Yard Work

I remember thinking, as I was droning around the vast expanses of Schmetterling Manor on my aging mower late last summer, that we had never enjoyed the normal annual mowing lull that comes after a hot, dry July and August. I was finally relieved of the onerous yard work duties that I bear by dint of my gender sometime in late October, when the grass decided that enough was enough and that it needed a rest. Unfortunately, that much needed (by both of us) hibernation was over almost as soon as it started due to the mild winter weather we enjoyed this year. There's no such thing as a free lunch (at least for us non-governmental types), and it is now time to pay the piper for the placid winter: the grass is back, and it is back with a vengeance.

Quick, here's a pop-quiz: see if you can guess precisely what the diametric limits are of the restraining ropes we use to keep Brave Sir Hogarth and Cabot Bennett from wandering off from their morning ablutions:

Too easy, right? Okay, see if you can guess where Cabot enjoys a daily sojourn on his way down to the mailbox:

So, there was definitely some mowing in my future this weekend, but I also had a trip that needed to be made. I ran into a little difficulty with the final sanding of the cowling halves. As I've mentioned, I've been making short forays out to the hangar to finish up the sanding jobs. I had finished the bottom, what I thought to be the more difficult of the two, and moved onto the top. Where I immediately realized that we had completely missed one of the edges that needed to be trimmed. Out came the Dremel and the belt sander.

Then the big sanding block:

Finally it was time to try introducing the halves to each other.

And, as in the ever-predictable plot lines of a Disney romance, they hated each other. Couldn't stand to get within a 16th of an inch of each other, in fact. And unlike in the movies, it was by no means certain that they would ultimately reconcile:

Somewhat at a loss, I thought that it might be beneficial to make a little road trip down south to visit with The Jackson Two. They finished their cowling work months ago, so an examination of their parts might point out where I was over/under cutting/trimming. Jackson and its environs have always been "flyover" parts of the state to me, but as I really like hilly, wooded rural areas, I relished the drive. Unfortunately, the whiny ("recalculating again, you idiot!") girl that lives inside my Garmin showed no interest whatsoever in the adventure:

Either that, or she was predicting a snow storm.

Eh, who needs her. I found the airport easily enough on my own.

In a side-by-side comparison, it was easy to see where one of my problems was. Given that it was 50-50 odds for one or the other, I was overjoyed to see that I had failed to remove enough material. Fixing the alternative (removing too much) is a lot more work. With fiberglass, it is always easier to remove stuff than it is to add it back.

Knowing that the installation of the cooling tunnel comes next, I also surveyed that part of the job. The little radiator in the middle is for the oil. The tunnel that runs off to the left feeds cooling air to the other radiator installed back on the firewall.

There is apparently a fundamental design issue with the tunnel that Van's is not willing to fix and therefore requires a field modification. The problem is that the tunnel runs into a conflict with one of the welded wire hoops that provide an anchor point for one of the springs that hold the exhaust header/muffler combination together. A hole has to be cut into the tunnel and a little fiberglass bump has to be fabricated. So, while it is easier to remove fiberglass than to add it, both are manifestly possible. Good thing, eh?

With the lower cowling installed on the airplane, you can see why the bump was needed:

I was also interested in seeing their progress on the installation of the Skyview avionics. I'll be doing that sometime in early summer and again it seemed like a good idea to learn of any issues. As seems to be their lot in their RV-12 build, they ran headlong into yet another abject failure of Van's quality control. You may remember that they were the ones that found that their flaperon tubes, parts absolutely critical to safe flight, had left Van's prior to being welded.

In this case, they got to the point where they were ready to apply power to the aircraft for the first time. After hundreds of hours of effort, this is one of those moments that you have looked forward to with great anticipation. Pretty much the last thing you want to happen the first time you throw the master switch to ON is see/smell a noxious cloud of smoke. Close behind that, the second to last thing you want to have happen is.... nothing.

Nothing is precisely what happened.

Days of troubleshooting later, the found the cause: the main electronics module had left Van's without being completely soldered.

Once a replacement unit was in place.... success!!

Short-lived as it was:

Just kidding. Those big X's just mean that the system hasn't yet been configured.

Configuration is a fairly lengthy process. The Dynon units are not custom designed for the RV-12, after all, so they need a few lessons about their new environment. In fact, they don't even know that they live in an airplane. Who knows, they might even be installed in a 'Parachutist' or an 'Unknown." Or even, although it doesn't seem likely, at least with regards to the display unit, an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV):

Just as I was getting ready to leave, I got a new idea for how to keep my yard mowed without having to deal with my geriatric mower:

These blades have a separate engine up at the top of the boom to drive them. The pilot simply starts the engine with a control in the cockpit of the helicopter and flies these blades along the edges of the corridors that they cut to keep the encroaching trees away from high tension power lines.

I'm not sure how well that's going to work on my estate, but it looks like it might be fun to try.

Just before I left, I noticed this old Pepsi machine sitting abandoned behind the airport office:

It was the Rock-Ola coin box that caught my eye. I did a little research on the name and found it to be fairly interesting:

The Rock-Ola Manufacturing Corporation was a top maker of jukeboxes. The company, which originally made slot machines, scales and pinball machines, was founded in 1927 by Coin-Op pioneer David Cullen Rockola.

Rock-Ola neon sign.

During the 1920s, Rockola was linked with Chicago organized crime and escaped a jail sentence by turning State's Evidence. Starting in 1935, Rock-Ola sold more than 400,000 jukeboxes under the Rock-Ola brand name, which predated the rock and roll era by two decades, and is thought to have inspired the term. In 1977, The Antique Apparatus Company engineered, refined and manufactured the first "Nostalgic" Jukeboxes, and in 1992 acquired the Rock-Ola Corporation and name.

The company currently manufactures a variety of jukeboxes for both commercial and home entertainment. Commercial jukeboxes feature touch screens, Peavey power amps and digital downloading of music and ad content, delivered by the AMI Network. Rock-Ola continues to manufacture Nostalgic style CD-jukeboxes and has also added state-of-the-art digital touch screen technology for the home market. The Rock-Ola line of Nostalgic Music Centers was introduced in 2006. Two new music center models, the "Mystic" and the "Q", were introduced in 2008.

Rock-Ola was one of the producers of the M1 carbine for the US Military during WWII, making 3.7% of the 6,221,220 made. Due to both the relative rarity of Rock-Ola carbines and the distinctive name, they are highly prized among collectors.

I wonder if the Pepsi machines are as highly prized.

Whittling away

It wasn't until today that I got back to work on the airplane, and even then it was only for forty-five minutes. I almost didn't go at all, but the allure of an eighty-five degree "first day of Spring" was too much for me to resist, particularly when I think ahead to the 125 degree "first day of Summer" that will logically follow should our temperature escalation proceed in a linear fashion.

Let's hope not.

I had thought to get out to the shop on Sunday, but instead went trap shooting with Pete and his wife Красивая женщина, who was going to try out her brand new 28 gauge ultra-light semi-auto shotgun. I was afraid that I wouldn't do nearly as well as I did last time, thinking that my 16 out of 25 was surely a fluke that I would never be able to match again, but it ended up being the opposite: I shot a 22 out of 25. I was doing so well that on the three that I missed, I theatrically looked askance at my gun as if it had somehow developed a warp in its barrel. Boorish, yes, but quite fun! Lest I give the impression that it's all about me, I also have to say that after a few shots to get the feel of her new gun, Красивая женщина also had a pretty good day. And I have to tell you, I went 0 for 3 with that gun. The five or six birds she hit in a row was very impressive!

Pete? Well, I don't think we will be inviting him on our safari.

I had also hoped to do some more sanding on the cowling halves on Monday after work, but by the time I was able to even think about making it out to the shop my mood was wrecked. And it wasn't the only thing in that condition. You see, Monday was one of those days that we have every three months or so at the sweat shop wherein we meet at an offsite location for a "strategy" meeting.

These meetings went a lot better for me in the past, before I came upon the idea that the secret to success in the business side of the house is to differentiate yourself. After thinking of various means to do that, I came across what I thought was a winning plan: rather than follow the herd, all of whom now pride themselves on "thinking outside the box," I thought that I might distinguish myself through the radical idea of thinking inside the box.

That ended up being just as unpopular as the most famous "inside the box" profession known to man which is, of course, being a mime.

So, after a grueling day of expostulating on obviously unworkable strategies, I found myself pulling into the driveway at the palatial estate that I call home, only to note that a portion of the house was no longer where it had been when I had left just nine short hours earlier. Apparently what had happened in the interim is that Co-pilot Egg had come home from school, and rather than drive into the garage, she had managed to drive into the garage.

She has often stated a desire to own a smaller, more nimble car. Unable to buy one, she seems hell bent on making one herself:

Smaller, anyway. Probably no more nimble.

No one was hurt, fortunately, which, if you figure (as I do) that a first accident is inevitable, is the best outcome possible. I've had my share of accidents born of over-confidence and/or carelessness, so I know of what I speak. Oddly enough, she thought she was going to be grounded as a result of her vehicular imbroglio. I quickly put her mind to rest by explaining that grounding is what you do to misbehaving little kids that don't have any foreseeable financial prospects against which a lien can be placed. Eighteen year olds, on the other hand, make pecuniary restitution, even if it is only the amount of the home insurance deductible.

I think she would have preferred being grounded.

Today was no real picnic at work either, as I learned the hard way that obvious ideas have the detrimental trait of actually being implementable. By me, as it turns out. More work.

Next time? I'm going back to the outside of the box. Way outside.

Still, with the weather being what it was I thought I'd at least get some more of the interminable sanding done. Pete loaned me a nice sanding block to use to try to straighten up the somewhat wavy edges caused by the use of the very narrow belt sander.

Trust me: I was every bit as tired as I look.

Scowling at the Cowling

Having reached the step in the engine installation process where the directions demand that I install the engine cowling, presumably in preparation for the fitting of the tunnel that will reside inside the cowling and direct air into the radiator, I thought maybe it might be time to go back to the section in which I was supposed to have fit the cowling in the first place. The large fiberglass cowling halves have been stored in the underground secure storage bunker at the Schetterling home office since the day they arrived with the rest of the finishing kit last year, where they have charitably provided ancestral housing for hundreds of generations of spiders.

Not all of whom were yet deceased, as it turns out.

They are now.

After wiping away the remains, the cowling halves were loaded into the trusty Hyundai-like-Sunday and hauled out to the shop. Figuring that there would inevitably be some trimming required, I also laid out the chopping and sanding tools.

Van's, who never has you do one step when two or more will do, instructs the builder to trim the fiberglass to within 1/8" of the "scribe line," then sand away that nominal 1/8" of fiberglass down to the scribe lines. I imagine that is intended to be a cautious way to increase the odds against accidentally cutting past the scribe line which, in a word, would be bad.

The problem is that the scribe lines are very hard to see. They would be next to impossible to see while obscured behind the cloud of fiberglass dust and chips thrown out by the Dremel cutting disk, so I made Sharpietm lines to help.

I don't trust the Dremel not to throw itself or a part of what its cutting right in my face, so I deck out in safety gear when using it. I also don't like the idea of lining my lungs with fiberglass dust, so I grab the filters as well.

Fiberglass is notoriously hostile to tools. I could actually see the cutting disk shrinking as I was cutting.

I went through three entire disks before it was done, which was fair because one of those disks tried to go through me. Through more than two years of building, I made it through almost all of the drilling work without once drilling into one of my fingers, which is good, only to slice into the tip of my left driving finger (used on occasion for non-verbal communications with inept and/or irritating drivers) with a Dremel cutting disk.

Which was bad.  In a word.

I applied first aid, as is my wont, with a shop rag and masking tape, which I thought to be more than sufficient for a tiny little flesh wound, but Pugnaciously Paternal Pete was having none of it. He sent me home for a real bandaid and a dab of Neosporin.

The conversion of the remaining 1/8" of fiberglass into a cloud of noxious and clinging dust was a job for the nifty little Harbor Freight belt sander that I bought for the canopy work. This job, being even more dependent on being able to see the nearly invisible scribe lines, was better suited for outdoor work.  If you can get the angle of the sun just right, you can get a fleeting glimpse of the hair-thin lines.

It was a nasty, thankless job, but with no more than a quick final sanding with a long sanding board left to do, we should be ready to move on to step 2 soon.

A Unique Historical Perspective

Through the immense power of the internet and the always helpful peer group of Van's builders, I was alerted to a problem that I didn't even know I had, to wit:

Dave - Good Monday! Was reading your Schmetterling blog over a cup a joe this morning and noticed something you may not be aware of.

The Vans plans don't actually tell you to do this, but the banjo bolt (the bulbous looking shiny fitting coming out of the bottom of the crankcase with the yellow plastic cap) has to be replaced with a flare fitting in order to mate with an oil return line. The fitting and a one page instruction sheet are in the small box of misc engine parts supplied by Rotax - the same box that the wrong fuel pressure sender came in.

I came to a screeching halt a couple of weekends ago trying to figure this out. A Monday morning call to Guss at Vans revealed that Rotax sometimes doesn't install the correct oil fitting for the Vans application, but supplies the fitting and an instruction sheet. Since Vans plans don't specifically tell us to do this, it left me stymied.

You have to drop the muffler to install this fitting and oil line, so don't bother silicone-ing your springs yet!

If you can't find the sheet, let me know. I'll forward it to you.

Also - when you take that yellow plastic cap off, oil will flow! (All over my muffler and nose wheel...!) You've been warned...

Hope this helps!

Well, I knew about the oil, anyway. The rest was surprising news. Upon examination this evening, I did find that my engine did indeed suffer from the presence of an unduly bulbous fitting. The replacement fitting was right there in the box, as predicted, but there was no sign of an instruction sheet.

While I was out there, I thought I'd knock out a couple of pages of work. I would install the knob/cable that will allow the opening and closing of the heater door from inside the cockpit. I will end up having to remove and replace the little panel that the knob mounts to because of the change in panel components brought about by the adoption of the Skyview avionics, but that won't be difficult. The majority of the work of installing the cable is in the mounting of it to the engine mount.

The first step is the fabrication of a firewall grommet. This is one of the weirder things Van's has us do - they have us create a larger diameter hole in the middle of a rubber grommet by using a socket as a die cutter. Basically we just crush the grommet with the socket until "a distinctive crunching sound" is heard. Of course, after the distinctive crushing sound that I heard when a tore the guts out of my vise while I was trying to open the angle at the ends of the longerons, I'm kind of leery about making distinctive crushing sounds with a vise.

Money, you know. It doesn't grow on trees.

And there is the newly widened grommet put safely to bed in the firewall.

I went ahead and ran the cable through. Gee, I hope it's long enough!

Most of its length will get eaten up in the circuitous, serpentine path that it will be taking on its way around the engine and over to the heater door. Nothing is left to just flop around on an airplane, so a cushion clamp is used to hold the cable in place under the panel shelf. I made repeated trips back and forth from the plans to the airplane trying to find the correct hole for the screw. You see, there were three available on the airplane, but the drawing only showed one. I ruled out the one that was too far away from the natural path that the cable wanted to take, leaving a choice of two. But which of the two was the correct one??

It took a very close examination to find the landmark that I was looking for. Ah, there's the other hole!

I remember not too long ago when I was thrilled to actually be able to sit in the airplane. These days, it's the precursor of a difficult job doing something under the panel shelf. Installing this clamp turned out to be easier than I had expected it to be, though.

It was the next one that caused all of the grief. This is one of those cases where the drawing in the manual masks a lot of the true complexity. Look how exposed those clamps are! Piece of cake!

I gathered up the clamps and attaching hardware, along with my extra-special cushion clamp installation tools.

Hey! Where'd all that extra stuff come from! None of that is in the drawing!! This is actually a more open path than I would have had if I hadn't known that I was going to have to remove the muffler anyway. I would have added another hour or so to the job of installed those first clamps just to avoid the five minutes that it took to remove the muffler. Odd, that, but it's just in my nature. I like a challenge! Conversely, I don't like work.

So, back there behind all of that stuff is the cable, patiently awaiting a set of clamps to hold it in place.

Installing that set of clamps was when I realized that building an airplane offers one a truly unique perspective on history. Sure, there's that whole Orville and Wilbur thing going on, but that's not what I'm referring to. No, I'm thinking that building an airplane gives one a unique opportunity to understand the history behind the English language. Case in point: installing these clamps was the precise type of situation that prompted the creation of the word "suck."

"Can you use it in a sentence, please?"

Yes, yes I can.

"Was it fun, educational, life-affirming, and all around rewarding to install those clamps? No, it sucked."

But eventually it was done! (Note the non-conventional orientation of the bolt - usually you try to go from the top down, but that would never have worked.)

There were two more to do, but they were right out in the open with the muffler removed. I found it easier to use the method that I learned with the oil vent hose: install the clamps, then push the hose/cable through.

I'm not sure what the purpose of the metal weave plate is, unless it was just a reminder of the utility of the work "suck." Kinda tricky to get that thing on there, it was.