Our annual September Labour day pancake fly-in is coming up this weekend. My RV hanger gets used as the main feeding area and cook house. My CH701 hanger gets used by the model aircraft club for their static displays. I am having to abandon Tango Lima Lima for the next week as I clean up my mess and make the place ready for our guests. We typically have 80 to 100 aircraft fly in and serve over 600 meals in the short period of 3 hours. I’m the flight line director and control the ground movement of the aircraft coming and going. It gets totally hectic for a while as I try and keep the bottle necks un-plugged. We love it and so do all our guests.

Post Breakfast Update:

It was a fantastic day. The weather was great, winds were almost calm, slightly favouring runway 25. We had over 80 aircraft fly in to the event and we served in excess of 600 meals. There were no incidents in the circuit, other than some minor crowding between the fast and slow aircraft. We had a dozen RVs attend and it was a chance to meet and talk about our projects. Finally met Troy Branch from Calgary and had a look at his beautiful RV10. Nice work Troy!

 Tango Lima Lima, as she is now registered, was pulled from the hanger and towed over to the fuel pump. I added 20 litres of fuel to each tank and then pulled it back to the apron in front of the hanger. I followed the instructions of Precision Airmotive’s Eagle ECU specialist, Dennis Anttilla for starting the engine. For the first time in 4 years, it came to life with just a couple of revolutions of the prop. I ran the engine for a few minutes and then shut it down so I could look for oil leaks or what-ever. Sure enough, I had missed tightening down an oil line fitting on the oil cooler. This was quickly remedied and the mess was cleaned up. I fired her up again and then started taxi testing around the ramp area. It sure sounds sweet! I could idle down to 700 rpm and it was still smooth running. The big IO360 with straight pipes is going to make it’s presence known soon.

Ground handling is a lot easier than my previous experience with Mike Seager’s RV6A on a grass strip. Short radius turns are way easy with the castering nose wheel . I have not installed the engine cowlings so I limited the run time on the engine to ensure it didn’t get too warm. Probably not an issue on a cool evening at low power settings, but I’m being overly cautious. I found a few snags that I need to work thru prior to my Final Inspection by the MD-RA. Most concerning is the small fuel weep on the left tank. This weep is coming from the back side of the fuel tank so I will have to remove the tank to find it and fix it. Groan. I had pressure tested both tanks prior to attaching to the wing but I am told this happens. Not looking forward to that task but better now than in the winter months with frozen fingers on cold tools and fittings. There is also the slight odor of 100LL in the cabin when the boost pump is on. I will have to go over all the fuel line fittings one more time to find the leaker.

The Eagle Screen is working really well. Up to now, all data received from the Eagle was static and it was difficult to validate all information was being displayed properly. I have a few points that need tweeking but this is normal stuff when you commission a new system. Data is streaming in from the Dynon and being displayed along with GPS data from a separate Garmin puck. It’s all coming together now. I’ll get some screen dumps posted to the blog in a week or so. I really like trend displays and I have set up a number of fast trends and slower historical trends with averaged and normalized values. This is a good way interpret how your engine is working and identify problems in the early stages.

With transport behind me, its time to get down to the last big job, namely final assembly. Today the wings went on, horizontal stab, elevators and vertical stabilizer. It had been a while since those components were last fitted but it all went together in four hours today. The open hanger door has attracted a few curious visitors who want to see what had been consuming my free time for the last few years.

I think the biggest task so far has been emptying my workshop and transporting everything I think I will need to the hanger. I was fortunate to have an empty hanger to start with and not have to deal with a pre-existing mess (like my other hanger the 701 sleeps in). There is a pile of tables and chairs against one wall which we use for our flyin breakfast on the labour day weekend, but so far the tables have proven to be quite valuable as I spread out parts and drawings.

I am truly fortunate to have such an understanding wife who puts up with this time and cash consuming obsession.

The time had finally come when the project had to leave the garage and get to the hanger for final assembly. Earlier in the week, my son and I set up to load the RV9A on my car transport trailer. I had never actually measured the width of the trailer and was surprised to find the trailer was about 2 inches too narrow to safely hold the RV9A. I had seen many aircraft pictured on the Van’s Airforce forum travelling to the airport on the back of a sliding deck truck so that became plan B. Our local auto wrecker was recruited for the task. He showed up at 5pm, we loaded the aircraft, made the short 15 minute trip to the airport, unloaded right into my hanger and dropped me back off at home at 6:15. It was too easy!

Tango Lima Lima loaded and secured for the trip to Stettler

Wheel straps secured the mains to the truck deck. We used a short D-Ring strap around the nose gear to tug the aircraft onto the deck. I steered with the makeshift pull bar to centre the wheels on the deck.

I kept a close eye on the cargo as we headed down th ehighway

The hanger’s inner doors opened just enough to accept the truck deck

I guided the nose wheel with my makeshift pull bar while the truck driver let the winch cable out.

Tango Lima Lima slides into her new home

That was too easy! Now onto final assembly.