Category Archives: General

Finish Kit

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Time: 2 Hours

My girl stepped in and sat at the shop on her day off to wait for RoadRunner transportation to deliver my finish kit on Friday. Of course it arrived at the end of the 4 hour window they gave. The box arrived with no damage and was unloaded  into the shop without any issues. A big thanks to T for sitting there and waiting patiently while I was out flying around the country for work. My goal this morning was to open it up and inventory all the items before I needed to head out to go school clothes shopping for my son Drake. The inventory went great with all items accounted for, except one bag that was listed as back ordered, and only one special screw that had an issue with the head was not formed correctly. Here are a few shots of the process. 

There it is, the next 8-10 months of work for me and I’m very excited to be on the downhill stretch of the build. 

EAA AirVenture

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It’s that time of the year when we make the trek to the greatest show in the world, the EAA’s AirVenture in OshKosh, WI. Every year I have a list of tasks that I want to look at, inspect and talk to other builders about their RV-8’s, this year is no different. Items this year include interior components such as seats and see colors and Sika-Flex windshield installs. Along with other small items for the upcoming finish kit. The show itself was awesome as it always is. The weather was up and down from 110° heat indexs to thunderstorms to beautiful blues skies and 75°. Camping is always a blast with good food, friends and laughter. I did buy a few smal items and solidified my decisions on others. Looked at some beautiful RV-8’s and asked a lot of questions of the builders. The fact that it has come in gone makes me a little sad but the thought of my finish kit being in a truck for delivery as I type brings a smile to my face. Here are a few photos of the trip. 


Another great AirVenture and #6 in a row. I have already started counting down until AirVenture 2017! 

Blog is Back

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I have had a bad time with my blog or more importantly the hosting service, Hostgator, and been working on getting it back up and running. To say their customer support was lacking was an understatement. So off to look for a new hosting service and do some research on good companies. What I came up with was SiteGround and I’m very happy with their customer service. They are super helpful and willing to help this guy get his blog back up and running. Hopefully no more issues. Thanks for sticking around while I got back up and running! 

Michael

Life Update

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For many of you, my blog readers, are family and friends and know my family’s recent tragedy. For the other readers I will explain my blog absense for the last month or so. On evening of March 7th my world as a father came crashing down with one single phone call. I had recieved this call from my ex-wife that our oldest son, Tanner 19, was in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. Through her tears all she could say was that they were doing CPR and she was scared. Where they live to the closest hospital is 35 min if driving fast as an ambulance would. I waited with my iPhone in my hand until they arrived at the hospital to receive word from her on my sons condition. That call came just a few minutes after they stopped CPR and pronunced the time of death at 11:54PM from a blood clot in his lungs.  My world changed with that one 30 second phone call, I couldn’t breathe or talk. The following days were a blur from the next day traveling to Iowa to make funeral arrangements to the end of the week when we finally got to say good bye and bury my son. The last few weeks have been very tough for me as a father and for the rest of the family. I have always found great peace in working on my RV-8 and the joy of building. I was having trouble just getting through a day let alone wanting to do something productive. As the days have gone by I have been able to get back to work and adjusting to a new normal. Thanks to great family and friends, especially Tricia, Thomas and Glenn, I have a great support system. This last weekend I had breakfast with Glenn and made it to the shop for a couple hours to get a little aluminum dust on my hands. It felt great to get my mind off of our tragedy and on to the project even for just a short time. He will always be with me in my heart as he will with all who he touched in his short life. 

 

Control Sticks & Smoke Oil Fill

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Time: 6 Hours

Today I worked on installing, at least temporarily, the pilot and passengers control stick grips. I purchased the grips from Tosten Manufacturing after looking at them at AirVenture 2015. First task was to come up with a rough height for the pilots control stick as the original part is too long. After coming up with the link I took the stick out of the aircraft and cut it with a hacksaw. With the stick cut I marked a spot at the lower section to drill a hole for the wires to exit.  

 To make it easier to fish the wires down through I put some shrink tube on the end of the wires   
   once I had the hole drilled in the bottom of the control stick I was able to slide the wires through and do some measurements to see how the grip fit. It took me several tries to get the length just perfect so that it cleared the bottom of the instrument panel and crossmember. 
    
 A nice feature of these grips is the collar that the grip slides into. This gets held in place with a drilled hole and cap head screw which also holds the grip into position. This collar also allow for the grip to be twisted and raise up around 3/8″ as required to get a perfect fit to your hand position. I drilled a 3/16″ hole 1/2″ from the top and inserted the screw and jam but to hold it for now.  

 I basically repeated these steps for the passenger grip with an addition to putting the pilot seat back in place which is the limiting factor to the height as you don’t want the grip to hit the back of the seat when pushed full forward.  

    
 The grips turned out awesome and I love the feel. The pilot grip has a trigger that will be the push to talk button. The left lower thumb button will be for smoke. The hat in the center is for trim and the toggle to the left for flaps and to the right will be for COM 1/2 switching. There is a pinky button below the trigger for autopilot touch steering. The passenger will just have trim and the push to talk. From there I moved to another modification that I’m follow my buddy on. The oil tank obviously needs to be filled with oil at some point. The first way is to reach in and pour oil in via a cap on the tank. The next and better way is to use an external full kit that I bought from smokingairplanes.com. It allow you to open a cap like a fuel cap and pour oil in and not mess with the possibility of making a mess inside you airplane. Glenn showed me a photo of a P-51 Mustang and their center fuel tank fill port on the left side just under the canopy.  

 So we are gonna put ours just like that! Glenn had a side canopy fiberglass skirt from his last project so I used it to mark the location that it will lie on the fuselage.  

 From there I made the mark for the location of the 2″ hole. Glenn helped me hold the skin on the drill press to make the cut with the fly cutter. I used the support ring to mark all six holes for the screws.  

   I drilled the center of the holes with a #40 drill bit followed by a #11 for the #10 screw.  

 After all six holes were drilled I screwed the fill cap into position.  

    
   I will eventually paint the cap red to give that P-51 look. I’m really done with the items in the back except for a couple of wiring harnesses and those will arrive on Monday. So I started cleaning up a few items that I had on hold. First was to trim the cabin heat cable to its final size. I wanted to drill the tee for the smoke tank system that goes through the firewall. This tee will direct oil to both exhaust pipes. I drilled the 9/16″ hole and put the tee in place.  
 With the fitting in place I could cut the cabin heat cable to the correct length so it doesn’t interfere with the tee or my rudder pedals.  

   One last item was to cut the fuel boost pump wired and crimp some ring terminals on the ends. I then screwed them to a two place terminal block. This will allow me to unscrew them in the future for easy replacement as needed.  
Thats where I called it a weekend and will get back at it tomorrow when my parts arrive. 

  

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