Day 16--we have liftoff!

Hello everyone & welcome back!

16 work days ago, our little airplane looked like this:

Now, it looks like this:

And today, it did this (sorry, video won't play on your iOS device...but trust me--our plane flew today!):

Although we flew today, we have a long ways to go.  We still have to calibrate all the avionics and fine-tune our engine.  We also have a lot on the airplane to finish prior to painting: rear seats, speed fairings, cargo pod, hatch cover bodywork....  So the 'blog doesn't end here, but we may slow down a bit.  Our last week and a half in Arlington includes flying the FAA-required 40 hours off our airplane and fixing all of our 'squawks' (any minor issues with the aircraft). 

Thanks to all the awesome people at Glasair Aviation for helping us make our airplane dream come true!

I'll write a couple more posts while we're here to show you the continued work, and perhaps some of the places we fly in our 40 hours.  Please keep checking in!

Blue Skies,
Eric & Tracy

Days 14 & 15--we are "airworthy!"

Hello everyone!

Today was a big day--the FAA inspectors came and issued us our airworthiness certificate!  The funny thing is, we're still not quite ready to fly yet...
...there's a saying in the Kitplane-building business: "You're 90% done, with 90% to go!"  That's not quite true, but the finish work to get the last details on the airplane sorted have taken most of the last three days.  We've worked 12-hour days all week this week, and still have work to do before our first flight tomorrow!
 Here are some pictures of the progress we've made:

This is the tunnel cover that goes over the boost pump and rudder cables.

We have seats!  The seats are about 9” of foam—extremely comfortable!  We didn’t have to fabricate these—all the leather work is done here in the facility.

Tracy spent a lot of time today working on the horizontal stabilizer tips.  These little pieces keeps a tight airflow in front of the elevator counterweights

Here is a picture of the completed left tip.  Again, it doesn’t look like much once completed, but it’s got to be perfectly measured, then Tracy installed flush-riveted nutplates in the horizontal stabilizer by dimpling the metal.

Meanwhile, I was working on the landing light lens covers, which required a similar process.  Grind them to size, flush-rivet nutplates inside the cove, then countersink holes for the flush screws into the fiberglass.

Our fairings are now one piece, joined by Cabo, which is a fiberglass paste.  Tomorrow morning we are going to reinforce the structure with a fiberglass layup.  The fiberglass cures so fast once it sets that we can glass at around 0830 and be flying by 1130.

The hatch inlays on the fuselage also require flush-riveted nutplates.  You can clearly see the gold-covered rivets in this picture, bracketing the hole for the hatch cover screws.

The leather crew brought us our bulkhead cover—nice!

Yep, we have to have a tail number to go fly!  This is temporary vinyl, but our Sportsman’s tail number will forever be N7815E.

Every airplane is required to have a placard on it with the builder’s name and serial number.  This is ours.  We didn’t get to choose the number—just lucky I suppose!  Fortune Favors the Bold…

While we've been finishing up, it's been a madhouse around here with a whole lot else going on!  Here are some other photos we took yesterday and today:

Our friends the Skeesicks came by to say hello!  Thanks you guys!

Another Sportsman owner stopped in to get help with a modification to his floats.  He put an electric kayak motor on the back of his left float, in order to water taxi under power.  Another modification that makes complete sense but would be very difficult to get done on a certified airplane.

Here is the kayak motor up close.  It will push the Sportsman—backward or forward—at a leisurely 2-ish mph.

Glasair is extremely busy with Oshkosh prep.  At the end of the day the hangar looks like a full aircraft carrier deck.  Ours is the one closest.

Well, folks, according to the FAA, we’ve got ourselves an airplane!  Now it just needs a name…and to go flying!  First flight is tomorrow--we can't wait!!

Day 13--Hatch covers, engine coolling, and inspection prep

Hi everyone!

Well, it looks like yesterday was our first day of building with not too much to report.  We have some big items to finish yet as we get the airplane ready for first flight, so we did a lot of work on those.  I was working on the hatch covers and Tracy worked on the final cowling baffling.  All afternoon yesterday we did a full aircraft inspection--basically a tip-to-tail, rivet-by-rivet aircraft inspection to double-check our work over the last couple of weeks.  It took over three hours!  It was great to do, however--it gave us a lot of appreciation for the attention to detail we'll need to exercise on our future annual inspections.

Here are today's photos:

Here is the bottom section of the left hatch cover.  the hatch covers are carbon fiber and form-fit to the fuselage and wings to complete the aerodynamic shape of the aircraft.  If we had a big gap here between the wing and fuselage it would increase our stall speed by about 5 knots.  Instead, our plane stalls at 42 knots in level flight in landing configuration.

Here are the top of the hatch covers.  They take awhile because they require precise fitting to the fuselage gap.  I spent most of the morning marking them and sanding them to get this gap to look right all the way around.  Tomorrow's work is to fiberglass the top and bottom halves of each hatch together.  Once installed, the hatches will be a removable feature on the aircraft--they need to be off to fold the wings.

Meanwhile, Tracy was working on the engine cowling baffling.  These rubber strips complete the air circuit under our hood.  When the cowling is on, it pushes down on them and creates a seal of sorts--it doesn't catch 100% of the air but it does divert most of it straight down through the engine cooling fins.

Here's the baffling up close.  The rubber strips are attached with big pull rivets and washers--easy.  The hardest part, like the hatch covers, is getting the right shape.

Meanwhile, it's a beehive of activity at Glasair!  There are actually 6 airplanes in this picture--3 of them are in the hangar!  3 are getting ready to go to OshKosh on Thursday, one is ours, and one is the Two-Weeks-to-Taxi build that started behind us this week, a nice couple from Wyoming.  The red one in the middle is the factory Demo plane, which we will fly Wednesday to get ready for our own flight on Thursday!

Okay folks, that's it for today!  Tuesday we expect to finish the hatch covers and baffling, and Glasair will follow up our inspection with one of their own.  Wednesday and Thursday are big days--on Wednesday the FAA comes to inspect our plane for airworthiness, and Thursday (maybe Wednesday afternoon but unlikely) we will take our first flight!  Stay tuned!  -zen

Yesterday's trials & triumphs--learning to troubleshoot

Hello again all!

As we posted last night, yesterday was ultimately a great day thanks to some awesome work by Matt and Ben buttoning up the airplane.  It took a while to get there, though, due to some hiccups along the way.  Our new little airplane came out of the hangar kicking and screaming a little, with some minor issues in the brakes, fuel system, oil system, and engine start (but she still started on the first attempt, so we win that bet!).  At the end of the day, we had a perfectly functioning powerplant.  Here's how we got there:

We started with putting brake fluid in the brake system and bleeding the air out of the lines.  Brake fluid goes in from the bottom up, there’s a valve at the bottom of the brake stack.  The white bottle in front of me is just a yard sprayer you can get at Lowe’s with pressurized air and brake fluid in it.  It has a tube on the end made for fitting to the brake line valve. 

The first tantrum our new airplane threw yesterday was a brake leak…this is the aftermath.  It turns out one of the fittings we used had a manufacturer’s defect.

Here is the male end of the fitting after we removed it.  Everywhere you see silver is bad—the male end got scoured by the female end, which had a misshapen countersink.  The two pieces need to match exactly—the seal is a metal-on-metal seal.  We replaced the parts and didn’t have any more issues.

We also had some final engine prep to do: routing the cooling hoses, putting the spark plugs in, doing final checks on all the routing & fitting of parts.  Here is the alternator belt on—the safety-wired bolts hold the belt in the correct position.

Tracy is putting the spinner on the prop.  In the background, Matt is putting heat tape on the inside of the cowling.

While Tracy & Matt were working on the engine, Ben and I were testing the fuel system.  Here is the resultant fuel leak—whoops!  This was our only big builder-induced error of the day.  We wait to put the sump valves in the bottom of the aircraft until right before we check the fuel.  Today…well, we forgot to put the valves in.  In this picture my finger is holding the rest of the fuel in the right wing as we get a gas can and funnel.  The fix for this is simple, of course—put the valves in, dummy!  Besides that our fuel system works perfectly.  We did an entire fuel flush to check for any debris or lack of flow at all the critical points in the system up to the engine.

After the engine was prepped and we had fuel loaded, it was time to pre-oil the engine.  Our engine holds 7 quarts, plus an extra quart that is used by the variable-pitch propeller and the oil cooler/pan.  Before we start the engine for the first time, we pre-oil it to push oil through all the engine components.  In this video, I am turning the starter while Ben checks the oil.  He is waiting until oil comes out of the port that goes to the oil cooler.  When it does, the engine is pre-oiled.  You may notice the motor spins freely in this video—that’s because the spark plugs are out so the engine isn’t fighting any air on its compression cycle.

Once everything was buttoned up, our airplane saw sunlight for the first time!

  Our first Engine start was successful, but the engine was running rough and the #4 cylinder was behaving badly—our Exhaust Gas Temperature (EGT) was about 400deg higher that the rest of the cylinders.  Uh-oh!  We shut it down and Ben went to work.  Ben is a wizard with engines—one of the previous customers calls him ‘Obi-Wan.’  He was able to isolate the problem to some debris in the #4 injector port left from the factory.  He pulled it out with a flashlight and a magnet while the engine was still too hot to touch. The engine started right up again with no issues.  Success!  Thanks, Ben!

We’d also like to say congrats to Ted Setzer, one of the Glasair Founders.  After 30 years of building them, Ted’s finally got a Sportsman of his own!  Yesterday he put it on Alaska Bushweel tires with his own custom-made bush gear, and took his wife flying in it for (we think) the first time.  This plane is guaranteed to make all the Super Cub owners at OshKosh jealous this year.   Great work, Ted—she’s beautiful!

Day 12--0 to taxi in 12 work days!

Hi folks, Happy Saturday!

We had a landmark day here in Arlington--our airplane's first power-up and taxi, just as the program says!  We have a lot of stories from today--getting our bird to taxi wasn't textbook--but right now it's about time to go catch up on some sleep, so...

...the taxi for us is just the beginning.  Here's our rough schedule from here on out:
--Mon-Tues: Prepare for flight
--Wed: FAA Inspection & airworthiness certificate
--Thurs: First flight
--Thurs-Jul 29-ish: fly the required 40 hours for the FAA test phase requirements
--29 Jul-02 Aug: finish remaining airplane components: Wheel fairings, rear cockpit seating, cargo pod, etc. 

So what I'm saying is: if you're an avid follower of this project, there's still a lot more to go, and a lot more to learn.  I'll recap the stories of today's drama tomorrow, but in the meantime, here's the result of our last two weeks' experience here at Glasair Aviation:

 

As Tracy's dad  says: "it's alive!"  Yes it is...and soon to be airborne!

See you tomorrow, Tracy & Eric

Day 11--Prop, Avionics, Cowling, & Fairings...taxi tomorrow!

Hi everyone!

We had a really exciting day today with a ton of work done on the aircraft.  Glasair put all hands on deck to help us get ready for taxi tomorrow.  It was especially fun because all the parts are pretty much on the airplane now--which means we were in a fight for elbow room all day!

Here's some of the major stuff we worked on today:

Tracy spent a good portion of the morning on cables.   The cables for our GPS antenna had to be hand-cut and have the fixtures put on the end.  Who knew we would learn how to put a coaxial cable together here?  In this shot, Tracy and Ryan are affixing the GPS antenna (the little white bubble antenna) to the top of the roof.

Here’s the GPS antenna mount from the inside.  Tracy affixed the antenna fittings by hand.

In addition to the GPS antenna, Tracy and Ryan ran both radio antenna wires today (the antennas are external and on the wings).  After the wires (gold-colored) drop through the strut they converge in the floor seam and are routed up to the avionics panel.  You can see it’s starting to get pretty busy in there!

While that was going on, Matt put together our exhaust.  The exhaust is a 4-into-1 system that collects exhaust air from each cylinder in a single exhaust tube.

Here’s the exhaust mounted on the airframe.  Just bolt it on—pretty easy for the most part.

We also mounted the prop today!   Our propeller is a 3-blade, 72” composite propeller built by MT propellers.  A three-blade prop is actually slightly less efficient in cruise than a two-blade prop—we will see about 5mph slower top-end speeds on our airplane than we would with a 2-blade prop.  On the other hand, with a 3-blade prop we get better climb performance and reduced noise & vibration—so longer flights will be less fatiguing.  Well worth it to us.  On a side note, over Bryce’s head you can see one of the wing-mounted radio antennas Tracy cabled today.

Bryce and I are tightening the prop bolts in this picture.  Getting it right is like a very meticulous version of changing the tire on a car.  There are six propeller bolts that are tightened in a star pattern, torqued to a specific torque value, then safety-wired.

Well folks, here’s our ‘complete’ panel—minus the backup iPad that will go on the right side.  From left to right, top to bottom:

-Advanced Flight Systems Electronic Flight Information System

-TruTrak Autopilot (does altitude find & hold, course following, and instrument approaches)

-Dynon D10 Electronics Attitude Indicator with Airspeed & Altitude

- Old School Standby Airspeed Indicator…for tradition!

- Garmin Intercom—controls the radios & intercom setup

- Garmin G650 touch-screen Primary Flight Display

- Backup Radio

- Transponder

Here’s the panel with the EFIS and the ADI booted up.  Today we did a full avionics run-through to make sure the entire electrical system on the airplane works.  Everything worked with only one hiccup…when we turned on the landing lights, the left fuel boos pump came on instead!  Ryan was able to trace it to a mis-labeled wire in the cockpit connectors—he fixed it in about 30 minutes and we are all set for tomorrow!  In this picture, notice the EFIS shows us in about 60deg of climb and 35deg of right bank....

…that’s because we haven’t attached the Attitude Heading and Reference System (AHRS) to the airframe yet—it’s attached to one of our inspection port covers but not screwed in yet.  Notice the diagonal tilt to the bracket the AHRS is on—this bracket is specifically designed to be perfectly level and forward facing once it’s installed for aircraft startup.  Right now it’s hanging…so our EFIS looks wonky!

Well, tomorrow is the last day of the "Two Weeks to Taxi" Program.  I am betting our engine will start on the first attempt...any takers?  Have a great weekend!  -zen

Day 10--doors & headlights...man this thing's fancy!

Hi again folks!

Today was another day of intense work, but this time we focused on specific areas instead of bouncing around.  Tracy worked on the wingtips for most of the day, and I was working on the door assembly.  While we were doing that, the Glasair team was wailing away on our engine, windshield, and autopilot systems, to name a few!  Here are some pics from today:

The first thing Tracy worked on today was the aileron servo tab.  This tab on our left aileron serves to assist aileron travel during flight by helping the aileron act like a ‘mini-wing’ in the airstream.  It’s all mechanical, determined by the inclination of the tab relative to the position of the aileron.  For further explanation…come visit and we’ll show you!  All kidding aside, this is one of the parts of the aircraft that has to be just right for the airplane to be perfectly rigged.  Tracy was adjusting it to a tolerance of less than a millimeter.  If our airplane is out of rig inflight (one wing feels heavier than the other), we may have to go back and readjust.

Tracy also did the final checks & torque seals on our flaps and ailerons.  Sounds easy…but getting a wrench in there is a pain.   That lone jam nut on the pushrod (the one you can see through the lightening hole) took about 30 minutes.

Once she was done with that, Tracy worked on the wingtips for the rest of the day.  These are aerodynamic caps that go on the wing spar ends; they also house our landing lights, strobes, and position lights.  They take time because we have to custom-fit them to our wings, then position the lights just right and run the electrical.

Part of the wing build was pre-routing the electrical wires for the wingtips.  They go down through the strut to the fuselage.

Here’s the inside of the wingtip with Tracy’s electrical work.  Looks pretty simple but takes awhile to put together right!  The angle of the landing light has to be perfect.  Luckily, if we need minor adjustments these are fairly easy to take off.  Knowing Tracy these won't need any adjustment at all! 

Here’s the wingtip from the front.  You can see the landing light—it is a High Intensity Discharge (HID) light with about 5x the power of an incandescent landing light.  A little pricey, but makes night landings safer!  On the right you can see the nearly flush position light/strobe fixture.  These are LEDs.

While Tracy was doing that, Bryce and I were working on the left side door—pretty much all day.  The latch mechanism on the Sportsman is ingenious but takes some time to get everything fit right. 

Here’s the door opening with the watertight gasket set in.  If you look closely you can see three cylinders in the frame—one top left, one top right, one near the bottom on the right.  In the Sportsman, when you close the door it latches in to all three of these cylinders simultaneously—creating a nice tight door seal.

I only look mildly happy in this picture because the door took so long!  In truth, I am ecstatic—we are still having a great time!!

Last thing of the day—peeling the tape off the door window after applying the silicone.

All day today, the Glasair team was hooking us up with major airframe installs.  Here, Tyler is form-fitting our windshield.  The process for this is ‘simple:’  Fit, mark, shave a little, fit, mark, shave a little….Tyler was at this most of the day.  Thanks buddy.

Ryan was awesome walking Tracy through the wingtip install.

Matt worked most of the day on our engine install.  You’re looking at the throttle assembly on our Sportsman.  Like I said yesterday, it’s all mechanically actuated—but that means there are some important fits to do.  The stops on the throttle must align exactly with the lever placement in the cockpit—which requires a lot of precise metalwork to design the stops. 

Last, I walked up to the airplane this afternoon and the autopilot servos were installed!  I think Bryce did it in between door work.  The servos are simple—electric motors hooked up to cables, which are in turn attached directly to our flight control cables.   Cool!

 Alright--we've got one more day to go before taxi!  (and then, a lot more work to be done!).  We expect first flight to be mid-next week.  Stay tuned!  --zen