When you spend an insanely large amount of money, it feels so much better if you can actually walk up to and touch a sample of the thing that you are buying. I mean, think about it. If you plunked down $15K on some crappy mutual fund that is equally likely to tank as rake in 1 or 2 percent gains this year, you would not feel nearly as happy as if you gave that money to Jan Eggenfellner and in return he gave you a beautiful ready to bolt on engine package for your RV-9a.
One reason I went to Sun N Fun this year was to do some shopping for avionics, and to look at and touch the Subaru engine package being sold by Eggenfellner Aircraft Inc. And let me tell you, it is NICE. But cosmetics alone do not make an engine. This is a 165hp, liquid cooled, fuel injected, computer controlled automotive conversion that comes complete and ready to lift out of the shipping crate and bolt onto the airplane.
I am not going to repeat all of the arguments here or discuss pros and cons of automotive engines being used in aircraft applications, since I believe that there is no clear winner in the debate. Both sides can make convincing arguments one way or the other. The key things that helped me decide were cost, ease of installation, completeness of the package, and modern design.
I am a firm believer that all aircraft specific parts are held in a permanent state of stagnation because of the steep costs of certifying a product or changing a design. Why in the hell would anybody buy a transponder with a vacuum tube in it? Yet if you buy a Narco transponder freshly manufactured off the shelf, that is what you get. Why? Because it is cheaper to reuse a certified design than prove in court to some dumb ass lawyers that it was not their box that caused a plane to crash.
This would probably be a good point to insert a long monologue about how lawyers suck, but instead I will close by saying one of the reasons I am building an experimental aircraft IS TO EXPERIMENT WITH IT. So one of the things I am going to do is put an experimental engine package on the plane. The only way we are going to get alternatives to Lycoming is to make some data and build some history. Everybody has to start somewhere, but if we don't give the alternatives a try, we just sit in stagnation.
Addendum: Click on the "Misc" link below for a page describing cowl and cooling system modifications.
Placed the order with Van's for the finishing kit. Expected delivery is last week of January, 2003.
It's here! This is the biggest crate yet (photo ), but amusingly, contains the fewest parts (photo1 , photo2 ). Included is all of the big fiberglass pieces - cowl, wheel pants, spinner, fairings - as well as the BIG plastic bubble that will be a canopy some day. No kidding either - this thing is huge. I honestly don't know where to store it where it won't get accidentally beat on. Also included in the kit are the wheels and tires, which is handy. I immediately put these together so that I could roll the fuse around the garage more easily to make some room.
As usual, Van's did an amazing job of packing everything and there are no missing, damaged or backordered items.
As I mentioned in the fuse section, the line blurs between fuse and finishing kits. From here on out, I am going to declare myself in the 75% done, 90% to go category and call it "finishing" even though I am nowhere near it.
Here is a rare photo of Fat Bastard in action. Here we see him putting the canopy frame on the rollers for the 309,125th time after making some minor adjustments for fitting it to the shape of the fuse. Well actually, it didn't take nearly as much as I would have thought. In fact, it was so easy to get the canopy frame into the right shape that I wonder if I got a defective one. :-)
And, there it is folks. There it is. Right there . Staring at me. Just waiting to rob me of my gumption. Stay tuned...
18 hours: Unfortunately, once I split the canopy, it seemed like the fit was not nearly so good anymore at the front. There was a significant gap between the plexi and the canopy frame that caused severe deformation when clecoed together.
Resolution: I took the canopy frame and clamped the plexi to it, then let it sit out in the sun for a few hours. I initially tried to put a small electric heater under it, however its internal thermostat would not let it come on.
This closed the gap just a little bit, so I went ahead and drilled it to the frame. No cracks!! Onward...
80 hours: OK, long time since we had an update, so here is the deal:
I took apart my little space heater and bypassed the termostat. For several days, I would place the heater under the canopy and let it get HOT. This has helped a great deal in getting the canopy to fit together better; there is a lot less stress on it while clecoed together. It is now at the point where I am confident it is OK. I think the bottom line is that I split the bubble just a few inches too far aft, which resulted in a good fit at the rear of the canopy, but a poor fit at the front ( photo1 , photo2 ). I think it might have been easier to deal with a poor fit at the back because it could have been hidden using plastic washers to fill the gaps between the plexi and the canopy frame. The problem at the front of the canopy can't really be hidden easily with the canopy open.
Once the issue with the plexi was worked out, I went ahead and completed the entire slider portion. It turned out to be quite a lot of work, mostly in just making things fit. The rear skirts took several hours to form in such a way that there was a minimum gap along their entire length. I am still having a slight problem with the side skirts in that they appear to be too close to the fuselage sides and are binding. Next time I take it apart, the frame will get a slight adjustment, plus the side skirts will be fitted better after reassembly.
I got a few good hours of time in cleaning up some miscellaneous
tasks that I have been putting off. This includes:
Once that was all done, I hit a wall with the fuselage. I can't really do anything else to the cabin until I paint the interior. So, I disassembled everything possible from the fuse and laid it out on the garage floor. Then, all of a sudden, it got hot. I mean, real Phoenix desert hot. I mean, really, really, really hot. In fact, we have been setting some records lately. On July 17th, we had a record low of 96 degrees. We also had a record high a few days later of 117 degrees. In a word, OUCH! My monkey ass aint going out in the garage with the heat turned up this high.
So, here we are in the last week of July, and I haven't touched the airframe in 2 1/2 weeks. But, the good news is that I haven't been idle either. I ordered the RST audio panel and marker beacon receiver kits from RST Engineering . It took just about 23 hours to complete both kits, but I have not tested either one yet. The kits are very nice, however the PC boards are very densely populated (photo ). Unless you are really good with a soldering iron, and have a steady hand, I would not recommend that this be your first electronics project. Fortunately my experience in Amateur Radio has been a great help here; I have had lots of time on a soldering iron.
The final bit of news is... ENGINE IN THE HOUSE, BAY-BEEE. Well, actually the crate is out in the garage. What a deal. It was kind of a hassle getting it delivered. The local trucking company had it for a couple of days and didn't bother calling me until they were prodded by Elizabeth over at Eggenfellner Aircraft. But the best part was that the day they decided to deliver it, "both" of the companys' lift gate trucks were out of service, so they decided to send it on a non-liftgate truck and hope that somehow by magic a loading dock and forklift would appear in front of my house. Well, to say the least, that did not happen. The crate was within 20 feet of my garage and it may as well have been 20 miles, because it was not coming off the truck. The driver was convinced we could slide it off the back and muscle it to the ground. I then told him what was in the crate and how much it cost. He then changed his mind. So I had to wait an extra day for them to find a truck to make the delivery, and finally, the big crate arrived. Here is a peek at the contents (photo1 , photo2 ).
17 hours: Well, it is 110 degrees outside, dusty, windy,
"high" humidity... the worst conditions for painting. If you have
been reading this journal carefully, you know what this means - time to
break out the paint gun.
Yes, the cabin area from the firewall to the baggage compartment finally got a coat of paint. The bottom line is that I could do very little else with the airframe at this point without doing some of the finishing work. I decided a coat of paint would be the easiest solution, and actually it turned out pretty nice, considering the paint I used was Rustoleum gloss Smoke Gray. The paint shot fairly well right out of the can, but I decided on the second batch to thin it with just a bit of mineral spirits. The canopy frame, rudder pedals and weldments, roll bar and gear weldments all got a coat of industrial flat black. Frankly, I was hesitant about using this paint as I could find very few comments about it in the usual homebuilding archives. So I decided to experiment.
25 hours: Rumors of accidentally painting myself and getting
stuck to the garage floor have been greatly exaggerated.
Between record setting temperatures and dealing with business around
the house, not much shop time has been logged. Several
miscellaneous items have been taken care of, such as: riveting top aft
fuse skins on, running conduit from the baggage area to the tail,
installing the static air ports and running the line forward, and
installing the vent, feed, return and brake lines.
Found some time to get to the Copperstate fly in this past Sunday,
but unfortunately we seem to have missed the party... nobody was
there. By the time the airshow started at 11:30, all but about
six planes were gone. Maybe next year... :-(
After adding up all the hours in my builders log, I find I finally
broke 1000 hours of shop time.
80 hours: I was a bit surprised that designing the instrument
panel took so much effort. It wasn't too hard picking out the
equipment that I wanted, but it literally took about 50 hours to figure
out where to put it and document the effort in a CAD layout. I
went through at least three ground up designs before I settled on what
seems to be a reasonable compromise, and finally this week sent the
panel out to be cut. Since this is a high visibility item, I want
it to look somewhat nice - not like some idiot with a flycutter and a
drill press cut the holes and tried to cover the mistakes... Anyway, as
soon as it gets back I will post a picture of the final result.
Once that was finally done, I got into running the wires. Back
in January, I honestly believed I had started down the road of running
the electrical system when I ran some of the engine harness
wires. Hah! I had an idea of how much wire it would take to
make everything work, but it has been quite an effort making up cable
bundles and routing everything literally from one end of the fuse to
the other.
Here is a big HINT: MAKE MORE HOLES TO RUN ELECTRICAL
WIRES! Because the ones on the plans are not enough... with
strobe and position lights, landing light, taxi light, three antennas,
a pitot line, remote ELT, cabin speaker, flap and trim switching power
there is simply not enough hole in the spar box to fit everything
through. The plans indicate that you can make an additional hole
near the center of the spar box for either the manual trim cable or
electrical wiring. Make it. Use it.
Another thing that I wish I had done was order the five conductor
cable for the Ray Allen servos. That would have saved some hassle
with making up very long 5 conductor cables.
And yet another hint - you really do not need to install the control
column assembly until you are nearing final assembly of the
plane. Leave it and the smaller elevator pushrod out.
Running big cables through the center tunnel is a pain otherwise.
It can be done, but it is a pain.
By the time I got done getting everything rough cut to length and
routed through all the bulkheads, the cabin area looked like some huge
horrific rats nest of wires and tubing (photo).
It was hard to believe
that I had all the wires run, and harder to believe that I will need to
plug the ends of all those wires somewhere into the system. But
that will be the next problem...
During this time I also embarked on a little side project to build a heater/outside air mixer. I detailed this in a seperate page in the Miscellaneous section.
Finally, after only 30 weeks of waiting, my MT prop arrived.
Apparently the MT production line was a tad slow, so the initial 10
weeks that was promised as the delivery time was blown big time.
Oh well, par for the course. Anyway, once everything arrived I
was able to fabricate the brackets for and install the brush block (photo). The prop package comes with a nice
wiring harness, so making all the connections was easy enough.
One of the things that must be done is to drill out the prop flange
holes to 7/16". This turned out to be fairly easy, using lots of
cutting oil, a sharp bit and a good electric drill motor. I was
able to then hang the prop so that I could measure and align the brush
block. Unfortunately I neglected to get a picture of the plane
with the prop on it.
Another nice event was the arrival of my seat cushions, manufactured by
Classic
Aero Designs. They did an absolutely unbelievable job.
The workmanship on these seats is simply top notch. A couple of
days ago I put the seats into the plane and sat in them to help me
locate the engine control bracket and heater ducting. They work
really well.
It turns out that with the panel done and the prop and seats finally
here, that another minor milestone has been reached. I now have
all of the major pieces of the plane to complete it, except for
paint. Not only am I happy, but my check book is thrilled.
I am now on a short list of things to do to finish the project.
Granted, some of the tasks are not that small (ie, "fit the cowl" and
"windscreen fairing"), but I have definitely confirmed that the light
at the end of the tunnel is NOT an oncoming train, but is in fact
daylight. For the first time I feel like this is the home stretch!
I tell you what though, it sure looks good with that MT prop hanging out front (photo).
The wheel fairings didn't go a whole lot better, however the job was made
easier with the Fairings Etc. intersection fairings. After epoxying them
in place, I added three layers of glass to smooth it out a bit. They
came out really well, but still require quite a bit of work before getting
painted.
Working with fiberglass really requires a different mindset. You can rough
out a shape pretty easily, but the hard part is sanding it to the final
shape or contour, then filling and sanding over and over until you get a
relatively nice smooth part. And if you do any serious filling or a layup
with epoxy, you have to wait 9 to 14 hours for the thing to set.
The good news is that I got my instrument panel painted (finally) and
repopulated it with instruments. It is actually looking quite good. I
also cleaned up some of the wiring while I was at it.
about 60 hours: Well, it is 110 degrees outside, dusty, windy,
"high" humidity... the worst conditions for painting. If you have
been reading this journal carefully, you know what this means - time to
break out the paint gun.
So, this weekend, I primed the entire fuselage in about 5 hours on Friday.
Then, on Saturday, I top-coated with generic white. Everything was going
so well - not one sag or run, even on the vertical surfaces! So on Sunday,
I decided to paint my "N" number on using the vinyl paint mask I bought from
Aircraft Spruce. I applied the masks, threw a plastic sheet over everything
else and shot some black paint. Again, perfectly shot paint!
But then, tragedy struck. I started pulling off the paint mask, and just as
I noted that it was sticking awfully good, suddenly I saw a gray patch under
the mask... I felt sick as I realized the mask had pulled a patch of the top
coat off. After nearly shedding tears, I very carefully peeled the rest of
the mask off on one side, then proceeded to the other side. Double tragedy!
As I started peeling the second number's mask off, a large patch of gray
primer became visible as the top coat pulled off.
I attempted to touch up the areas that were damaged, but there is little hope as the patches are still extremely obvious. My nearly perfect paint wrecked by the silly paint mask. How disappointing is that.
One thing I know for sure is that I am not going to take any more chances
of ruining the rest of the job. I was going to add a couple of stripes
to the sides, but now I think I can live with a plain white plane. If I
decide to add some color later, I might just buy some vinyl stick-on type
decals. At least I know for sure they won't come off...
The big news is that the fuselage has been moved to the hangar. It was loaded onto one of those flat bed tow trucks and driven down the road at a blistering 25 MPH the whole 11 miles to Glendale Airport (large photo).
Meanwhile, back at the shop, I have been trying to find time to finish painting the last few items - the VS and rudder are primed, as well as all the wing access covers. Only the fiberglass parts remain - the cowl and all of the fairings.
Finishing the fiberglass has been hell. I can't imagine ever building an entire plane out of fiberglass. Round after round of sanding and filling, and still I just can't seem to eliminate all of the pinholes and uneven surfaces. I have followed Van's suggested method of painting with epoxy thinned with acetone, then using a creme body filler compound to fill the low spots and pinholes. I am getting real tired of all the sanding - I must have at least 60 hours into just finishing the cowl and I still have more to go.
The brakes are a bit tight, and the audio panel has some issues apparently
with RF causing feed back in the cabin speaker. I have also run into an
issue with the low fuel pressure switch. After forgetting to turn the fuel
selector to Left from Off, the fuel pressure spiked at 65 psi. Apparently
this blew out the pressure switch as it started leaking gasoline.
A replacement was quickly received, however the new switch was not
working at all. Pulling the connector off caused the terminal to break off,
necessitating the forking over of $85 for another new switch. Not good.
The only "airworthiness" items left are to do the weight and balance, and finish up the cowl hinge pins which have really been painful to deal with.
As such, I have contacted a DAR and set up an inspection date for early March. One more stack of paperwork and I am home free...
The weight came in a bit porky at 1188 lbs. On the other hand, I made no overt attempt to conserve on weight. This makes flying with another Bubba sized adult tricky unless a lot of fuel is left behind. However, there are no CG issues. You really have to work at blowing the CG limits.
On Friday, March 11, 2005, N194TC received an airworthiness certificate.
I must say I was almost as nervous as my first checkride in the days leading up to the inspection. As it turned out, everything was ready and it was just a matter of going through the excercise.
My DAR had asked for draft copied of the paperwork ahead of time, and said not to worry about it as we would be updating things as we go along. The inspection itself concentrated mostly on the control system, and a few minor sqauwks have been easily corrected. After looking over the entire plane, and verifying all the "legal items" were present, some logbook entries were made and a pink slip was issued.
At this point, I will conclude this chapter of the journal and create a new section to document the flight testing of my airplane.
Total time to build:
First Journal Entry: 04/06/2001
Last Journal Entry: 03/11/2005
Total shop hours logged: 1644.0
