Delayed again, but.....

Bachelor pad sold, new house bought, year going well. What could happen?

I grew up in Alameda, CA, and read "Fate is the Hunter" for the first time when I was a kid.  In the mid-80s I learned to fly hang gliders at Dillon Beach, moved on to fixed wing aircraft, and built my time in Santa Rosa and Petaluma. Like Ernie Gann, I started my flying career at Newark Airport and for the last 17 years I've been based there, dodging Fate and learning about flying, and myself.

Recently, my company announced that they were opening a 787 base in San Francisco. When the results came out I was holding a position, and will leave soon for training. I'm going to miss the challenges of flying out of Newark, but after 12 years of commuting from Seattle the 6 hour flight each way has suddenly gotten old this last year.

25 years after my second "first solo"*, I'm coming home...

*Pilots always remember their first solo, the first time they flew an airplane without an instructor. While I solo'd a Piper Tomahawk in October 1989, I consider that my true "first solo" was my first lesson in a hang glider, when I flew a Super Lancer named Betsy by myself. Thanks, Everett.

Gone west....

When a person died in ancient Egypt, their heart was weighed against the feather of truth. If your heart was lighter than the feather, it meant you had lived a good life and could pass on to the Afterlife.

Less than 24 hours after sending this photo, my friend Ken Berger passed on to the Afterlife.

I'll miss you, my friend.

Last gap

Spring, and a young man's dreams to to airplanes. (and with one house sold, he gets a day or two to relax....)

The last thing to do is the stab/fin gap seals, which means reattaching the stabs. Had I known I could have done all this last year when I had everything set up in the hangar, but we were also racing the weather to get the airplane over to Einar's. (BTW, the wings in the background are covered with some cheap sheets I pickup up at the Salvation Army, so even though they're getting direct sunlight on them they're protected from UV damage.)

Test fit the seal with the weather stripping on, and mark.

The "steampunk" reinforcing mods for the stab got marked so I didn't drill into their rivets. Ironically, I recently learned from PA that the reinforcing sleeves were not needed, but they never told us. Had they told me in time they might have caught me before I mounted them, saving some weight. The lack of communication from PA has been one of the most frustrating parts of this build.

As with the other seals, it's all about the alignment. It will probably never be noticed if a seal doesn't perfectly align with a stab, but I'll know, and if there's time to do it, there's time to do it right.

As in the final stages of mounting the aileron gap seals, I did the corners, then filled in the rest afterward.

Here you get a better look at the offset I had to do so I would not drill into the reinforcements. I'll have to get some longer rivets in this area, too.

Mirror, mirror, on the bench. Why do it twice when you can copy the first?

 
And Yes, it's been a pain to remove the Sharpie marks from the painted areas after drilling. Be warned!

Remember to cauterize the holes in the covering after you're done drilling them.

That's not a SeaRey!!!

No it's not, but it explains why I haven't been working on my plane. My house is almost sold, and while OspRey is at Einar's shop we're using my hangar for storage. Stay tuned.....

Illusions 2: The Adventures of a Reluctant Student, by Richard Bach

In 2012 Richard Bach suffered a near-fatal mishap while flying his SeaRey, Puff, and in "Illusions 2: The Adventures of a Reluctant Student" he tells about it, including the visit SeaRey Specialist Jim Ratte made to see what it would take to bring Puff back into the air.
 

 

Closing the gaps

A few years ago my airline underwent a merger with another one, and I spent a lot of time on the airplane last year waiting for the dust to settle. With Jim's help I got far more done than I dreamed, but now that the merger is over and I know my job is secure, the priority for this year is finding a home for Giuliana and I.


Einar has some projects he needs to do in the big shop, and we've moved OspRey from the paint shop into his home garage.

First he put his welding talents to use repairing a horse trailer for a local charity. Painting the trailer also allowed him to start using the paint booth and get a feel for the changes he was going to have to make to make it fully useable for painting the SeaRey.

I'm working on the airplane as I can, and with Osp settled into her new digs I was able to complete the aileron gap seal on the right wing.

 A couple days later I got the rudder gap seal done. A LOT easier to do than the ailerons and flaps!

A few weeks later I had a nice block of days off, and I had planned on some quality time in the shop finishing up the gap seals. Nature had other plans, though, and I ended up miserably sick for almost the entire time. Wasn't a total waste since Bellingham got hit by a blizzard at the same time.
 

An old trick from model airplanes, blocking up the trailing edge of the elevator before starting the gap seals.

Hard to see in these images, but one thing I was being anal about was getting the gap seals even so they don't bulge enevenly upward (top), but instead line up nicely (bottom).

Something else I tried was to just pin the top edges of the gap seal, then pin the bottom before drilling/clecoing all the holes in-between. It worked fine, but I'm not sure one method is better than another.

Next day I came back out and did the left elevator. Since it's a kitplane by an amateur builder, there's bound to be some variation between the left and right side, but fitting the right hand gap seals onto the left elevator showed that the fit was acceptable, and I was able to use them as a template.

I decided just pinning the top and bottom corners was the easiest method after all

Off to work for a few days, going to snow again while I'm gone. I think my garden is going to be nothing but frostbitten stumps this spring....

Congratulations to Progressive Aerodyne on the final certificaion of the SeaRey!!

Just back from the Sebring Sport Aviation Expo, sponsored by Progressive Aerodyne. Progressive Aerodyne announced the completion of testing and certification of the Searey Elite, the 914 version of the Searey Light Sport Amphibian.

It's been a long journey since Progressive Aerodyne announced that the SeaRey was going to be brought to LSA standards and I signed my contract in September 2009, and I am very happy for them.

Jetlag therapy

Remember all that time off I had this summer, when it seemed like I was constantly working on the airplane? It's payback time, and since mid-November I've only been home a couple days at a stretch. Jetlag is cumulative, but recovery is helped by doing something you love (like working on an airplane) and I've learned to gauge my fatigue by starting with small projects and seeing how the day goes from there. Some days it's all I can do just to come out and sweep the hangar, other days start easy and by the end I'm into a complex project.

I'm home for a long pre-Christmas trip stretch, with Sparky at work I came out to do some simple things. PA uses some #10x3/4" machine screws to hold the side rails in place, and probably no one else will notice but I thought they looked disproportionately long so I ordered some #10x5/8" ones. Replacing them was the perfect job for a jetlag day, and you can see the difference here.

I was starting to feel better, and finished something I started when I was rewiring the electrical system for the new radio. The Dynon system is updated via a USB port, and Approach wires a USB pigtail into the harness. I added an extension to it, and put a layer of heat shrink over the connection to hold it together.

After that I (carefully) used a grinder to cut a slot into the instrument panel L-brace, and screwed it in place. 

This allows me to hide the USB port but get easy access for updates.

Feeling good and in a groove, I finished the gap seal on the right flap. Hopefully I'll get to the aileron gap seal tomorrow.

Oh, by the way. How 'bout them Seahawks?

 

Mind the gap.

When we moved into Einar's shop, he asked me when I would be ready to paint. About a week, I replied.

Boy, was I wrong.


Ailerons, flaps, rudder, elevators and stabs all have gap seals, and I decided to fit the gap seals to everything before painting so that I wouldn't have to worry about scratching the paint while mounting them. While the latest round of assembly manual updates (posted on the builder run support site in March 2013) had information about the gap seals for the tail feathers, there was nothing for the ailerons or flaps except for a single sketchy page from the Classic manual for the flaps. I emailed PA asking for any updates, but there's been no response, so I was on my own. ("think of those who went through it before you, and say to yourself, 'What they could do, I can do.'")


I could have done the gaps seals back at my hangar when I had everything set up after completing the covering, but I wanted to get everything tucked away at Einar's before the bad weather hit, and later you'll see how good a call that was.

First, scrap wood clamped the aileron to the wingtip to line them up. 

Luckily, mi amigos came through and told me to set up the aileron gap seals so there was 1/8" space between the wing trailing edge and the seal. I set them up so the cutout in the outer gap seal was centered on the hinge, then drilled the tangent of the aileron leading edge tube and the gap seal on each end of the top.

Then I crawled under and did the same for the bottom. 

Unmounting the seal, I used the 2.5" rivet spacing from the elevators and rudder gap seal mounting instructions for the aileron gap seal, and drilled 1/8" holes for the AN4-2 rivets I'll use later.

Remounting the seal to the aileron, I drilled the top and bottom of the leading edge, then repeated the process for the inner gap seal.

Poor thing looked like a pincushion by the time I was done. 

For some reason the flap gap seals are shorter than the aileron gap seals, and there's no way to get the same 1/8" spacing as on the other control surfaces. However, on the flaps in addition to the rounded gap seal there's a flat piece over the top of that, so getting the 1/8" spacing is not as critical. Since I was unable to set the 1/8" spacing I just mounted the trailing edge of the gap seal to the leading edge of the flap, allowing room for proper rivet spacing.

Since I wasn't worried about setting a spacing for the wing-gap seal, I was able to do all this on the workbench. 

 

Just to be sure, though, I drilled the initial bottom holes with the flap mounted on the wing. Yes, I'm wearing a headlamp, they do come in handy after all.

It took almost all of Einar's clecos to do the gap seals.

After I finished the left wing Einar helped me swap wings onto/off the stands, and I started on the right wing. I was able to reference the left wing flap, and it went quickly.

The inner edge of the flap gap seal is supposed to be supported by a Flap Gap Seal Support, but looking at photos of other SeaReys I could see this part was buried under the engine mount, and the gap seal served no aerodynamic function inboard of the flap root. In fact, I noted that many builders had trimmed their gap seals to end at the root of the flap. Made sense to me, so I did the same.

This meant a quick run to my hangar, since my bandsaw is set up with a metal cutting blade. It also reminded me why I wanted to get the wings to Einar's and out of my unheated hangar. 

The stack of scrap wood is all that remains of the dolly the hull used to rest on. 

Nailed the cut on the first try on both sides.

The real proof of my work, taking the clecos off and seeing how I did lining up on the aileron/flap leading edge tube. Not bad at all. Later I'll go back over all the holes with the soldering iron to seal the fabric.

Next will be the left aileron, then the tail feathers. THEN we might be ready to paint.