Thank you Dr. King, Thank you Abe Lincoln!

My dad would have been in a good mood today. The Republican that he was, born a Quaker and growing up in the shadow of the Levi Coffin House (I think it used to belong to a relative at one time - here's a list of Indiana Macy's who operated the underground railroad), he would be talking of Abe Lincoln, the Underground Railroad that his hometown enabled and how proud he was to serve his country for over 40 years combined as an enlisted man in WWII and later for ~ 40 years as a US DOD civil service employee mostly stationed overseas. These days, when I seemingly randomely think of my dad, I tend to remember him as the old man who ran the electrical and fabrication shop on the flightline at Lajes Field Air Force Base, the Azores, Portugal when I was a kid. I still remember the young GIs using metal brakes and such to make parts out of aluminum to patch up the old transport planes that passed through there. These were the days before the C-141 pretty much took over all the day to day long haul heavy loads. You could still see piston powered planes on the ramp daily like the C-124 and C-118.

No surprise I "volunteered" to be the parent to stay home with the kids today who have the day off on account of MLK holiday and turned the day into an airplane project day. It was WAAYYY too cold to fly. A bottle of water I left in the plane was frozen solid. Aaron took all the screws out that held the rear baggage compartment together and we came right back home with the rear shelf. I spent the rest of the day doing what I used to do hours on end for years on end, fabricate aircraft parts.

I modded the rear shelf so that I can open it up anytime to access the battery and the elevator bellcrank assembly. It should be standard RV-8 design and many others have done this mod already. It was fun and I forgot how tiring this type of work actually is and what a hell of a mess I could make in the basement in no time at all. Here's all you get for hours of trouble.

When Hell Freezes Over, or maybe just to Vermont and back...

This is what Southern Vermont/Albany NY area looked like today. Compared to the greater Philly area, Winters are serious up there I can tell! After the snowiest December on record, so they said, there was still a bunch of it on the ground and the areas where it melted the frozen ground seemed to keep it from weeping into the ground and instead areas were flooded. Looked like pictures of Holland or something like that. We new we Philly boys were cold weather light-weights when one or two of the locals were walking around the airport in T-shirts while I was digging for my top jacket as soon as I crawled out of my plane! Dale, Doug, Rob and I flew up there to pick up Dale and Rob's RV-7A from J&M Aviation. The 2 week paint job quote turned into an 8 week 'ordeal' for robdale. They missed some fantastic Thanksgiving through Christmas flying weather so they were bummin'. They also had some expectation/price squabble issues. They were quoted 4500 plus a couple hundred extra for the pearl paint they decided later they wanted. The bill they got today was $6900. Quite a shock. After negotiations I think the out the door final bill was $6100. That's around the quote I was 'tentatively' given but still no final word for me since he wanted to think about it some more. Sigh. Well robdale's painted plane did look nice. Rob did the test flight and complained of some bad elevator and aileron shock in slow flight/flare attitude. Turned out they didn't install the wing root fairing/rubber seal and the turbulence through there was a real eye-opener for Rob. Once we all finally got ready to leave, Rob had to turnaround and land do to fuel pouring out of a wing tank cap that just wasn't sealing right. Exciting day all around. Don't worry, everyone eventually got their planes home and I don't think Rob even chipped any of the paint yet on the new RV. There's always tomorrow...but it is obvious that there's habits that develop that will have to change to protect the finish. I can't show you the scenery where we were flying a couple hundred feet between mountain tops and cloud bottoms. A plane like and RV gives one a false sense of near invulnerability and makes one too brave at times I think. What looked like was going to be just a few minute of fun flying turned into more of an adventure than we wanted and the clouds kept getting lower or each new wave of mountains larger. Anyway, the turbulence of the wind over the mountain tops made it all but impossible at times to even tune a radio. The blurry pictures below are from today and what it felt like sometimes. Anyway, we took the long way back around the mountains and the total flight time was exactly the same according to my GPS. Fun, really. We're sickos but our wives still love us. Usually.

York Fly-out

Yesterday was just one of those days that turns out better than if you had tried to plan it. Got up early and took GA newbie George Johnson to York PA with me for our first 2008 EAA 240 fly out. George got to fly Cirrus chase from the back of the '8 by following Mike, Jim, Jeff and Harv in the spaceship one Cirrus. That sucker is loaded but it kept up with the '8 fine in cruise. Below you can see the star wars panel making it too easy for Mike to line up his strafing run on the unsuspecting farm house located off the end of runway 31 at York. Mike pretended to overshoot the runway to achieve this optimal angle of attack.

I'm pretty sure that's what they said because if anyone knew how much processing power that plane had they'd never believe anyone flying it could ever fly a less than perfect pattern. No way. After a filling breakfast and dropping George off at New Garden, I flew to Wilmington and snuggled the '8 into Rich Zeidman's toasty hangar where Matt Noto, Rich and I did some progressive conditional inspection checks on his RV-7 and my RV-8. My cylinder leak check results were good and no one get whacked by a runaway blade in the process. Later that evening it was on to Media to meet Rich and Pat for dinner and drinks.

New Year's resolution leads to a balanced life.

Heck, it was only 20 degrees with slight winds so with balmy conditions like that Christine and I headed to Lancaster airport so we could pay $265 to hangout on the ramp periodically running up the engine to hurricane force winds (talk about wind chill!) while patient Mark from Sensenich prop services fiddled with small weights on the starting ring. Before the balancing act there were times when I'd try to cruise at 23 squared but the noise and vibration just wasn't nice so I often cruised with settings above 2350. Well, after over an hour of tinkering between 2500 and 2300 RPM readings on his computer, we settled on minimizing the IPS at 2300 RPM and hit a home run. Below are the results on paper and on the flight home I cruised at 2300 squared and enjoyed it for the first time in this plane. What a difference. I think I could even start to tell the difference while taxiing but I definately could in the air. Glad I kept the only NYs resolution I've ever remember making! If you haven't done this yet to your homebuilt, DO IT SOON!

We did some catching up!

Christmas 2007 was great! My sister and her family were in town from Las Vegas and the weather was fantastic so got some flights in with the RV-8. That included flying my brother-in-law Mike Lim, friend Mike McGlade and Rachel's boyfriend Jackson for their first ever RV/small GA plane flights. That's always extra rewarding, taking up newbies and giving them the stick. I'm still off work! Spending time learning Perl and finalizing my RV8 paint scheme. Naturally Christine and I don't like the same paint schemes as "the best" but there's a middle ground I'm warming up to....but I'm not letting the cat out of the bag just yet.

Here's Christine, Brady, Rachel and Joshua hamming it up! Those boys are just too much fun. We'd like to steal them for a couple of years.