Deja Stab

About a year after Osp was delivered PA determined that the fin and rudder needed reinforcing, and sent me a kit with oversleeves to be riveted over the existing tubing.

Further testing determined the oversleeves were not necessary, but by this time I had already installed them. The SeaRey LSA/X is a little porker, a kit that used to come in under 900# often now weighs in the 1,000# range, leaving a small payload envelope to stay below the 1,435# max weight for an amphib. In addition, the SeaRey has a long tail moment and a short nose, meaning any excess weight in the tail requires more to compensate in the nose. Removing them would have left the structure weakened as a result of the holes I had drilled, so I was caught in a Catch-22.

After debating it, I decided to go ahead and acquire new stab frames, and while I was at it I acquired the new Friese ailerons. I'll fly Osp with the "Classic" ailerons, then switch to the newer ones at a date in the future if I want. By building them now I'd be able to paint everything at once and match the paint.

We've been there and done this before, but boiled linseed oil is still a sticky mess to apply and clean up.

Prep the hangar...

 and review old photos about previous assembly/covering days.

I really had to take a breath and ask myself if I wanted to do this again, if it was worth saving the weight. A quick slice of a knife ended the debate. 

That's a lot of junk off a single stab. 

A beat up hangar scale showed just under 2# removed, I stopped at the post office on the way home and got a more accurate reading of 2.1#/side, leading to a 4.2# weight removal from the tail, and saving an undetermined amount of weight I would have needed to add to the nose to counter the oversleeves. Worth it.

A long time ago...

It's not the years, it's the (s)miles.

Covering is FUN!!

Rust never sleeps

Thanks to Dan Nickens for the suggestion, I'm giving the control cables and bolts a coat of Black Bear par-al-ketone. It's also IAW AC  43.13-1B, part 6-206-208

Remember that problem with the cluster brackets I was having last year, when they were bent incorrectly and too tight for the aft root tube support? I knew the new ones were wide enough to let the support drop in, but I should have put a bolt in and checked out the longitudinal alignment....

It's only a few degrees misaligned and can be pulled into position, but it's the idea of having to...

little here, a little there... and an EVA.

Had a bit of time home and managed a few more things.

(December 2012 note: after spending time assembling the Batterman tailwheel system, I decided to go back to the stock garage door spring retract system. I was getting away from the philosophy of KISS (Keep It Simple and Standard) for my first build, and it was pointed out that is something went wrong when I was on the road, would I have the tools and expertise to fix it? Or would I feel more comfortable having Renee FedEx me new parts for PA? So while Eric had designed an elegant system, I decided to trade the parts with another, more experienced builder. Sometimes "good enough: is enough.)

With the help of some friends we set up the Batterman tailwheel retract modification. We spent a lazy day rigging, debating, undoing and redoing it. But at the end of the day when I hooked up the battery the damn thing worked on the first try.

It's not final, I want to tweak it a little but it's a big load off my mind.


With help from my minions I rearranged the hangar and tucked the wings away until next summer, when I hope to cover them, and brought the hull up front to begin prepping it for installation of the frame.

Corrosion is the airplane's enemy, so I took the tail apart and sprayed the boom tube with zinc chromate for another layer of anticorrosion.

I also took the fuel tank home, screwed the brass fittings in with some Loctite 592, and after a few days to set I put 5 gallons of gas into it for a leak check. I'll let it sit while I'm on this trip.

****note******
Adding the reinforcing rails was another one of those times where I should not have believed everything I read on the web. DO NOT add them, they're in the way of the hull/frame mate and also totally unnecessary. I've left this entry in the blog for history, and to warn others not to repeat my mistakes.

I've been perusing another builder's blog, he suggested adding some bracing to the side of the hull where the cockpit is. Sounded good to me.

Something kept niggling at the back of my head while I was doing the glassing. The next day I went "D'oh!!!!" The railing for the canopies sits on the top and extends down into the hull Sure enough, when I measured it I found I had put the brace too high up. 

The rest of the day was spent carefully using a chisel, motor tool, and sand paper to cut a notch for the railing out. No big deal, but while I was doing it I was terrified of slipping and going through the hull. Luckily I didn't. One hull repair was enough.

A fine gent named Terry Dunn works for a NASA contractor at the Johnson Space Center, and like me is a contributing writer for Fly RC magazine. He mentioned that if I was ever in Houston I should give him a call, so after my recurrent landing currency sim last week Fly RC editor Thayer Syme, his family and myself descended on Terry.

Thayer was a student of mine when I was a starving CFI back in the early '90s, and with his background he was one of those students I didn't teach so much as guide. (He loves to recollect about the times I used to fall alseep while he was doing landings.) Before going to JSC Thayer met me at the training center of the airline I work for, and it was one of those times I was able to close a circle as I showed him, his wife Ann, and young Gryffin around.

As it happened, the techs were testing the new 787 sim and we were allowed to peek in.

One of them looked back and saw Gryffin. They suddenly decided they needed to take a break from testing and the next thing I knew....

 

That's a long way from our Cessna 152, Thayer. 

Father and son. 

Of course, that was just a warmup for the next day. Terry was kind enough to take us on a tour of his workplace at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab where the astronauts train for EVAs (spacewalks) on the ISS. Yes, that's a full sized replica of the ISS inside a huge pool.

Regretfully, the full motion sims were long gone, but we were able to get to see the mockups facility where the astronauts trained.

Damn, that's small...

Inside the Shuttle mockup trainer. (image above)

I don't think the 787 was as impressive.:-)

Mom and Dad flying, Gryffin in the flight engineer seat.

Of course I'm going to sit in the left seat (and dream.). One time I was not going to be modest.

The last MCC used for the Shuttle. 

Lest we forget.