I've been beavering away on the last little stuff, making good progress. I ended up back in a phase where every time I finished one thing I saw a yet undetected new item that needed doing. In the past, I would simply add these new items to the big list, and put them off until "someday". But there aren't many "somedays" left until this thing must fly, so now if I see a new task, I try to do it right away, if possible.

I picked up the altimeter and altitude encoder from Woodlawn Instruments on Friday. They had done the required biennial adjustments and checks. They fixed a glitch with the encoder - when I first installed it, it appeared to be working correctly. But lately it was reporting an altitude that was hundreds of feet in error. And, now the altimeter reads within five feet of the one on the Dynon EFIS. Before it differed from the EFIS by about 50 ft.

Sunday I had planned to recheck the calibration of the EFIS ASI. I had checked it back in 2005, but the newest EFIS firmware has a feature that allows the calibration of the ASI zero pressure to be set, and I foolishly pushed that button. This probably means that the old calibration is no longer valid, so I decided to redo it. Before I started the calibration, I ran the ASI up to 220 kt to confirm there were no leaks. I found that the pitot system leaked a bit less than a kt per minute. This isn't a big enough leak to be an airworthiness concern, but it would make it very difficult to do an accurate calibration using a water manometer, as it takes some time to measure the water level, then read the ASI, and the ASI would be falling all that time. So, I spent four hours looking for the leak, tightening and resealing connections, then trying again. After four hours I gave up and moved on to starting to tidy up the wiring ahead of the firewall. I'll put off this pitot leak check until after I get flying. I'll attack it again sometime where there is a rainy day, and I'm in the mood for a puzzle.

It is quite common to find that the inboard lower surface of RV-8 flaps do not match up well to the fuselage. This view is looking aft, at the inboard lower surface of the left flap, with the hinge line near the top of the picture. The forward part of the lower skin, not yet trimmed, sticks down quite a bit below the fuselage. The aft end of the trailing edge is sticking down below the fuselage fairing. The whole thing looks quite untidy.

I wasn't sure what I was going to do about this until I found Randy Lervold's description. Randy trimmed the inboard edge of the skin to match up against a seam in the fuselage skins, and he bent the inboard edge so it matched the fuselage. I was a bit troubled by the fact that Randy's solution had a small portion of the flap trailing edge sticking down perhaps a quarter inch below the flap to fuselage fairing. That would cost at least a hundredth of a knot, and looked less tidy than I wanted. So, I decided to "improve" upon his concept by trimming the upper surface skin a bit more, to allow the bend in the lower surface to start further outboard.

Once I trimmed the upper skin, and trimmed and bent the lower skin, I was very happy to see that it fit very nicely. But I was quite dismayed to find that the inboard portion of the lower surface skin was much less stiff than I had expected, due to the loss of support from the upper surface skin. Now I saw why Randy had trimmed his flaps the way he did. Drat. I should have simply copied Randy's idea, without trying to "improve" upon it.

I did some serious head scratching, and finally fabricated reinforcements from 0.040 aluminum. The reinforcements attach to the inboard flap rib at the upper and lower rivets, and then extend inboard to support the lower surface skin. They appear to add more than enough stiffness.

I need to add one more rivet to connect the two portions of the lower flap skin, as the two layers are spread slightly apart at the inboard end. I didn't get the right reinforcement installed today, as it turned out that one of the holes was in a slightly less accessible location, and I would need my pop-rivet dimple tool to dimple the flap skin, and it was sitting home in the basement. I also need to bring a different bucking bar so I can get the most outboard rivet on the lower surface of the reinforcements. Next work session.

After spending many extra hours work because of my distaste for having part of the flap sticking down a quarter inch below the fuselage, I wondered how the flap to fuselage interface is done on other aircraft. There are two Mooney M20s in the hangar, so I peered under an M20F. I was amazed to see a huge hole between the inboard edge of the flap and the fuselage - the hole is about 8 x 4 inches, and must create a lot of extra turbulence.

The hole between the flap and fuselage looks like it would act as a huge scoop, catching the air. Ugh.

After installing the left flap reinforcement, I bolted the flap pushrod to the actuator, for hopefully the last time. Then I installed the left wing intersection fairing.

I got the OAT probe installed, and connected to the EIS 4000 back in mid-April before I did the last burst of road trips. The Grand Rapids OAT probe comes with six feet of wire, as I recall, and the wire cannot be spliced. They will sell probes with custom lengths of wire, if requested. I knew that the standard length of wire would not be enough, so I made some measurements, estimated how long a wire I needed, and added a bit more just to be sure I had enough. When I ran the wire, I wanted to route it with other wire bundles, so it had some support, and those bundles made several detours to get around the passenger foot wells, the aileron pushrods, the front spar, landing gear boxes etc. As I ran the wire, the amount left was getting shorter, and shorter, and I became concerned that I might not have enough. When I finally got it all the way to the EIS 4000, I was very happy to see that I had three inches of extra wire.

I screwed up when I drilled the hole in the under-wing NACA scoop for the OAT probe - I went straight to the final size hole, and that large drill dug into the plastic and cracked it. I fixed it with epoxy today. I should have started with a small hole, and worked up in small increments. I put the OAT probe over to one side, to leave room in case I later decide to add an OAT probe for the Dynon EFIS.

The OAT is displayed at the bottom left on the EIS 4000 screen - it is showing 2°C, which compared well with the temperature shown on the thermometer in the hangar.

In late March and early April I closed off a number of small items, and started cataloging all the non-building type things that had to happen before the aircraft is legal to fly. Such as altimeter and altitude encoder checks, ELT check, etc. I spent quite a bit of time tracking down the details of the required altimeter and altitude encoder checks - they are very well hidden. CAR 605.86(1) says the aircraft must have an approved maintenance schedule, which conforms to the Aircraft Equipment and Maintenance Standard (a.k.a. CAR 625). CAR 625.86 says that as part of the approved maintenance schedule, owners of non-commercial small aircraft must comply with Appendix C to CAR 625, and in there we find the details of the required ELT, altimeter, transponder and altitude encoder checks. It looks like Woodlawn Instruments are the best local place for the altimeter and altitude encoder checks, and Canadian Airmotive Avionics are the best place to have the ELT and transponder checks done. Canadian Airmotive Avionics will even come out to Smiths Falls to do the portion of the transponder check that must be done on the aircraft.

I tracked down a set of supposedly accurate digital scales, and the tools I need to pull two cylinders and do a borescope inspection for internal engine corrosion. I need to get two cylinder gasket sets though.

I was on the road the last two weeks (one week in London, ON, home for 35 hours, then one week in Toulouse, France), so today was the first work session for about 2.5 weeks. Three hardware orders came in while I was on the road, so I was able to finish off several small items that were on hold for lack of small parts. I'm still a bit jet-lagged, as I got back from France on Friday afternoon, so I ran out of steam mid afternoon and came home.

Today I did some scouting around the airfield looking for some sloped terrain to help get a suitable nose high attitude for a fuel flow test. It looks like there are potential places to do this test, including one across the ramp from the fuel pumps, behind the "Beech Hangar".

I hope to be around town for the next several weeks, so will be pushing hard to close off all the remaining items. I'm not too many weeks away from doing the first engine run, the weight and balance, etc, then having the final inspection.

I had a good work session at the hangar today. In the morning I closed off a bunch of small items, and in the afternoon I attacked the fuel line from the right tank to the fuel selector. I originally made that fuel line a long time ago, then when I installed the wing leveler servo I discovered that the location I chose for it interfered with the way I had bent the fuel line. So, I pulled the fuel line out and put it on my To Do List. Well, today I finally got to that item. It was a pain in the butt to get it sorted out, as now that all the wiring is in, it made it impossible to manoeuvre the whole fuel line in place. I had to make it in two pieces, with an AN815 union to connect them together. It took quite a bit of screwing around to get all the bends in the right place - I destroyed a hanger so I could use the wire to do trial templates. But in the end it worked out pretty much perfectly. I just need to make some spacers to put between the wing spar and the Adel clamps so the AN815 union doesn't press on the spar.

I'm quite satisfied with the progress I've made lately. I still have quite a bit of work to do, but I am working my way through the remaining items on the To Do List at a good rate. This weekend I got that list down to less than one page, and I got one of the more worrisome items (that fuel line) off the list. Barring some strange event, I really should be able to do the first flight sometime this summer. I am really, really hoping to get it done in time to allow me to take the aircraft to the annual Oshkosh fly-in, but there are a whole bunch of ways that this plan could fall apart.

Dynon has been working on an autopilot for quite some time, but they've kept the details very close to their chest. Well, the information is finally starting to emerge, and it sounds very, very enticing. The lead-in image is an advertisement that appeared in the electronic version of the latest Kitplanes magazine.

Each servo is $750, and the interface can be via a Dynon EFIS, or via a dedicated AP74 control panel. The autopilot can be slaved to the bugs that are set on the EFIS. That means that I could add a pitch axis autopilot to my aircraft for $750, without having to sacrifice any panel real estate. The only downside is that the servos are similar to those from TruTrak, in that there is some drag on the flight controls even when the autopilot is not engaged. Those that have TruTrak autopilots claim that while the drag from the servo can be felt on the ground cannot be perceived in flight.

I'm putting any work on my pitch axis autopilot project on hold until I learn more about the Dynon autopilot. Assuming I can live with the servo drag, it is hard to go wrong for $750.

Update 28 Mar 2008 - Dynon now has autopilot information posted on their web site.

Dealing with the fallout from the heat pump failure killed any chance to work on the aircraft during the week, but I got a fair bit of work done last Sunday, yesterday and today. I hope to get another burst of work done on Monday.

Lesson 1 - Install the rear seat air duct onto the NACA scoop before mounting the wings. It would have been a piece of cake to pull the other end of the duct into the fuselage after mounting the wings. Instead, I spent an hour with one arm jammed through an inspection cover on the bottom of the wing, trying to get the duct over the NACA scoop outlet, then getting the worm clamp installed. It is amazing what you can do with only one hand if you have no other choice. Not fun.

Lesson 2 - Don't put UHMW tape on the bottom of the upper wing skin ahead of the flap. I had done that instead of putting the tape on the flap, as I thought it would look better. But, when I installed the flap I found that the aft edge of that tape was loose in a couple of spots. No big deal, I thought, I'll just remove the tape and put a new piece on. Well, when you pull the tape off, it leaves a whole bunch of adhesive behind, and it is a real pain in the butt to clean it off the bottom of the upper wing skin as the flaps get in the way. I didn't want to remove the flaps as it was a pain in the butt to get the hinge pins in place, and I didn't want to have to do that any more often than necessary. I would have been a lot easier to be removing adhesive from the upper surface of the flap skin, as at least you have good access to that area without removing the flaps. So, once I finally got the adhesive off, I put the replacement UHMW tape on the flap, instead of the wing skin.

I did the final installation of the battery - I used an Odyssey PC680 battery, which was quite a bit smaller than the one that the battery tray was designed for. I made the tray narrower by bolting in two pieces of aluminum angle. Van's design uses a piece of U-shaped channel on top of the battery to hold it into the tray. The channel is supposed to be placed with the flat face against the top of the battery. But, with the narrower PC680, the two terminals would then be very, very close to the channel, creating a large risk of the positive terminal shorting against the channel. I flipped the channel upside down, trimmed the edges at an angle, and put a piece of oak between the channel and the battery. This moved the metal channel well away from the battery terminals, but it had the knock-on effect of making the supplied hold-down bolts too short, so I used red (permanent) Loctite to bond nuts to one end of threaded rod to effectively make longer bolts (I couldn't find sufficiently long 1/4" bolts at any local source.)

The two smaller wires on the battery terminals are for a battery charger. The other end of the battery charger wire will come out in the baggage area, and has a connection with a cover to keep it clean. This will allow me to charge the battery with a trickle charger without having to remove the rear baggage shelf.

After mounting the battery, I installed the aft baggage shelf (which covers the battery), and the cover at the back of the baggage bay. If past experience holds, within the next two weeks I'll discover some reason why I need to remove those items to access that area. But, the project is slowly approaching its end, and I need to close in each area eventually, so I rolled the dice and put those items in place.

You can see the other end of the battery charger wire over to the left side of the picture.

You can also see two of the four removable tie down points that will be used to secure baggage in place (and will also be used to secure ballast during the flight test phase.)

Today I spent quite a bit of time fiddling away inside the left landing gear box, securing the pitot line in place to ensure it doesn't chafe against anything. Then I hit a phase where everything I tried to work on required something that wasn't at the hangar, so I eventually got frustrated and came home to spend some time with Terry.

I hadn't gotten any work done for almost three weeks, due to travel and a major winter storm. I booked Thursday afternoon and Friday off, and was really looking forward to getting back at the project. I got home from work after lunch on Thursday, planning to quickly change and head for the hangar. But, I noted that the house was quite cold, and found that the water source heat pump was not working. I called our local heating and cooling contractor, and waited for him to show up. He came by mid-afternoon, did some disassembly and troubleshooting, and determined that the compressor had failed. Worse, the heat pump manufacturer had gone out of business many years ago, and parts were hard to find. And, the heat pump had already exceeded its expected lifetime, and many other components looked to be in bad shape. He recommended that I replace it with a new heat pump, rather than spending a bunch of money on one that was on its last legs.

That killed Thursday afternoon. I had to go to Home Depot to purchase three electric heaters to knock the chill off the house, and I had to contact an official auditor to discuss how to tap into a government grant program to fund energy efficient upgrades. My heating contractor said they would cover part of the cost of a new heat pump, even if the old one was dead, as long as the new one met some magic energy efficiency standard. I made an appointment with the auditor for Friday afternoon. Monday I'll contact another heating contractor to get another quote on a new heat pump, as the price the first guy quoted me was a whole bunch more than I expected. I need to figure out whether he was fishing to make some money, or whether these things are really that expensive. If it costs as much as he quoted me, I'll have to cash in a bunch of my banked comp time rather than using it to work on the aircraft.

I had known that this brand heat pump didn't have a great service history, that the manufacturer was long gone, and that ours was getting pretty tired. So, I'm not terribly surprised that it has died. But I am not happy to be spending a bunch of money and time on it, when I really just want to get this aircraft in the air. The only consolation is that apparently the current generation heat pumps are much better quality than the one that died.

Friday morning I did manage to get out to the hangar to get some work done. Nothing major to report, but I did close off a few very small items. It seems like I spent most of the time making a list of the stuff that I should have brought with me, but had left in the basement.

I have made zero progress in the last two weeks due to a combination of travel and weather.

Sunday, February 24th I flew to beautiful Savannah, GA for two weeks, and got back a bit after midnight on Friday night, March 7th (or perhaps more accurately, early Saturday morning). The trip to Savannah was to conduct type certification flight tests so Transport Canada will eventually be able to issue Type Certificates for the Gulfstream G350, G450, GV, G500 and G550. I didn't fly all five models, as they are more similar than different. But I did do two flights on the prototype GV, and one flight on the prototype G450. The time not flying was spent in meetings, reviewing various aspects of the design and Gulfsteam's flight test program.

Savannah is an absolutely wonderful small city, with a huge number of beautiful old houses in the downtown core. I didn't mind the nice weather either, as I needed a break from winter. We had one day off in the two weeks, so on Sunday morning I visited the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum, which covers the history of the US Army Air Force 8th Air Force, which was formed in Savannah in 1942, and then moved to England for the rest of WWII, eventually growing to over 200,000 personel, and suffering over half of the casualties of the whole US Army Air Force. In the afternoon I visited RV-10 builder Todd Swezey, and then drove down to the Eagle Neck Airpark where I met several RV builders and flyers.

I had hoped to work on the aircraft today, but the 51 cm of snow that we got in the storm that ended this morning killed that idea. There is no chance that I would have been able to drive to the hangar. I'll give them a few days to clear the taxiways before I chance it.

I worked long hours in Savannah, and built up quite a bit of comp time. I hope to take several days off over the next few weeks so I can make progress on the RV-8.

I got out to the hangar for several hours on Monday and Thursday. I got a few small things finished off, but the big progress was on the pitot tube. I soldered the pins for the pitot heat connector to the pitot heat wires, installed the pitot tube, did a functional test of the pitot heat, and connected the pitot line to the pitot tube. Then I installed the access covers on the bottom of the left wing.

Everything on the left wing is now complete from the wing tip to about 6 inches from the wing root (I need to install the fuel and fuel vent lines, and hook up the fuel quantity sender to the fuel gauge). Everything on the right wing is complete from the wing tip to the NACA scoop under the wing (I need to hook up the OAT probe, fresh air vent tube, fuel quantity sender wires, fuel line and fuel vent line). Everything on the fuselage is complete from the tail to the aft baggage compartment (except for two screws in the rudder bottom, and the tail wheel springs).