Scott & Tanya Card RV9A build log (N4822C)

Saturday was apparently the day for fly-ins in central Texas. There were four going on within less than an hour’s flight. We decided to stay close to home and stopped in first at Taylor. The airspace was full as we arrived, and we considered bailing since parking could be iffy. We decided to go ahead and land, thinking that if parking wasn’t optimal, we would just taxi right back up to departure. No need, luck was shining upon us and we had a nice, happy parking spot on the ramp. As we were getting ready to wander, the pilot of a twin parked behind us asked if we would kindly tie down our tail. He was going to start her up just to idle but was a little nervous about tossing us around since we looked pretty light. A quick tail tie-down, and off to wander the line. Not surprisingly, we ran into some cohorts from Georgetown and some other RV kin.

Then, off to the next stop, Breakaway Park. Breakaway Park is only a 5 minute drive from the house, but it is much more fun to show up by plane. Besides, we had to show off our pretty paint job. We have some friends that just moved in less than a month ago. We got the full tour of their beautiful house on the airstrip. We tried to hold the color down to a mild shade of green. They are of the crazy variety as well - they are building a 2-person submarine in their garage. Ah yes, they fit right in.

Ran into the same RV kin as Taylor and chatted some more. That was followed by a tasty lunch of smoked sausage, chips, and dessert. There was a gorgeous antique car that was built from the ground up, with the only exception being the engine. The owner couldn’t find a chassis that fit the engine, so he just built one. We weren’t surprised to find out he was one of the early RV6 builders. So it wasn’t an airplane, but it was a very, fine machine.

Less that 45 minutes of flight time and 5 hours of pure fun.

22C is back home and ready to fly. We went up to 52F on Friday to bring it home. We (I) spent a little over an hour going over it on the ramp in front of Grady’s. I pulled some inspection panels and double checked much of the re-assembly of control surfaces and such. Of course, we also looked over every square inch of the paint job. It really does look nice. The surface finish is generally really great. Grady said he had to repaint around the forward canopy a couple of times because he was fighting fish-eye. Be careful what you use to clean the canopy before paint.

Grady at GLO Custom was really great to work with. He is very understanding of my builder paranoia of leaving nothing to chance and not trusting anyone else when it comes time to put my butt on the line when flying it away. It looks like they took the utmost care during dis-assembly and reassembly. Almost all of the hardware on the controls was correct. I say almost because I did find a couple of hardware reassembly items that needed changing once back home.

Tanya generally kept Grady busy chit chatting so I was able to carefully inspect and think. As I had made my third or fourth full lap around the plane I decided that the storms that we could see building to the west were getting close enough. Time to blast off. Tanya took some pictures of my departure. She got the unlucky task of driving the car back to Austin (boring!). It wasn’t five minutes before I was dodging rain showers. The best part was that the XM weather was NOT working. Argh. I actually had to pick my way home the old fashion way. At one point just south of Dallas, I basically flew right up to a line of rain (so weird no to have a radar image to look at) to determine my next plan of attack. I certainly wasn’t going through it because it was a real thunderstorm that I couldn’t tell just how yucky it was until I got up to it. As I was starting to think through my plan, a nice bit lightning bolt struck about 15mi. straight ahead. Nope, not going that direction. I looked further out west but figured that these little storms were probably building out that direction. Also, it occurred to me that if I had to put down somewhere because of weather, I would be better off placing myself closer to the highway that Tanya would be coming down in the car, not further out the other direction. It occurred to me that I just might have to actually use the radio to talk to flight watch about the weather picture. How weird would that have been :). So, a 90 degree turn eastbound was brighter skies and closer to ground retrieval possibilities. Once I was well clear of the stuff that the lightning was coming out of, I began picking my way south toward home again. Keep in mind that I’m a weather chicken, so when I say picking my way through weather, I mean with the intent of not getting so much as a drop of rain on the airframe.

The flight was bumpy, hot, and kinda’ “old school” in the weather department. The rigging of the flaps was well off so roll trim was maxed out and I had to hold it the whole way home. Ok, I made the autopilot hold it most of the way. I did a decent landing for the first one in 30 days back home. Comments about the new paint job were almost immediate from the tower. I had a couple of hours to kill before Tanya arrived in the car so I got to work.

I pulled all of the control inspection panels and checked all control rigging again. I found that the main reason the flaps were out of rig was because Paul put a full length screw back into the aft top hole for the wing gap fairing. That screw is too long and keeps the flaps from coming all the way up. Also, we added some UHMW tape on the underside of the flap gap fairing which made that just a little tighter. I trimmed the screws which obviously made a huge difference and adjusted the flap pushrods half of a turn. All better. Next up was the XM weather. Gotta’ have that working. We came to figure out (assumption) that after it hasn’t been used for a few weeks, you probably need to reactivate the radio. Did that and all is well.

We got everything all put back together and did a local flight to shake everything out. It flies great, looks great, and is ready to travel.

The big day is Friday. We are heading up to pick up 22C from Grady. He offered to send pictures, but I do love a surprise, so I told him not to send them. We should be two very happy campers come Saturday morning. (I’ll be too wiped to enjoy it Friday after an 8 hour round trip to Dallas and back in a car.) Hmmm, now where is the first lunch run going to be?

Week two without the plane has passed. Scott’s taken that time to work on the 8. I can also be caught in the garage from time to time. Another week of extremely hot weather is making this a little easier to take. Instead of sweating at the airport, the air-conditioned garage has been the place to be.

We had a friend that is a spam can driver visit us last night. He is considering building a 10, so we did or best to encourage him to come over to the “dark side”. A planned “short visit” turned into a 5 hour chat that lasted until midnight! Yet more proof that these things can be addictive.

Ugh. One full week since we dropped 22C off at the paint shop. It is a real bummer not to have it available to fly. It is a little disturbing the “personal” connection one can form with a machine. My anticipation grows with each day. I hope I can still remember how to fly when it is time to bring it home. Luckily, the afternoon temperatures have been solidly over 100 degrees, not great flying weather.