The TSA Phase...

Hey, remember how I asked you to remind me to tighten up the oil line fittings if I never showed evidence of having done so? Well, you can rest easy. The last couple of work sessions have include some small clean-up jobs. First up was to test the fit of the weather seal stuff that creates a hopefully air tight bond between the cooling duct and the radiator. While it's pretty hard to get the cowl in place with this stuff in place, it certainly does create the required seal.

Once that was done, I was able to remove the lower cowl and set it aside for the next couple of months. That gave me the access needed to tighten the oil lines.

I also cut the length of scat tube that will lead air from the left side cowl inlet to the plenum on top of the engine. One thing that I have learned about scat tube is that it likes to unravel. I now treat the cuts with RTV to keep the inner wire and the outer reinforcement thread from unraveling.

Knowing that the next phase was about to begin, I took a night off to go flying. I headed down south to visit Kyle, Margarita mixer and cymbal polisher for The Jackson Two. I may have mentioned that his RV-12 is flying now, or I may not have. In either case, it is. He has successfully flown off his FAA-mandated five hours of test flights, so can now carry passengers. I can't see any down side at all to having some time in the air in an RV-12 before flying mine, so it was worth a trip down in the RV-6 even if I hadn't needed to return his oil can that I had borrowed for filling my brake lines.

As mentioned in the title of this post, I am about to enter another TSA (Tearing Shi..., uh Stuff Apart) phase of work. I heartily detest these, of course. Removing things that took hours of frustrating effort to install in the first place is hugely annoying. In this case, I need to take out a bunch of stuff that I wouldn't have had to remove if not for the change from the Dynon D-180 to the Dynon Skyview. While this will require quite a bit of backtracking, I think that I will enjoy the result. Just watch this little video I recorded while riding with Kyle; you will be able to see the awesomeness that is the Skyview.



Slick, right? Next time to jump in an airliner, take a look at the panel as you shuffle your way through the door. It will look nothing like that!

To get there will not be easy or pleasant. A lot of the wiring and most of the panel metal will have to be changed. Even the simplest sounding steps are rife with the treat of hair-tugging difficulty. Consider.... "remove the snap bushings." How hard could that be? Well... given that things with wires were pushed trough the bushings to later have big terminal blocks attached to them or multitudinous wires on the other end attached to dozes of places on the other side of the firewall or further aft in the airplane, pretty hard. I'll probably have to cut slots in the sides of the bushings.

Oh, and do you remember the epic battle I engaged in to install the heater door cable? Well, it's no more happy about coming out that it was when going in. It now has a big hook bent into it that is anything but happy about being yanked back through cushion clamps.

The next steps involving drilling out the rivets that hold panel supports in place on the avionics tray. That should be tremendous fun!