Wing spars relocated back on the work bench

As part of my ongoing major re-organization effort of the garage, I managed to clear off enough space from the work benches to allow me to move the spars from the shelf on the wall to the benches. I had not seen them for a while, and it felt good to get them down from "storage" so I can start match drilling ribs and skins and such.

The only problem I encountered whne attempting to move them from the shelf to the bench was that all of the parts that were stored on the shelf had been buried by almost 1 inch of shingle remnant when the jerks put my new roof on the house. THey did a great job cleaning up around the perimeter of the house but nobody even mentioned anything about checking and cleaning up my garage. This really pissed me off, but at the same time I realized that this was mostly my fault for leaving them "in harms way" adn not covering them with a tarp or something. I guess I just did not expect to ahve that much crap fall down into the garage.

IN any event, it looks like I was able to vacuum up most of the stuff, but this kind of thing always makes me nervous when I start thinking about all the little pieces tht may still be buried underneath the metal that will not show their ugly face until the vibration from the finished plane finally jars them loose, adn then who know what crevace they may find to deposit themselves into that end up affecting a critical flight control or something.

Here is the first of several pics - lovely shingle crap and sawdust all over my left elevator, and most certainly inside the bay where the electric servo and linkage  goes - the one place that I really don't want to have any of this crap in my airplane, where it can be fatal if something goes wrong.

Edit - and a happy new year to me!! Turns out that blogspot has had problems with uploading images apparently since clear back on January 4. Smells like a virus or even better a ploy to push users away from IE and onto Google chrome or Firefox browsers. Having recently had problems at work with Firefox's latest release, I am now leary of downloading anyone's browser. That said, it does seem that Firefox v 17.0.1 does not have the problem that IE does (do NOT under any circumstances install Firefox v 18.0 - very bad!).

Anyway, to continue - here is the pics of my roof debris covered airplane parts, starting with the left elevator:

Next is the rear spar:

And on a happier note, here are the main wing spars back on the bench. Unfortunately, my HS is still on the table in front of the bench, and I need to finish up some touch up work on the HS so I can hang it back up on the wall to free up the table so I can start attaching ribs - it just never ends.

Still dealing with another deep freeze that has put the stops on anything in the garage. Now working on the cleanup of the benches in the basement - getting tired of living in the junk heap of a house. Almost ready to break out the two fire pits that I own and start some serious burning!

And finally, this is better late than never I guess. A couple of weeks ago I attended a hangar party up at KBJC for a gathering of RV folks across the state. Compliments to Bob Market, who owns this awesome hangar which will soon house Ron Duren's RV-7. I met several people that I had never met before, and made some new friends along the way. Here is a list of things that happened up there:

1. Got a close up view of Sean Thomas' Metal Wing stands. I will post some additional pics of that in another post, but here is a teaser pic for now. Sean is doing a great job.

2. Finally got to see Sean B, who had some very bad luck last summer after his house, and nearly completed RV7 were lost in a large fire near Colorado Springs. It was really great to see him and to find out that he is actually back to building another 7 again and doing his best to put the fire behind him. Kudos to you Sean. I admire your intestinal fortitude! KPR my friend.
3. I got to meet Jim Gray, owner and builder of the 2010 grand champion homebuilt award at Oshkosh for his beautifully finished RV-8, which was finished in the colors of the Jolly Roger Squadron seen in so many movies, including Top Gun and GI Jane. I took a ton of pics and got to pick Jim's brain for some building tips for such things as the forward baggage door, etc.

4. As if that was not enough, I then got a chance to talk with Bob Markert, who is now working on his fuselage. Get ready for alot of green - I just love the color of the primer he is using:

Note the mockup of the instrument panel - alot of Garmin goodies going in this one. He also has a rear seat throttle that I am also considering putting in the back as a safety feature more than anything else. I am NOT going to put the rear rudder pedals in mine - too many stories from other folks about ineffective control and uncomfortable foot position for the rear seat occupant. here is the forward throttle quadrant  - very similar to what I am going to do.

And the rear throttle:

And here is shot of an improvement over the stock landing gear provided by Vans - Grove lnding gear struts are made from one piece leaf spring steel (I think), and they are designed to carry the hydraulic brake fluid inside the actual strut instead of from a separate brake line that is typically strapped to the the landing gear strut. These also serve to eliminate the need to make fairings for the landing gear legs since they already come aerodynamically shaped.

And finally a shot of one of the auxiliary fuel tanks that fit at the tip of each wing. These are from SafeAir and are very expensive (about 1500.00 for the pair), and they give you about an hour of extra fuel. I plan on getting the bungle kit which is simply the fuel line fitting that is added to the main fuel tank which connects to the fuel line coming from the aux tank shown below. I will simply cap this off for potential future use shold I decide to add the aux tanks at a later time. Part of the tank fits inside the wing tip (bottom of pic), and the rest of it (long tube) fits inside the lightening holes of the outer wing ribs. It was very cool to see these up close.

Then Bob showed me a custom windscreen that he ordered from the same company that makes the canopies for Vans. The stock canopy comes molded as one full unit that must be cut and trimmed to create the wind screen and the separate bubble canopy. I had no idea that you could order just the wind screen by itself. I learn something every day.

So it was one hangar, good friends, good food, good conversation, and a mind blowing awesome experience to see flying RVs and RVs under construction all in the same place. It certainly had an airplane factory feel to it. Now I just need to get back to pounding some rivets! All for now.