EAA Chapter 732
Newsletter March 2005
From the President’s Workbench
I have a friend whose favorite saying is “It’s all about the journey, not the destination”. She flies a hot air balloon, so maybe that explains a lot. But really, when you think about it, much of what we do in experimental aviation really is all about the journey. The program for our meeting this month is about selecting a project to build. I’m sure that some of you remember that this is a real trip all by itself. It should be an enjoyable one, but you do need to invest the time and energy to get properly prepared. Involving others in this part of the journey will only enhance the experience. Yes, you’ll get a lot of biased opinions, but along the way you’ll learn how to ask the right questions, how to really evaluate the advertised claims, how to measure the “completion factor” of a particular design. Most importantly, you’ll learn to recognize that very special feeling that comes when you discover the flying machine that really stirs your passion. We’re all here to help each other enjoy the journey – are you ready to start yours?
Chip Gibbons Honored With Eagle Award at 4th Annual Gathering of Eagles – Several members of the Chapter attended the event and were proud to see Chip receive this outstanding award for his personal contribution to the education of new aviators through scholarship creation, flights and Young Eagle activities. Symbolizing the award was an impressive crystal eagle. Fellow member Dave Bowman hosted this excellent dinner event on behalf of the Northwest Arkansas Community College Aviation Department. The featured speaker was Reno Air Race and Fedex pilot Mary Dilda. Everyone should plan to attend next year’s event in support of the fine aviation program at NWACC.
Membership – Art Formanek attended the February Chapter meeting and subsequently decided to become a member. Please be sure to welcome him at the next meeting.
Dues – It is time to pay the annual $15 dues. In April everyone who has not paid their dues will be removed from the active member list. You make them payable to “EAA Chapter 732” and give the check to the Treasurer Richard Rost at the March meeting or mail them to:
Richard Rost
14952 E. Hwy 62
Next Meeting:
It will be held at 2 PM on March 20 in the FBO (in the main terminal
building) at Drake Field, which is located at the south end of Fayetteville , Arkansas
Chapter Calendar:
March 20, 2:00 pm-Meeting /Selecting your project/
Drake Field FBO-Fayetteville, AR - Dave Hill
April 17, 2:00 pm-Meeting/Review of Mickey &
Lester's 701 Project -
May 15, 2:00 pm-Meeting/Annual Picnic, Election and
Fun Fly -
June 12, 2-00 pm-Meeting/Review of Barry's Pulsar
Project – location to be announced - Barry West
July17, 2:00 pm-Meeting/14th(and final?) Defiant
Review - Drake Field – Charley Caldwell
Upcoming Events:
April 28-30 - Fly-in to tour
Corvette factory and Museum,
June 25-26 - Fly-in for leisure
time,
Flying News:
Diana Richards Citabria 4216Y
- I've been out in sunny (rainy)
Jimmy Davis, 1946 C-140,
N72826 - I had been having trouble with the starter on my '46 Cessna
140. It actually wasn't the starter, but it was the battery. After
prop starting the plane and flying, the ammeter didn't show the battery was
taking a charge so I assumed the old starter (probably approaching 60 years
old) had failed. Someone suggested that I check the specific weight of
the batter acid. I purchased a hydrometer from
Now up to the flying thing. I work all the dang time but there was a
beautiful afternoon in mid-Feb where I found a little extra time and was in
Bentonville anyway. I pulled up to my hangar, walked up to the plane,
stuck my hand in my pocket and discovered I had left the keys to the plane at
home. Since it was about 5PM, and Chip had just taxied by, I had a nice
visit with him while the automobile traffic cleared out.
I did manage to spend 1.5 hours in the pattern this past Friday afternoon
late. What a pretty evening, no wind, nice temperature, no one else was
out. It was a good combination for me since I hadn't flown in a couple of
months. Since no one was there I will tell you that all of my landings
were great, 3 point and full stall every time, right on the center line and I
had to add power to get off the runway. Since no one would believe that,
the last one was way better than the first and I was able to walk away from
each arrival.
Gary Simmons – Zodiak XL – Has been observed flying his brightly polished airplane at Drake Field. The appearance, performance and reliability all appear to be good.
Steve Fossett – GlobalFlyer – Flew the Burt Rutan designed, Sir Richard Branson financed, jet powered airplane around the world solo without refueling in 67 hours. Burt’s other recent great accomplishment with SpaceShipOne received tremendous news coverage but this one did not. It is curious because no one, government sponsored or not, had ever done what was completed on March 4, 2005. Well done GlobalFlyer team!
Building Notes:
Barry West, Pulsar – Working with a very compact and complex in-tip lighting arrangement that will enable landing lights, strobes and nav. lights to be enclosed in the small Pulsar wingtip. A lot of creativity and research are going into this. The workmanship is very good and the intermediate results are promising.
Al & Brenda Smith, RV-6 – Continuing to work on the Instrument panel and attachment of the wings on our RV 6.
Rex Stewart, GlaStar – Rex used a special trailer and delivered his fuselage for painting.
Bob Axsom, RV-6A –
Gray’s Aircraft Refinishing at the
Pulsar Retractable Steps – Barry West:
This Pulsar kit was purchased and construction started knowing there are serious problems with airplanes having the wing on the wrong side, especially for old guys like me. Visibility is seriously hindered if one wants to see where he is or where he has been, and then there is the problem of cleaning the bottom of the wing which gets dirty a lot being so close to the ground when not flying. But the main problem is getting in and out of the airplane. Some people want their airplane to be fast and some want it to be pretty. I want those too but I also want it to be comfortable and reasonably convenient. I always had problems getting in and out of low wing airplanes. There’s this thing of stepping up on the wing. At 70 plus that’s a big step. I recall some older people carrying wooden boxes in their trucks for entering it and thought I would never come to that.
So, to make it easier it was decided to put steps on the fuselage to assist getting up on the wing, and down too. To help get in and out of the cockpit, the only thing I have been able to think of to help is loose weight and exercise. Maybe I can do that.
Well, there is not room to carry a wooden box in the Pulsar so steps on the side behind and below the wing root seemed in order. But I didn’t want them hanging down in the breeze; I wanted them to retract so this is what we ended up with.
This photo shows the step for the left side which is an airfoil section of 4130 steel welded to a 7/8 inch square box section, also 4130 steel.
The second photo shows the step extended about
5 inches so that old guys can actually get their foot up on it and step on the
wing and lift a leg into the cockpit. A
bungee will retract the step when the old guy takes his foot off of it.
The next two pictures are of the setup inside the fuselage behind the baggage compartment.
The view inside shows another square tube that is 1 inch square so the tube that makes the step will slip inside it. (They must have figured this out when they established the sizes for square tubes.) This one has a bracket welded to the lower end so it can be bolted to a stiffener
plate 
on
the floor. The large triangular thing is
a sheet of honeycomb and glass composite that will keep the step from moving
fore and aft and toward the outer wall.
In this final view, the piece on the left is the outer tube with attachment brackets welded to it and a long slot on each side.
The center piece is the step welded to the inner tube with holes drilled at each end. These holes take the two roll pins, the lower one is to anchor the bungee and the upper one engages the slots in the outer tube that guides and limits the slide of one in the other. It was convenient that the bungee came with a ball on the end to be anchored to the upper end of the outer tube.
The steps will be powder coated and though they may slow the Pulsar a little, the convenience for this old guy will be worth it.
Barry
RV-10 Building Experience – Doug Stone:
Four Place Hot Rod – Part 1
The Cherokee 6 was broken, it was too windy to fly the powered parachute, and I had really grown weary of working on the KR-2. It was probably fate that about that same time last spring, articles appeared in Sport Aviation and Kitplanes extolling the virtues of the new four place RV-10 kit from Van’s. Checked the internet and found nearly 200 kits had been sold, many being ordered even before flight testing of the single prototype had been completed. To my surprise, I found a bunch of the RV-10 builders had already built one or more of the two place RVs. That says something about product line loyalty. The numbers looked great, 1100 pounds of people and fuel, 1600 pounds of airframe, being pulled along at 195+ mph by a 260 HP Lycoming IO-540. Anyhow, after three months of study and self examination, I found myself standing at Van’s counter in Oshkosh, credit card in hand, heart going a mile a minute. This really was the airplane I had always wanted to build!
When the empennage/tailcone kit showed up several weeks later, it was like Christmas morning when you were young. One damaged skin, which Van’s replaced immediately, and a huge pile of packing materials. Everything on the inventory list was in the shipment. I had bought a set of preview plans and had studied several web sites with step-by-step photos, so I generally knew what to expect getting started. I was really surprised, however, with how well everything fit together. Van’s has punched or drilled an undersized pilot hole at almost every fastener location. The tough part of cutting and forming most of the sheet metal components is accomplished at the factory. It is very obvious some real thought has been put into the factory tooling for this kit.
Like all of Van’s aircraft, nearly every external fastener is flush. This allows you to become very proficient in (and tired of) dimpling and countersinking. That is of course after you have deburred both sides of every drilled hole. Not a place to skimp on tools. Apparently, RV builders have been going through something called “primer wars” for years now, with some people priming every interior surface (for corrosion protection) and others leaving it all bare to save weight. I enjoy painting, although I’ll admit the stuff I’m using does have a funky green color. Because of the matched hole tooling concept, there are very few jigs or fixtures required to assemble this airplane. That’s the good news. The bad news is that there are a bazillion rivets. Here’s another place for good tools, as well as a few experienced friends. It really made a difference having Steve Chambers on the bucking bar when the first rivets were driven on the vertical stabilizer skin.
The building instructions are first class, but not everything is covered. Van let’s you pretty much do your own thing with electrical stuff. In the rear of the fuselage this doesn’t amount to much, but you do need to figure out where and how to mount things like the ELT and the strobe light power supply, and you will want to run wires before the tailcone is closed up. I’m still debating on a dual battery installation, which would be mounted aft of the baggage bulkhead for weight and balance purposes. The real junior engineering effort will come when its time to tackle the instrument panel and associated antenna installations. I’ll need (and get) lots of help doing this part. Wait until you see Jim Younkin’s panel in his RV-10. Wow!
I keep my builder’s log right on the plans, noting
the date a step is completed and the number of manhours required. So far, I’ve completed assembly of the vertical
stabilizer, horizontal stabilizer, and rudder (250 hours). The elevators and trim tabs (86 hours) are
ready to prime prior to assembly, and the tailcone (76 hours) has completed
predrill and the parts are now being dimpled and countersunk. I must work slowly, because some fellows have
gotten this far in half the hours. Even
at my snail’s pace, I’ll run out of things to do before the next pieces show
up. I’ve ordered the “Quickbuild” wings
and fuselage, which should deliver sometime in July or August. This might be a good time to work out the
details of the instrument panel and electrical system. Stay tuned.
Glass
Cockpit on the Cheap - Jerry Eastman via Barry West
Ok guys... and girls, pay
attention, there will be a quiz. This is how you can have all the
up to date glass cockpit stuff on the cheap. Weather radar, I have
Verizon as my provider for my cell service, they have a thing called "get
it now." On that they have a weather thing called "My cast weather." I can go to that enter in a zip code and
bang.... I have the weather radar that I can zoom in and out on. So all I
have to do as I'm flying along is look ahead on my GPS and pick an airport and
go to the details of the airport and get the zip code and - well you get the picture. Cost you ask?
This will really shock you - $3.00 a month. That's right just $3.00 a month in addition
to your regular cell bill. Now, for the TFR's. If you have "Anywhere map" (http://www.anywheremap.com/) on your
handheld PC, they update the TFR's every hour. Anywhere map is a great
service that costs $115.00 a year for the subscription. It gives you "Triptics", small
versions of your flight plan, printed 5" X 7" on sectionals, Wacs, or
just about any chart you want and is printed on, so it’s perfect for Pulsar
flight. Now the TFR's, as you are flying along - since my cell phone is
Blue tooth enabled and my Ipaq H2200 is Blue tooth enabled the Ipaq can talk to
the cell phone and dial into Verizon (a free 14.4 connection), download the TFR
file and Bang, I'm updated in about 10 seconds. Any of you that do a lot
of flying especially around areas that have a lot of special use airspace (I'm
around
Jerry Eastman
Craftmasters, Inc.
Retrofitting RV-6A With Aileron Pushrod Boots – Bob Axsom
In the October 2003 issue of Sport
Aviation, Ken Scott of Van’s Aircraft wrote an article entitled “Baby Gets New
Booties – Reducing cold airflow inside the cabin.” When we flew our new RV-6A from
The article is complete enough but there are a few things I did and some observations that should be noted if you are considering this modification for your airplane.
· You can use a piece of cardboard (file folder) coiled to provide a 5” based cone tapering to 1” at least 5” above the base with edges marked and excess cut off to make the cloth pattern – you don’t need to find that 5” to 1” in 4” funnel for a model.
·
The ripstop nylon is readily available; I bought
mine at Hancock Fabrics in
· I sewed each cone together by hand then turned them inside out before assembly with the mounting plates.
· Because I wanted to be able to maintain the boots I considered several installation fastener means other than the pop rivets mentioned in the article. Ken Scott sent me an e-mail recommending sheetmetal screws and I decided to use #8 sheetmetal screws of ½” length.
· I drilled three #30 mounting holes in the baseplate on the workbench before installing boots.
· I used a flexible (snake) drive with a ¼” socket and a 1/8” drill with a ¼” drive head and the previously drilled baseplates for a drill guide to make the mounting holes in the fuselage. A clecoe was put in each baseplate/fuselage hole after it was drilled to retain perfect alignment.
· I removed the baseplates after all the mounting holes were drilled in the fuselage and opened the holes in the baseplates to 3/16” so a false tight indication isn’t experienced, resulting in an unwanted gap.
· The area around the hole is very uneven and there is a spar attachment bulkhead flange at the fwd edge so when I installed mine I applied some leftover (expensive) red RTV on the fuselage before attaching the boot base to it for a complete seal.
· I displaced the stick to give maximum aileron pushrod travel into the fuselage and applied the nylon cable tie securing the small end of the boot to the pushrod with some slack in the boot.
· After I applied the nylon cable ties I deflected the stick to give maximum aileron pushrod travel out of the fuselage and moved the stick through a full range of motion to check for stress, binding and interference. I found that the orientation of the nylon cable tie locks causes some concern and also the configuration of the cutoff tail is important. I had carelessly cut the tail off with dikes at an angle resulting in a protruding point and the securing device on the fwd part of the push rod. This is the worst orientation and the protruding point constantly running into the nylon didn’t seem like a good idea. I replaced the offending nylon cable ties with the securing device to the rear and slightly below horizontal and a flush tail cutoff.
· I removed the wing/fuselage gap closure strips and put some of the red RTV on the ends of the sheetmetal screws to eliminate the possibility of any wire abrasion or shorting problems.
In flight the boots did not affect the flight control function and they provide an effective cold air block in this area. You will notice black sealer in the photo below and forward of the boot. This area and the interface between the fuselage and the fwd side of the spar need to be sealed as cold air blocks as well. These changes seem to be effective but extreme cold flights have not been flown since the modification was completed. The tricycle main gear attachment configuration on the RV-6A is more prone to cold air leaks into the fuselage than the conventional gear configuration on the RV-6
Paul Lipps’ Elippse Propeller – Bob Axsom
In the Winter 2005 issue of Sportsman Pilot there is
an article entitled “A conversation with Paul Lipps” written by Jack Cox. It starts off with a head on photograph of a
Lancair 235 with a strange looking propeller.
It has a conventional looking base at the spinner with a rapidly
spreading chord to a location about 30% of the distance from the spinner to the
tip. Then it curves and tapers sharply
to a squared of tip that appears to be about 1” wide. Maximum extension of the trailing edge from a
span-wise centerline occurs slightly before the leading maximum extension of
the leading edge from the same line. The
pitch at the hub is extremely high and at the tip it is very low. He designed one of these propellers (called
“Elippse propellers”) with a raked back tip leading edge (instead squared off)
for Tom Aberie’s Phantom biplane racer that won the class at
Sportsman Pilot – Bob Axsom
Sportsman Pilot is a slick
finished non-color magazine that I subscribe to that is special. It is produced by Jack and Golda Cox in
Sportsman Pilot
They also have a website at http://www.sportsmanpilot.com.
The cut-off date is March 21, 2005. There has been one cancellation of two participants since the last newsletter:
|
Room |
Name |
Airplane |
Reg. # |
Confirmed |
Days |
|
1 |
Steve & Terri Chambers |
RV-6 |
N99ST |
2/6/05 |
1-Friday |
|
2 |
Charley & Frances Scott |
Glassair |
N189CW |
1/26/05 |
2-Thr/Fri |
|
3 |
Garnett & Sue Collins |
Bonanza |
N4984M |
1/26/05 |
1-Friday |
|
4 |
Barry & Sherron West |
Kitfox/Bon |
N880BW |
1/26/05 |
1-Friday |
|
5 |
JW & Helen Neal |
Dakota |
N2110Y |
1/25/05 |
2-Thr/Fri |
|
6 |
Bob & Jeanine Axsom |
RV-6A |
N710BJ |
1/25/05 |
2-Thr/Fri |
|
7 |
Tom & Ruth Wyatt |
Bonanza |
N733SE |
Maybe |
? |
|
8 |
Bill
& Camilia Smith |
? |
? |
Maybe |
? |
|
9 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
10 |
|
|
|
|
|
Please notify Bob Axsom by mail, e-mail or telephone if you
would like to participate in the