Around the World in (many) Days

People often ask "How far can you go in that thing?". Back in October Mike and I had the opportunity to meet a gent who gave the ultimate answer to that question.

Michael Smith started in Melbourne, Australia in March with the intent of reflying the Qantas Empire Flying Boat route of 1938 from Sydney to London. Long story short, he got to London, took a break, and decided to keep going, making it all the way around the world in his custom built SeaRey, Southern Sun.

Michael was taking a break in Seattle when Mike and I were able to meet up with him for breakfast.

Michael continued from Seattle up into Alaska and along the Aleutians, before making an incredible one-stop leg from Adak-Attu-Kushiro. That's 1,680 miles in one day!!!!


I've got a great life, but it's good to see nice guys do even better. Congratulations, Michael, it was a real pleasure meeting you.

..

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!!

I'm not dead yet.... (just been busy)

It's like the beaver said, Life is just one dam thing after another.


The last few years have been good and bad. I've lost more friends due to aviation in the last 2 years than I have in the previous 25, and while my love for flying is unabated, my tolerance for pudknocker pilots has worn thin. It's ok to make mistakes and learn from them, lord knows I've made my share and odds are I'm going to make some in the future, but I've learned to listen and learn from others, and if someone else (experienced pilot or newly minted) isn't willing to do the same, I don't want them in my life anymore.


I took some time to reexamine OspRey last summer, look for things that need updating and worked with PA to identify parts that have changed since my kit was delivered so long ago. It's been funny to occasionally look back at this site and see statements like "She'll fly in 2012... 2013... 2014..." Now I just tell people "She'll fly on Wednesday." without specifying WHICH Wednesday.


First things first. Prior to build OspRey I cut my teeth turning wrenches volunteering at the Heritage Flight Museum, and in late 2009 I participated in the recovery and restoration of a 1950s era F-89 Scorpion. When the museum moved from Bellingham to Skagit/Bayview Airport a few years ago, the F-89 was taken apart again and moved, and while she was in pieces Hal and his crew had her painted. When it was time to put Humpty back together again, Hal "got the band back together" and gave me a call to help.

Think there's a lot of bolts in the SeaRey? Check the wing of the -89 out. Very little clearance in the wing, we had to have custom wrenches machined, and you could only make 1/16 of a turn at a time before you had to reset the wrenches. (I don't remember how many bolts there are, but there are a lot!!) Luckily, the weather was nice once it warmed up, and once we got the critical underwing bolts in we were able to relax, sit in the sun, and leisurely tighten the nuts.

She looks very pretty now. I understand the museum is having some mock Genie missiles fabricated for her pylons, and we might be getting the band back together one more time this summer.

In December the maintenance hangar at Bellingham was sold, and the entire operation has moved to Skagit. It was rather eerie to stand inside the empty space, hear the echoes of good times there and lessons I learned.

Thanks to Bill, Alan, Greg, JR, Hal, Charlotte, Mike, Einar, Eric, and all the others who let me work on their airplanes, and patiently suffered my travel up the learning curve of becoming a mechanic.

Do you want to touch me?

Got a very nice email from Dynon tech support just before Sun n Fun telling me I could trade in my SV-D1000 for a brand new (instead of remanufactured) SV-D1000 Touch. Got the old unit off just before I left...

and the new one was waiting for me when I got home. 

Huge difference in the man-machine interface. I'm really going to enjoy this unit now.

Aside from that, I've just been washing parts, getting them ready for painting this summer.

Remember when....

I've been doing a lot of cleanup in the shop the last week, no sense posting photos of me pushing a broom around. The paint booth won't be ready until mid-June, so I've been going over things that I've always meant to get back to improving or finishing or making better, mixing them in with the things that have to be done to get her flying this year, and trying to come up with a plan. We're getting there....


A special moment yesterday. Leaving for Osaka our flight plan followed the coastline north up to Pt. Arena before turning westbound. In the foreground is Dillion Beach, where I had my first solo in a red and yellow Wills Wing Super Lancer hang glider named Betsy in 1987, in the distance is Bodega Bay, where I waited tables at night for 10 years while I chased the dream. Never in my wildest fantasies did I ever think I'd see it all from a brand new 787 at FL380.
 

 

It's good to be back home again

Einar's been terrific about letting OspRey live at his shop for the last year while Giuliana and I moved, but now that we're settled in and the hangar is empty again, it's time to give him back his shop. 

 

It's good to be home again. The bad thing is that the laser strike to my eye last year has left it a little sensitive to light, I can operate fine but while cleaning the hangar I found that if I spent too much time under the bright fluorescents my eye would start to hurt. A hat helps a lot, so I'll be wearing a hat in the shop from now on. 

Ending and beginning

Made my final landing in the 77 last week. I told the Captain that if I bounced it I was going to go around, I was only semi-joking. I started my airline career in August 1996 as an ATR First Officer in Newark, I was on the 77 for 8 years, and I don't know what I'll miss more: flying out of Newark and getting to interact with the NY TRACON controllers, or flying the 77. But I'm coming back to the Bay Area where I grew up dreaming of being a pilot, and you can go home again.

2 days later I was in training. This is the BASIC trainer for the 78, a long way from the days of plywood mockups we used to start out in. 

I'm an analog guy in a digital world. Upper left computer is displaying today's computer based training (CBT) module, bottom left is the Aircraft Operating Manual on our company issued iPad, bottom right is my computer that I'm taking notes on. I really miss getting to mark up a paper manual. 

Kitplanes visits the Rotax factory

Keeping with our powerplant theme, Kitplanes Magazine recently paid a visit to the Rotax factory, good look at this uniqure company and engine.

Final day, and more examples of lead poisioning in an engine.

HI-ho, Hi-ho, it's back to work we go.... First you pull off the intake manifold.(The safety glasses not only indulge my paranoid side about my eyes, but they've also got "cheaters" built-in, so it takes care of two birds at once.)

Then the heads come off, followed by the cylinders. 

If you really dig into the engine you get to look at the pushrod lifters. 

Ever stick a screwdriver into the spark plug hole to see if the cylinder is at TDC?  Here's what you're doing to the piston when you do.

 Compare the 912 cylinder (L) to the 912S cylinder (R). Wider cylinder, more compression, etc. Also higher strung.

Here's something cool, the evolution of the Rotax cylinders can be seen in this comparison between the old one on the right, and a newer one on the left. Can you tell the difference? It's very subtle. (The older versions have a sharp edged depression in the cylinder head, the new versions have a rounded head. Rotax found the sharp edge tended to trap lead, leading to hotspots and wear, and uneven combustion, among other things. Neat how such subtle things have such a big effect.)

Rings around the piston.

a pocket for the oil.

Now put it all back together. A cool thing about the engine is that there's very little that can be/needs to be adjusted. The timing is set by the triggers on the flywheel/rotor, the valves are set by the tolerances of the pieces themselves. Being an old Lycoming and Continental guy and having listened to too many urban legends and hearsay, I went into the class with some reservations about the engine, but after listening to the explanations about how the engine was developed, how it's manufactured and seeing how the systems work, I've gone into full on Kool-aid Rotax drinker mode. Still don't like having to balance the carbs, but I can always fly up to Rotec to let them do it. Good excuse for a cross country. 

Note the lip of the combustion area, just above the exhaust valve. See the pitting? Lead deposits creating hotspots, leading to pitting of the aluminum caused it.

A newer cylinder showing the same signs of fouling above the spark plug.

And some graphic examples of old cylinders. The one on the left is showing heavy lead deposits and ring fouling after 750 hours of running on 100LL and no Decalin. The cylinder on the right is after 2,000 hours, with the lead cleaned off the top but the rings are completly fouled and immovable.

Here's a best case scenario: 2,000 hours of 100LL and Decalin. The head is fouled but at least the rings are fairly free.

The heads are liquid cooled and (fairly) easily come off and apart, but shouldn't need to be removed in a normal, well maintained engine run on Mogas.

The front fell off. We had some extra time and even disassembled the gear box.

Rotec Canada. Small, efficient office and shop in a beautiful location, they even do video production in-house.