Scott & Tanya Card RV9A build log (N4822C)

Another evening of annual Condition Inspection. I’m working my way aft from the spinner and Tanya is working forward from the tail. Everything aft of the baggage compartment has been inspected, lubricated, and buttoned back up. Nothing of interest to report. I completed the new carb heat setup with the “Zilik hinge”. I’m quite happy with it. We’ll see how it holds up.

I did notice that I’m missing one ring gear tooth. I know exactly when it happened. A couple of weeks ago during formation training in Brownwood, I was having a little bit of an issue getting it started when the signal was given. In my haste, I released the starter after enough turns, and reengaged it too quickly. The starter caught the prop in the last millisecond before it stopped. Don’t do that, my bad. The starter has been fine and I don’t see any other damage other than that one ring gear tooth. I’ll press on a new ring gear next time I have the prop off for any period of time.

How NOT to rig the carb heat control (see picture). With a few breaks in less than 250hrs, it is time for a change. There is just nothing like pulling the control all the way out of the instrument panel in flight :). At the same time, I’m installing a new carb heat muff from Robbins Wings hoping for a little more heat. Also, I’m replacing the extruded carb heat door hinge with a simple piece of baffle material. I’m calling it the Zilik hinge in honor of Gary Zilik who gave me the idea along with an idea for reworking the control cable attachment.

Yeah, It is annual condition inspection time. After our Lufkin trip, we were just intending on doing an oil change while the engine was warm. We got the oil drained quickly and the engine was still hot. I asked Tanya if she was up for a quick compression test. “Sure”. We immediately broke into optimized labor tasks with barely another word. Moments later we had all four cylinders checked with numbers that I’m easily happy with. With a long day of flying, family, and the 100+ degree heat, we were done for the day. On the drive home, we decided that we might as well just get the whole condition inspection done now. The airplane doesn’t have to be flying for anything until about July 11.

So we spent the majority of Sunday diving into a full swing annual Condition Inspection. Of course Tanya knew where she was going first, into the tail cone on the “belly board”. She is a trooper isn’t she! She sees it as the better part of the deal as she doesn’t want to have too much responsibility for firewall forward just in case the fan up front ever stops.

I also decided to finally do away with the foil tape in front of the #1 cylinder and fabricated up a little aluminum ramp. With a couple of nutplates installed behind the bottom ramp, we have a part that is removable that I think will work great.

We’re pecking away at the tasks on the master checklist a little each day.

(Repost from VAF)
Today our presence was required at my Grandfather’s 90th birthday party/lunch in Lufkin Texas. This was a suit and tie event at the country club for the family from all corners, and about 75 of his closest friends. He was an Instrument flight instructor at the Corpus Christi Naval Air Station during WWII.
The few hour drive through the piny woods from Austin is ok, but pretty boring. Good weather and an RV make for an easy day. We saddled up 22C at about 9am for the one hour flight over the top of the thick, hot, oppressive, murky, crud that was the first 9k’ that passes for “clear” skies this time of year. At 10.5k’, it was almost as if we were skimming along a vast ocean of visible hot below. This was Tanya’s leg of the trip to be PIC. Once we got above the hot and it looked like she had things stabilized, I turned on the XM radio for some tunes (classic rock). We both sat there just about as happy as two people could be tapping our feet and swaying back and forth in unison to the music for the next thirty minutes. This is about the time that I still just can’t resist breaking the squelch with “This is awesome”.

Before long, it was time to head back down through the hot. Seat backs and tray tables were placed in the upright and locked position, and extraneous distractions extinguished. The decent was timed perfectly by the pilot to be stuck in the thick hot for minimum time. The Lufkin airport, with its long wide runways, was sighted through the sticky, yucky, murky, mucky, hot at about ten miles. Of course, it was right where the GPS said it would be. The pilot made the landing look easy, landing long for minimum taxi time to the appropriate turnoff to the ramp. As we taxied across the ramp, we noticed two RVs parked right up next to the little terminal and restaurant building. Ah, maybe we’ll find some friends inside.

We shut down on the ramp and had the plane tied down shortly after 10am. We were on a very specific time schedule for this event. That is how my grandfather likes it. Punctual and specific. The next objective was to figure out where we were going to change into the monkey suit and tie. As we walked past the restaurant window in the terminal, a table of people that we’ve never met before waved us in to come join them. Apparently this is a small East Texas bunch of RVers holding court on a late Saturday morning. Introductions were made and we were recognized from VAF. It is nice to find friends that you didn’t even know you had. That really made my day. However, we were on a mission and we were promptly shown around the facilities we would need. After the monkey suit was donned, we went back to join the group at the table. We spent the next thirty minutes hanging out talking RVs with the locals. Great fun. I would have been content to just stay there and swap stories.

Our ride arrived and we had to make a quick exit. Sorry we didn’t get to say a proper good bye, but we’ll be back very soon on a second Saturday of the month for the monthly Fajita fly-in. The lunch party was a success and ended just as punctually as it had started. We were back at the airport by 2:30pm to jump back out of the monkey suit. I bet you can guess what the weather was like now. Let me help; HOT, sticky, humid, thick, murky, wring-the-sweat-out-on-the-ramp, oppressive. But guess what, we get to fly again! How much more fun could I ask for. This was my leg for PIC. By now, the “clear” muck had plenty of time to congeal into a forest of cumulus clouds from about 8k’ to 13.5k’. Oh, yeah it was hot as we taxied out for the runup. That was ok, because we new we weren’t staying low, no matter what the winds. It would only be a few minutes before we would be in cool air again. During the runup, I got the now familiar surprise of pulling the carb heat cable all the way out of the panel. Yep, it is broken again. I know exactly how NOT to install a carb heat cable and have the correct resolution parts all ready to go for the next time the cowl was off. I pushed the cable back in and finished my runup. I stopped to confer with the co-pilot quickly about the failure that we were just waiting to happen again. We talked about possible adverse effects on this flight and agreed it was perfectly safe to continue. Mind you, we knew exactly where it had failed.

So we launched with only cooler air above on the mind. We are still very excited that we finally figured out how to keep the engine cool in hot climbs. For the longest time I was certain that I had done a full round of tests specifically focused on climb cooling. But clearly I had not fully explored the most obvious combination. Full throttle so the enrichment circuit is in effect, and reducing power output a little by spooling the prop back to 2500. This is like magic. We don’t have to worry about CHTs even on a long slow climb with OAT 100+ degrees. We kept climbing and climbing. The co-pilot setup the oxygen and got it flowing. You may have heard that I’m addicted to O2. I refuse to apologize. The cloud tops seemed to be reaching up for the clean cool air above just the same as we were. I leveled off at 14.5k’ that would get us over most of it. We made a few slight deviations around those that were reaching higher. If we were going much further, I would not have thought twice to go on up to 16.5k’, because by now, you know what we were avoiding below. I still had at least a 400 fpm climb rate. Density altitude up there was a little over 17k’. This was another easy VFR flight back home with a 1300 fpm let down on the other side.
We got the airplane tucked away and unpacked. Now, the days mission was successfully complete, the engine was still nice and hot, so what to do next? … Of course, pull the cowl and drain the oil. It was due for a scheduled change a whole two hours ago (gasp). Hmmm, while we are at it, we’re also due for a compression check. Tanya said she was up for it if we could knock it out and retreat to someplace cooler. I turned on the big fan in the hangar which was just blowing around a lot of really hot air. It is really cool that Tanya knows the drill. She immediately went to fire up the air compressor and string out the hose, grab the tool cart and the compression tester, and while I was removing the leads off of the lower plugs, she was retrieving the spark plug socket and ratchets. We had all the lower plugs out almost before the oil finished draining. It took us only another 8 minutes to check the compression on the cylinders (all good). We closed up the hangar door and headed for home. A tremendously successful RV day. Tomorrow is a maintenance day. We’ll be in the hangar sweating to the tower frequency on the scanner. I bet it is going to be HOT!

You might be interested in a little short story that my mother wrote from my perspective after I recounted an amazing lack of observed airport etiquette at the fuel pumps the other day. Read the full story here.

In the world of Stu McCurdy, Falcon, and other proficient formation pilots, Scott was a “Red Scary” this weekend. We traveled to Brownwood to take part in the formation clinic that Stu ran. The “Red Scarries” are those that are completely new to formation flying or haven’t had much practice with it and are still very dangerous up there. Suffice to say that the nomenclature is very appropriate.

Stu must have this formation clinic deal down to a science as he had everything in order. Hangar, vans for travel to the hotel and back, block of rooms at the hotel, places to eat within walking distance at the hotel, meeting room for ground school, a very tasty lunch from the Brownwood Chamber of Commerce, a giant cooler with plenty of cold drinks through the day, tables and chairs for briefings, and he even ordered a slight breeze so that the heat was at least bearable.

The Brownwood airport is a great place for a fuel stop if anyone passes that way. Reasonable fuel prices, clean and airy terminal building, ice machine, cold water, and a great staff.

We arrived early due to my instrument check ride, and Scott waited in the terminal building for me. He was able to chat with the arrivals as they trickled in for the 2pm rendezvous. Some of the experienced guys gave him some private ground school lessons while he waited. Nothing better than getting ahead of the pack. I didn’t get back until 2:30, so we quickly tucked away the airplane in the hangar and caught a ride to the hotel.

The ground school portion took about 4 1/2 hours. While in class, a nasty storm passed and we could hear the hail pelting the building. I can’t say how much we appreciated Stu’s planning that allowed all of our airplanes to be in a hangar, safe and sound.

Words cannot describe how intense Saturday was. Stu got us started at 7 so we could get 3 flights in before the heat of the day was really upon us, and that was a good call. The first flight had the “red scaries” riding along with the experienced guys to see what formation flight looks like from inside the cockpit. Stu was kind enough to let me ride in his back seat to take it all in. I know my eyes were wide throughout the flight, so I’m sure it was that way for Scott as well. Those guys are CLOSE up there. The second flight had the newbies piloting their planes with their respective safety pilots and the maneuvers severely tamed down. The third flight was about the same with slightly higher banks and pitches in the maneuvers. We took a break for lunch, and then changed the flight groups around for the final flight. Scott went up with Subob as his lead this time. Subob pushed them even harder to end the day. `

Stu and Subob allowed me to ride along with them during the flights. I’m pretty sure that made their flight a little more difficult having the extra weight and the concern that goes along with taking a passenger. I was able to get the first air to air pictures of 22C. It was a hazy day, so they aren’t spectacular, but they are pretty incredible to have anyway.

I wanted to see the demo flight Falcon Flight was going to give Saturday and the all up on Sunday, but we decided to head for home instead as the prospect of spending another “blissful” (as another participant described it) night in the hotel was just too much for us. The worst hotel experience we had had until Friday night was a bed and breakfast in Napa Valley that had a cow print in the bowl of the toilet and an extremely worn out mattress. This one topped it without a doubt. The worst of it was the air conditioner pretended to work, but it barely brought down the temperature and did not bring down the humidity. I am pretty confident the room was more humid than the rain-moistened, ninety-five degree heat outside. Let’s add that the sink drain leaked onto the carpet. We only had one sheet on the bed - the mattress cover was left on the bottom with no sheet over it. The bath towels were about the size of a hand towel and had about the same absorbency and scratchiness of a 50 cent roll of paper towels. There was no information about the hotel to be found in the rooms, so I had to go to the front desk to find the ice machine - the condition of is probably better left unsaid. The next morning, the used towels had been removed but not replaced so we had one bath towel and no hand towels. We were down to one cup as those were again removed but not replaced. The one upside - they didn’t charge me for the second night even though I checked out at 4.

Special thanks to Roy Geer and Danny Kight for keeping my husband (and me for that matter) safe throughout the day. They were the safety pilots in our formations and were certainly working hard to make that happen.

Here are some pictures.