinion is always welcome and if there was an area where I had a loose connector or a potential for wires to chafe or whatever, it would sure be easier to identify and correct it before I shoot that skin on.

Robert and I went to A&P school together and he spent a good portion of his subsequent career as an accident investigator for Cessna. I wasn't really expecting him to find anything and thankfully all he was able to come up with was a couple of pieces of wire insulation that had gotten away from me during stripping and a zip tie tail. Other than that, his only comment was that he wished his airplane had wire bundles as neat as mine. yay!

My brother in law Nate is an IA and if his schedule allows I'm going to ask him to do the same thing.

  Apr 14, 2023     led lighting, relocated brake line, random stuff - (10 hours)       Category: misc.

knocked out a few random things this week. One was a big win.

A while back, I was working on the panel LEDs that I'm putting under the glare shield. I have the 3 dimmer setup and 3 LED strips that Stein sells and am running them through the GAD27. When I hooked up the 1st channel to the baggage compartment, that this was bright! Then I temporarily wired up the other two and suddenly they dropped to about 1/2 the output I was expecting.

I got into the book and discovered that the GAD was capable of controlling 500 milliamps per channel, and the data on Steins website said that each strip pulled about 0.8 amps. I reasoned that I had found the source of my issue, put a meter on the strips while they were connected to my lawn mower battery, and lopped off a bit (about 8") until they were pulling less than 0.5 amps each.

Hooked them back up to the dimmers and their was no improvement. I called Garmin to see if it was possible that I had fried teh lighting circuit in the GAD27 and while they didn't think so, they agreed to swap out my unit for for a different one. Still no change, what the heck?

I put this on the back burner for a while and just got back to it this week where I discovered almost by accident that the fuse to the lighting circuit had popped. I can't explain why they were still lighting ups at all, but evidently there was enough current coming through the GAD27 to cause them to come on, albeit at a much reduced brightness level..replaced that fuse and now it's all good, yay! I also I filed a u shape channel in the panel where the wiring for the light strips will go from under the glare shield back behind the panel.

I also relocated the r/h brake line from the firewall to the gear leg so that it runs aft of the engine mount tubes. This tucks it up out of the way a bit better for a neater installation as well as gets it a bit further away from the exhaust pipes.

I was rooting around in my scrap pile for something or other and discovered a new shop mascot as well. Why he decided that was where he wanted to be is beyond me, but I guess this means that spring is here :)