Nothing like "hands on" to really understand something.

Gives me flashbacks to when I was a kid and Dad gave me a screwdriver and a cast metal airplane, that kept me occupied for days and started my love of working with my hands. I think I wore that thing out taking it apart and putting it back together again.

 

Wait- where are the green, blue and purple parts?

Always fun doing it with a friend.  Mike, another gent, and I are the only homebuilders in the class, the other 7 are professional mechanics sent here by their companies.

Success. Before we started the teardown I was completely lost about how the Bing carb worked, not a word he said during the formal class made sense to me and I didn't want to slow the class down. I went to the instructor during the break, and asked him to explain it in simple "Damn it, Jim, I'm a pilot, not a mechanic." terms. A few minutes later he had explained it to me in a completely different way, the light went on, and I understood it. The mark of a good instructor.

..

Suck, squeeze, blow, go. How does the magic happen?

I've got some time off this month, and the house stuff is (finally!!) winding down, so in preparation for getting my engine next year I've escaped for a week to attend a Rotax Service and Maintenance course at Rotech Flight Safety in Vernon, BC.

Beautiful drive up there from Bellingham to Vernon. Hope to fly it sometime. About 6 hours to drive, bet OspRey could do it faster.

Tea, camera, highlighter, note pad. Back to school, Giuliana even packed me a lunch.

Small class size ensures attention. This is something I miss at the airline, our ground schools are now taught via CBTs, which are good for repeating things you're not certain of, or making your own schedule. But you lose the interaction of bouncing questions off the instructor, or hearing someone else explain something better than you understand it. More than once today another student struggled with the same problem I was having, and listening to them I was able to grasp it better. Hopefully I returned the favor with something they struggled with. 

 Hands-on learning is encouraged, there are several engines and lots of parts to look at and play with.

 

Can't say enough about the instructor, Mike. It's easy to know how something works. To teach it, that's a whole 'nother skill.

...

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....