Ted's RV-10 Construction Blog

Page down a ways to see this post....

Labels: AD, Horizontal stab, repairs

Van's has found some cracking on a bulkhead in the tailcone of their RV-10. As a result, they have issued a mandatory AD which will require the removal of the empannege and disassembly of the rear tailcone. They have supplied some reinforcing doublers and a package of rivits. I will start the repairs Monday Sept 8th.

The aircraft now has about 95 hours on it and it is performing flawlessly. I took it to Oshkosh and on to London Ontario this summer

Labels: AD, Tailcone

I finished the 25 hr fly-off last week. I then flew the plane to Aero Sport Power in Kamloops and they fixed my idle problem. The mixture adjustment was grossly out of adjustment. Ted and Brian worked on the plane for a couple of hours. I also have a rough left mag which we did not resolve. I will probably have to go back again. I'll talk to Bart tomorrow.
Ther have been a number of teething problems with the plane, but 95% of them have been fixed. The one thats driving me crazy right now is an oil leak. Its coming from somewhere at the back of the engine, I think, and showing up on the bottom of the craft.

Today I moved out of the hangar. Washed the floor and left it in pristine condition. Cause I want it for the next winter...

Before I left, I was able to replace the defective oil cooler, reverse the screw up on the bowdon cables for the cabin heat. They now work in the correct direction.. I also replaced the stick grips with the Ray Allen style with the hat switch for trim. I eliminated the switch for the comm 1 flip flop. Too easy to be on the wrong frequency inadvertantly, and its not exactly a stretch to reach the switch on comm 1.

I am now parked outside with concrete blocks for tie downs. I prefered to be in the hangar. :>(

Plane now has about 11 hrs on it. I love it....

The plane now has about 7hrs on it. I replaced the axle extensions for the wheel pants with a heavy duty version. Shoud keep them from breaking off as has been a problem on other tens.

The insurance company has given me the go-ahead to fly on my own, so now i just need some decent weather .

Am in the process of moving out of the hangar. The owner is back sometime between the middle and end of May. Looks like I have to park outside. I fitted the canopy cover yesterday. It is a very good fit. Could be fun on a windy day.

Now that the plane has been flying for a couple of weeks I have had to deal with a few issues.

1) My handy dandy auto correct trim system which counteracts the nose down tendency of the flaps worked too well. The first two flap positions do not generate much trim change, but the correction still tried to correct. The result was severe nose up changes when the flaps were first deployed. Once the trim was manually put to the correct place for 10 deg of flap, the rest of the flap deployment was counteracted for very well. I installed a microswitch which disables the trim correction for the first 10 deg of flap.

2) I had the aileron trim and the altitude hold working backwards. Now corrected.

3) The fuel pump was leaking from an unknown number of places. Took it out and tightened a number of fittings.

4)I have an oil leak from one of the connections to the oil cooler. It looks like the pipe thread was cut too far into the cooler, with the result that the fitting could not be properly tightened. New oil cooler on order.

5) The Ray Allen stick grips with the flush pushbuttons for trim are a disaster. You can hardly go near them without inadvertantly operating the trim. New grips with a coolie hat switch are on order.

6) The comm flip/flop switch on the grip has to go. Too many times I have been transmitting on the wrong frequency because I accidently touched the switch. It's easy to reach the radio so I'll just switch it there.

7) I connected the bowden cables for the cabin heat backwards so in is ON and out is OFF. Have ordered new cables cause the old ones are too short to make the necessary changes.

8) Lots and lots of tweaking and changes on the EFIS and EIS.

9) Corrected a heavy left wing by removeing the rear spar bolt, moving the spar down about 3/64 ths of an inch, redrilling to the next size up and reassembling. Ther is NO tendency to heavyness any more.

10) I removed the inoperable aileron trim indicator and put it in the EFIS. Now I have to plug the hole.

11) My AOA does not talk to the audio panel. It worked originally, but I had the panel out to make some corrections and when I reinstalled it , it didn't work. Broken wire ?

12) Had to tweak the high speed setting on the governor. It was going into overspeed on takeoff. Good now.

13) I have some problem with the idle. Screw in all the way in, but still reluctant to idle. It seems to run a bit rough at low RPM as well. Pulled the plugs and they looked good.

14) For some reason, I did not put a screen in front of the intake air for the oil cooler. I still need to do that.

I've been up twice with Colin for training purposes. I've never flown constant speed, and the insurance company won't cover me until I have 10 hrs with Colin. Going up again today and tomorrow.

This is an awesome plane. The first takeoff was like hanging on to the tigers tail. I've never flown anything so powerful and fast on the climb. Quite an experience.

Discovered that the nose wheel fairing did not have enough clearance to the tire. Did not hurt the fiberglass but it bent it enough to pop some of the paint off. It now has the clearance. I'm in the process of moving my trim indications to the EFIS. The aileron trim indicator is not working and rather than replace it, I'll move it. Pretty simple wiring change.
I moved the rear spar connection about 3/64 in down. Hopefully this will correct the heavy left wing..

I absolutely hate the stick grips I installed. Have ordered grips with a coolie hat on them. Anyone want the old ones? They are Ray Allen with the pushbutton trim switches, a flap switch, and a toggle center off spring back from either end switch.

I found that 50 lbs os sand in the luggage compartment makes it much easier to fly.

Labels: modifications, training

The aircraft flew on Thurdsay April 5 2007.

Colin Jordan was at the controls and he was very impressed with the plane.

There are a few issues to be addressed: an oil leak, heavy left wing, aileron trim working in reverse, altitude hold which doesn't, and the aileron trim indicator doesn't work.

He flew for an hour at high power settings to break in the engine, then did some stuff at slower air speeds. Stalls are straight ahead.

More to come

I was not too happy with the proximety of the gascolator to the exhaust system so I installed a shroud around it. It's a bit rough, but it should do the job.

Labels: Gascolator shroud, idle

Just finished putting all the inspection covers and inside access covers on. I ran both my rechargeable drill and my power screwdriver dead befor I finished. I don't even want to know how many screws that was, but it was a LOT.

Today I'll fab a cover for the gascolator and run some cooling air to it. It is just too close to the muffler and exhaust pipes for my comfort.

Labels: acess covers, inspection

Labels: Gascolator

The RV-10 passed it's final inspection today. The inspector took about 2 hours doing the paper work and checking the aircraft. I have a couple of minor things to do before I put the covers on, and she's ready to go.

Yahoo

I re-installed the panel today. The serial connections now work to both comms. However, I noticed that the Nav reciever does not appear to be working. I just get a blast of noise when I tune it. Oh well, more to do...

Final inspection is Saturday...

Today I had to pull the panel back off the plane. There were one too many issues to deal with.
I did not have serial communication between my EFIS and comm1. When I pulled the radio out to check continuity on the wires, I discovered a wire hanging into the space the radio slides into. I also did not have continuity from the radio to the EFIS. I also needed to remove the EFIS alarm light and troubleshoot the aileron trim indicator.

So I pulled the panel.

On an up note, I recieved the registration papers from Transport Canada today. That means that I can arrange for the final inspection as soon as the panel is back in.

Labels: EFIS, panel, trim

Labels: engine monitor modification Lasar

Today I weighed the aircraft. It came in at a very respectable 1557 lbs I weighed it 3 times, each time rotating the scales to a different wheel. Hopefully, this will eliminate any errors in the readings.
I then sat in the aircraft and started to do the configurations on the engine monitor and EFIS. That is very tedious work, but I got most of it done. Then the displays started to go wonky (technical term) and blanked out, then rebooted. Thats when I discovered that my battery was down to about 8 volts. End of configurations for today. Will finish them up tomorrow.
Tomorrow I will put fuel in the tanks and calibrate the fuel gauges. Then its time to start the engine !!!!!

just need to change the oil, put some gas in it, and fire it up. Course, I need to do the W & B
before the gas, and I still have to configure the instruments.

Spent alomost three days trying to fix the trim indications. I finally found the problems which were brought on by myself. I got really screwed up on the wiring on both the elevator and aileron trims. However, they are both working properly now.
I populated the fuse panel today and powered everything up for the first time. It all worked very well. I just need to put all the covers, seats, and wheel pants in position so I can do the Weight and Balance. Maybe tomorrow....

Labels: trim, weight and balance

Mounted the prop. Torqued the bolts and saftey wired. Have the scars to prove it...!

Managed to remember to take the camera today. Almost finished the wing fairings. They were a lot more work than I was expecting. Took a good two days. Still have to torque the wing bolts and put a gazzillion screws and bolts on to the tanks.