Oil Changed

 

Last night we had a huge storm go through so I changed the oil while it poured outside.  It was so noisy in the hangar you could hardly hear yourself think.

After flying the other day I left the plane with the oil draining into a jug.  A one gallon jug setting on a stool allowed the quick drain tube to stick into the jug a couple inches.

The oil screen was free of any metal so we're good for another 20-30 hours flying.  No flying today. Gusts are forecast at 35-40 MPH.

Got Lost Flying

 Yesterday evening was clear with a light southeast breeze so I head south toward my brother-in-law's farm near Kents Store, about 30 miles.

Fall colors are starting to change.  On the ground it looks like we're into fall colors, not so much from the air.

Below, Under the tip of the spreader bar is one of 2 quarries in the US which mine Vermiculite.

I hadn't seen this huge Solar Farm before, in front of the wire on the right wing.  It's about 5 miles west of the town of Louisa, which is under the spreader bar on the left wing.

After flying about 1/2 hour I realized I was over a school and I didn't have a clue where exactly I was, but I was east of where I should have been.  I could see the water tower at Louisa so I just headed back northwest and on to Gordonsville.

Here's the aerial image from Google Earth.  The school turned out to be Jouette Elementary school, lower right, way east of Mike's farm on Four Winds Lane, lower left.  Louisa is in the middle at the top.

Gordonsville basically northwest from Jouette school.  I'll do this properly another day.

A Nice Evening Flying Around Southwest Mountain and Charlottesville

 

Friday evening it was 67 degrees, overcast with the ceiling at about 8,000 feet, and dead calm air.  A perfect evening to go flying.

I'm looking down Southwest Mountain, which runs from southwest of  Gordonsville to the east side of Charlottesville, about 20 miles long.

Route 33 runs west from Gordonsville around the end of Southwest Mt.  The first town west is Barboursville, where route 20 crosses 33.

In the distance are the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Everything around here runs from southwest to northeast.  It takes a while to remember the mountains are not north south.

The thin horizontal line above the spreader bar is Charlottesville Airport.

Today Charlottesville starts along Route 29 for several miles before you reach the city proper.

The city of Charlottesville is the biggest town for about 50-60 miles around.

I'm going around the southern end of Southwest Mt.

There is some flat open ground that the city is growing into and then the mountain returns as Monticello Mountain and behind it for several miles is Carters Mountain, nice orchard on top.

Interstate 64 and the Rivanna River run east west through this flat area, past a quarry which seems to be getting much deeper every time I fly over it.

The arrow points to Mr. Jefferson's home Monticello (Little Mountain).

The stripe through the trees is for power lines.  Interstate highways, power lines and pipe lines have gaps in the trees which make navigating around here much easier, if you use charts instead of GPS.

Heading back northeast, to Gordonsville, on the other side of Southwest Mt.

Still waiting for fall colors.

Spruce To Rebuild The Monoplane Wings For Fly Baby

 In January 2020, pre-Covid, I found one of my rear spar blanks for my 1926 WACO NINE project was defective.  I also drilled a hole in the wrong place on another rear spar,  I ordered 2 new spars from Aircraft Spruce, not realizing 1 1/2 years later they wouldn't even be able to give me an expected date for them to have spar quality spruce.  While I was at the Antique Fly-in, Blakesburg 2021, a fellow Fly Baby builder, Kurt Gubert told me about an old lumber yard in Detroit who had some spruce that might work for my WACO spars and a new set of monoplane wings for our Fly Baby

Our Fly Baby is currently a Biplane, but it's licensed to switch to Monoplane wings, or back, with a log book entry.  Unfortunately the wings were ruined in a hangar fire years ago.  One of my projects is to rebuild the wings, but I need more spruce.  I want the monoplane wings because it's easier to trailer to events.  The monoplane wings fold or unfold in about 5 minutes.  That was the reason Fly Baby won the EAA design contest back in 1960.  The biplane wings take at least an hour each way.

Before you get crazy, Sitka Spruce is a small part of the several woods they stock and it has not been Certified as spar quality wood, that's up to you to resolve.  A good reference is ANC-19, Wood Aircraft Inspection and Fabrication.

That lumber yard is Public Lumber.  They've been there since 1927.

They're at 7 mile and I-75.  I took the picture of their store form the other side of 7 Mile Rd.  Look to the left 90 degrees and there is the entrance ramp to I-75 northbound.  It is in Detroit, in a residential neighborhood.  I met Craig and Tom, both super to work with.

It's a real lumberyard and full-service millwork facility, the smell of fresh wood, and the sounds of cutting and milling.  They even make their own custom cutters for their millwork.  People after my own heart

The spruce is in the lower bay of the rack at the left of this picture.  The boards are rough saw, 2" thick, 6" - 12" wide and mostly 16' - 20' long.  

They left me to sort out what I wanted.  The aisle is about 12' wide so it takes some thought to pull boards all the way out.  I had a great time examining and restacking boards.  I believe I found enough wood to make my WACO Spars and rebuild the Monoplane wings for our Fly Baby.  It was very fairly priced and I was dancing happy when I left.

It was cool when I got there.  As I worked and warmed up I took off my sweater, Christmas present from my wife.  I left it setting in the bay above the spruce with a tape measure I found laying under the rack.

I went on from there to visit my parents up by Flint.  The next morning I realized I'd forgotten the sweater.  Tom boxed it up and shipped it to me.  Thanks Tom for saving me from some serious dog house time.

I borrowed my son's Transit van to pull the Fly Baby trailer.  It's much nicer than my 24 year old Chevy van with 355,000 miles.

The weather was sunny and dry so I didn't worry about protecting the wood from the weather.  It all stayed strapped down and towed very well.

The round trip was almost 1,700 miles, well worth it.

The wood is safely home in my attic workshop.  

The next step is to pick out boards for the WACO spars.  Then the scary part, cutting them up.  Once I have the WACO wings done I'll start on the Fly Baby wings.

Computer Hard Drive Died - We're Back

 I got behind posting things and then the hard drive on my computer died.  Dell sent me a new drive, which sat in New Jersey for a day because of airplane problems.  Then it took over a week to reload 250K files form Carbonite.  After 3 days I hardwired the computer to the router, which tripled the download speed.  The rest of that week was spent re-installing software.

Last week we visited the grand kids, always fun.  I'm finally back writing and will use this post to get caught up to date.

First thing, I have another flight review story.  Four years ago I was at the American WACO Club fly-in at Creve Coeur, Mo. and John Ricciotti offered a ride in his 400 HP, 1934 WACO S3HD.  Of course the answer was yes.  Saturday morning I almost missed my ride because I wanted to drive by the local Catholic church so I would know where I was going, and how long it would take to get there for the 5 pm Mass, at the end of the day.  I made it in the nick of time and got my much cherished ride.

As we were taxing out I told him how much I appreciated it since I had been grounded while I waited for my FAA Medical to be approved, due to a kidney stone New Years Eve.  As it turned out my medical was in the mail the afternoon before I left for the fly-in, yea. He commented that my BFR must have expired.  Yup.  Would you like to do it? YES!  What a wonderful plane to fly, power on & off stalls, lazy 8s and more.  All the way to the first landing I'm thinking any second he's going to change his mind about letting me land this, from this nearly blind rear cockpit.  Actually the view wasn't that much worse than my Cabin WACO, in which I had over 500 landings, and I did fine.

What a treat.  We then did an hour of excellent ground review work for the best BFR ever.  Thanks John!

But that wasn't the end of an amazing day.  At 4:30 I closed my sales tent and jumped in my van heading to 5 pm Mass. As I pulled out of the airport the radio was playing something boring, so I hit the seek button and then got busy driving.  The radio stopped on the Catholic channel.  I knew it existed on cable but had no idea it was on the radio.  I was too busy with traffic to change it when on came the announcer talking with a young fellow who had converted to be a Catholic, and was asking about how to get his family interested in converting.  The announcer went into a story of how he and his whole family were Catholic haters and had all become Catholics, his brother had even become a priest.  

Well, now I'm listening!  I've heard this story dozens of times from his brother who is our parish priest, Father Staples.  At the same moment I'm listening to him help this young convert, my wife was receiving communion from his brother at our parish back in Virginia.  As I pulled into the church parking lot the show ended and yes it was Tim Staples, our priest's brother who lives in California.

The extra couple minutes to locate the church in the morning turned this into one of the most amazing and blessed days ever.  

My Flight Review and the annual Condition Inspection of the airplane both expired at the end of July.  While inspecting the plane I found a cooling air leak from the high pressure area above the cylinders to the low pressure area below.  I'm not sure how I missed it but the hole was about 2 1/2" x 1 1/4" (3 square inches).  When I made the new metal pieces I clearly missed this.  Once the nose bowl was on you couldn't see it.

I made a piece of felt to close the hole.  I split the one edge of it so it would seal better against the crankcase.

I removed the 2 staples holding the seal beside it and fastened both seals with new staples.

I also added some length to some of the seals against the nose bowl to get better sealing there.  

When I made the new baffle pieces I had added a cross baffle below the crankshaft.  From an article in Vintage magazine about Taylorcraft baffles, I learned this piece was blocking flow that was supposed to go over the top of the case into the high pressure plenum. I removed the added baffle.

I finished the inspection Oct 1 and got it back in the air the next day with high hopes of having solved the cooling problem.  It was a gorgeous morning to go flying.  I had fun and the motor did run cooler, but not enough to say I've solved the cooling problem.

I did make a really good landing, so my lessons from my flight review were working.

Mike got a nice picture of me parking back at the hangar, next to his plane

Yesterday I got to fly for almost an hour just at sunset, very nice evening.  The fall colors are just starting to turn.

I did find another corn maze near the other one, west of the airport.  This one was way better.  It's at a pick your own farm.  The maze is titled America The Beautiful.  What a cool maze.