Starting the Fuselage

We've been working on the fuselage in our copious amounts of spare time.  I wish I had the energy to work on the plane every night after work.  The first part of the kit is the mid fuselage bulkheads.  This is where the wings are going to attach to the fuselage, so, you know, it's kinda of important. Here's a coupe photos of some parts we have finished.

Welcome Again

It's been several years since my last post. I've continued flying doing short cross country flights to the coast, up the Columbia River Gorge, and all around the Willamette Valley. However, my last flight was in June. The place I rent the plane requires at least one takeoff (and landing) in the last 90 days, otherwise you need to go up with an instructor. In addition, every two years, you are required to go through a bi-annual flight review (BFR). Mine expired at the end of October. I think what I would like to do is schedule between 5 and 10 hours with an instructor and review several key elements from the private pilot syllabus. Review short and soft field takeoffs and landings, stalls, towered airport operations, etc. The only question is when I should do it. After a relatively dry October, the rainy season has started in the Northwest. If I do this review now, chances are there won't be any decent flying weather until late March or April (and that's optimistic). If I wait until Spring, there's going to be a lot more rust to shake off.

The reason for the lack of flying is not from lack of interest. Rather it's a lack of the two things that always seem to be in short supply; time and money. A friend and I quickly realized that we would be able to utilize our pilot certificates a lot more if we owned a plane. We had two options; build or buy. This was back in early 2008; pre-recession. Buying a new plane was (and still is) certainly out of the question. The used plane market seemed to be a seller's market. 30 year old Cessnas were actually appreciating in value. (I wish that would happen to my 10 year old Jetta.) It didn't seem like we were going to get a lot of plane for our money. We then looked at the build option. There is a healthy experimental plane community in the United States. Anyone who has been to Oshkosh can attest to that. Lots of companies will sell you a kit with instructions on how to assemble it into a fully functional aircraft. Basically, instead of exchanging a ton of money for a 30 year old plane, we would exchange a half-ton of money and lots of sweat equity for a brand new plane. In addition, when you build your own plane, you are allowed to do your own maintenance. In addition to saving money upfront, we should save money on ongoing costs.

Given all that, we went ahead and purchased a kit for a Van's Aircraft RV-10. It's a four seat aircraft with a cruising speed between 180 and 200 m.p.h. It's a fairly stable aircraft, which means it's hard to stall and fairly easy to fly. Plus, Van's is located less than an hour away in Aurora. We toured their facilities and even got to go up in a Rv-10. After we got back from the test flight, the check was writing itself.

The kit itself is purchased in 4 parts; empennage (a.k.a. "the tail"), wings, fuselage, and the finishing kit. We started building the plane in October 2008. We have completed the tail and the wings and just started the fuselage. My guess is that we are a couple years away from our first test flight.

Today, the used plane market has really bottomed out. Your money can buy you a lot more used plane. If we were making the build vs. buy decision today, would we still be building a plane. Most likely. I've learned a ton of new skills and there's still a lot of new stuff ahead of us. Plus, building a plane is a lot of fun.

The focus of this blog will shift from flying planes to building them. There's, hopefully, still a lot of flying ahead for me. In order to fly this plane, I'm going to need to get a high-performance and complex endorsements. In order for it to be practical to fly to exciting destinations (VEGAS!), I'm really going to need to get IFR certified. But the budget allows for one thing at a time, and that thing right now is building.

Here some pics of the stuff we've already done:

The trailing edge of the wing:

The ribs of the wing:

Constructing the tail cone:

The horizontal stabilizer:

The elevators:

The tail:

The rudder:

VFR X-Country to Hoquiam

On September 22, a friend from work and I flew up to Bowerman Field in Hoquiam, Washington. It was a beautiful late summer afternoon and a great day for flying. We had lunch at a cafe on the field called Lana's for our $100 hamburgers. In my case, it was a $100 tuna fish sandwich. The food must have been good since our takeoff roll after lunch was a bit longer than our takeoff roll before lunch.

Some people might think it's crazy to spend over a year and a good chunk of change to get a license just so that once can fly somewhere to get lunch. To that I respond, it's the journey, not the goal. Or is it the means justify the ends.

Here is a short clip of us departing Bowerman to head back to Pearson Field.




And here we are flying over Grays Harbor.




And here are some pictures:

Would you fly with this pilot?

Lined up and ready to depart Pearson Field (VUO)

Flying over the Columbia.

Over Grays Harbor

Video of flight around St. Helens

Last week Big D and I went for a flight around Mt. St. Helens. Big D ran the video camera while I flew the plane. The video begins with us departing Scappoose (SPB). We approach Mt. St. Helens from the southwest and circle the summit counterclockwise. The other mountains you see in the video are Mt. Ranier, Mt. Adams, and Mt. Hood.

Loop around western Washington

Aero Maintainence, the FBO at Pearson Field at my home airport organized a group X-Country around western Washington. We flew from Pearson (VUO) to Bowerman Field in Hoquiam (HQM) to Jefferson County International in Port Townsend (0S9) to Chehalis (CLS) and back to Pearson. It was an absolute blast.

Five planes went on the trip. On my plane, a Cessna 172m, with me were an instructor and a student pilot. I flew the VUO - HQM and 0S9 - CLS legs. We used mainly pilotage for navigation. I've never been to the Washington coast before and it was absolutely beautiful. The flight around Mt. Olympus was breathtaking.

Big D Finally Soloed!

Yesterday, a good friend of mine, let's call him "Big D", finally soloed. He started flight training a few months after I did, but got waylaid by a six month delay in getting his third class medical from the FAA. All private pilots need to get a third class medical certificate which basically states you meet the medical requirements set forth by the FAA. To get it, you go to a FAA approved doctor and they put you through a routine physical, ask about your medical history, and ask you for a list of any current medications you are on. The doctor can then approve you during the physical and you can walk out the door with your medical certificate. Or, as was the case with "Big D", the doctor wasn't sure about something, so he decided to send it to the FAA for approval.

A few weeks later, Big D got a letter saying his application for a certificate was denied. The strange thing was that he was denied for something other than what the doctor had a question about. The letter went on to say that if he wanted to appeal he needed to do X, Y, and Z. Big D does X,Y, and Z, and two months later, the FAA asks him to do X,Y, and Z again! It was at this point I understood why pilot's hold the FAA in such a special place in their heart. It was also at this point when I bought Big D a t-shirt that said:

FAA Mission Statement:
We're not happy until you aren't happy.

Anyway, Big D had enough of this and decided to get AOPA involved. It was amazing. Two phone calls and two weeks later, Big D had his medical certificate in hand and was back in the sky training. Yesterday, he soloed. Now he gets to do the fun stuff; X/countries, short and soft field T/O and landings, night flying, towered airports, and the FAA written exam. (Maybe the last one isn't exactly fun.)

Congratulation's Big D!

VFR To Astoria

In a previous job, I had to travel a lot. Once, I was stuck in Denver as United tried to find a crew to fly our plane. I thought to myself that even I could run an airline better than United. It turns out I can't.

The plan was to fly to Astoria with two of my friends from Borland. It was the first VFR weekend day in Vancouver in two or three weeks. The weather was forcasted to turn ugly the following day and the rest of the week, so basically, this was going to be our only chance to fly.

I get a call about an hour before I'm supposed to get the airplane. Apparently, the previous renter drained the battery trying to start the plane. Thankfully, the mechanic was willing to come in and charge the battery back up. When I arrived at the airport, the mechanic was charging the battery in the shop. The flight desk told me that I should still have the plane on-time. That's when they realized that the previous renter, who took off in another plane, had the key. That's right, the key to our plane, was flying somewhere over Oregon or Washington. Just a note to fellow renters: It's really annoying to not be able to fly because the previous pilot didn't return the key. Please return the key to the plane when you're done.

After an hour wait, the pilot with our key finally returned it to the flight school (without an apology, by the way). Fortunately, we had enough daylight to make the trip. The trip itself went fine. The only scary part was when, on the return leg of the trip, I listened to weather at Pearson (our home airport). I thought the report said that the clouds were at 1000 feet, which is minimal ceiling for VFR flight. I started thinking about alternative landing spots. My co-pilot, who is a student pilot, must have seen the gears cranking in my head when he said he heard the clouds at One-Zero Thousand (10,0000 ft.) Turns out he was correct.

Here are some pictures taken from the trip:

This is Pearson Field as we depart. The yellow and black checkered roof is the Pearson Air Museum. To the right of the museum is Fort Vancouver.











The occupants of the spacious 172 showing off their best side.













I think this is when we were in the pattern in Astoria.













On final on Runway 8 at Astoria. And, no, I did not photoshop this picture. I really was on glideslope!











We found this plane parked on the tarmac at Astoria. It looked like the engines were in working order. (Meaning there was fresh oil on the ground beneath them.) I'll have to look up to see what kind of plane it is. Whatever it is, it looks like a lot of fun to fly.