Kent Ashton

I wanted to fly the prop today but it was way out of balance. The engine shook noticeably and I was afraid to fly it. I confess I did not pay much attention to checking the tracking during construction and a quick check from the prop tips to a point on the wing T.E. showed one blade tracks 1/4" differently from the other. Also when I inserted the lead slug in the hub, I did not split the weight on each side of the hub which might be giving me a coupling imbalance. And it could be a combination of the two. 😞 They say a slight tracking error can be fixed by torquing the bolts differently but I probably have too much error for that. I will do a careful rebalance paying attention to hub (coupling) balance and check the tracking at the stations. I might be able to shave the hub a fraction to correct the tracking.

I made a "flox corner" at the trailing edge. Grind a thin saber-saw blade so it it only about 1/8" wide and pointed (pic 1). Mark a line along the T.E. about 5/16 to 3/8" in from the T.E. Drill several holes big enough to get the saber-saw blade started in the holes. Cut a line down the T.E. leaving the wood attached with small bridges where you drilled the holes (pic 2) Apply a bit of contact cement on the cambered side of the T.E. and apply a strip of peel-ply tape (pic 3). Layup the cambered-side layers. After cure, flip the prop and chisel-off the wood and peel-ply at the T.E which is pretty easy since it s only attached in 4 or 5 places (pic 4). Fill the edge with wet flox and layup the flat-side layers (pic 5). I have no idea how the professional builders do the trailing edges but this is about what I did on the last prop and it worked well. On the other prop, I didn't cut the line with the saw and it was lot more work chiseling off the wood. If this prop holds together I will make a full writeup. If not, it was nice knowing you. 🙂

I like how my friend cut his baffle material so it will spread but keep a tight seal. His AN bolts are a little overkill but those baffles are NOT GOING TO COME OFF! 🙂

No takers on the quiz, eh? Just posted: this Quickie north of Atlanta https://atlanta.craigslist.org/nat/avo/d/demorest-new-quickie-airplane-kit/6873120820.html More pics in the ad. Bonus feature: Interesting discussion of a Super Quickie with a Rotax 503. 52 hp versus the 18 hp Onan. http://jdfinley.com/file-downloads/quickie-aircraft-documents/ Alternatively, you could try the jet version but that one has had mixed results. https://youtu.be/QnJBMYC8ReA Nah, I think I will let this one pass me by. 🙂

Nice clean Vari today N112EZ https://flightaware.com/resources/registration/N112EZ Only 136 TT? OK, here is a question for the kids: He is showing 170 on the Ipad and 125 KIAS at 7300' on the instruments. Assuming about 0 deg. C at that altitude, how much tailwind component? 🙂 Question 2 for extra credit: He says she'll do 165 MPH w no wheel pants. True or false? RUTAN MODEL 33 VARI-EZE • $24,500 • FOR SALE • Vari-Eze S/N 43 N112EZ - 136TTAF, C85-12 with 328 SMOH, 700 man-hour refit & paint Oct 2018 includes Carb & Mags by RLB, balanced controls, Belleville shimmy damp, new Saber prop ext., clean wing attach w/ new 4130 plugs, teflon hinge kit, -4 rod ends, push-pull eng controls, canopy strut, Hookers, elec speed brake, new panel, Becker com/intercom, LEMO, Ram, Stratus ADS-B/AHRS, ELT, ADS-B out & MODE-C exempt 91.215(B)3 & 91.225(E), Compliance with most Canard Pusher mods. 661 empty, 1110 MGTOW, 165 MPH TAS w/ no wheel pants, tall pilot friendly, flight tested great, Pristine documentation. • Contact Joseph D. Dougherty, Owner - located Wheaton, IL USA • Telephone: 630-292-1139 • Posted April 22, 2019

He started with a UL 390, now has a bigger engine. I don't recall all the details but I believe he said the first engine did not put out the advertised HP. You can pretty much read the history of his project here or search for jenatepilot's posts http://forum.canardaviation.com/search.php?searchid=19&pp=25 Found another discussion of his engine here. That's probably what you ought to read http://www.myulpower.com

Good catch. For reference, the EZ above is N675JL https://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_Results.aspx?NNumbertxt=675JL Being sold by the builder's son, it appears. I know of two EZs near me that are languishing. One is almost new, has been sitting nearly four years. The builder is a friend but he didn't even finish Phase I. I talk to him a lot and say "Let's get that baby back in the air" but so far, no go. Another EZ was bought by a biz-jet pilot, I flew him over to the western part of the state to see it. It was a pretty good airplane but non-flying after the builder/owner died, the biz-jet pilot trucked it home 4-5 years ago but has never flown it. Last I heard, he was trying to get someone to put it together and get it flying for him. People! 😞

I learned something about mold wax today: I have made cowl molds, waxed them with a carnauba wax and noticed that PVA will clump up on the mold unless it is sprayed-on in very thin coats, which is rather tedious. The purpose of the PVA is to keep the wax off the finished part. A chap on the Cozy list says the PVA clumps because the carnauba-based wax contains silicone. He says to use a "green" wax like this Partall https://s3.amazonaws.com/cdn.fibreglast.com/downloads/00148.pdf Good to know! My prop is done, painted, and I made a cover. After I fly it a bit, I will make a report. I worry about flying an untested prop but it is the same layup schedule I used before which held together: BID-UNI-BID on cambered side, UNI-BID on the flat side wrapping to the cambered side. Painted in some "Porsche Green" motorcycle paint I had left-over. Pic 3 is the balance. It took a plug of lead in the hub 3/4" long X 1/2" to bring it almost to balance, then a bit if extra paint on one blade.

This EZ today N795BT. A basic airplane but looks OK. Being sold by the builder. No pics but the video is pretty good. 2011 LONG EZ, O-235, 144 HRS • $24,900 • FOR SALE • Located in Huntington, IN. Email for pics, specs and videos. • Contact Brett D. Gerber, Owner - located Columbia City, IN USA • Telephone: 260-494-4570 • Posted April 19, 2019 Youtube: https://youtu.be/7nM1A2mUosk https://www.regosearch.com/aircraft/us/795BT

Wow again! But just what we expected, right? Sorry you had to do that but save the pics. Maybe the next builder can use them. It would be fun to know more about the test. What did the authorities require? What G are you simulating? How did you establish the loading schedule? Did you support the wings while loading the bags. Did you hear any noises during the test? What were the wing and canard deflections? Did they seem to recover to original position?

A couple of things I would question are (1) Can you taxi it at 10-15 kts in a 10-15 kt headwind without the canopy coming off? and (2) is the white interior going to reflect up into the canopy? Yeah, it has some nice features but from 50' it just looks like another white EZ. For $95K I would want some stripes or shark's teeth 🙂 (pic: Dick Rutan's EZ. Actually a little overdone for my taste. I would have stopped at the eagle beak and eyes.)

This EZ today N367MS "Magnificent Seven"! https://registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/NNum_Results.aspx?NNumbertxt=N367ms LONG EZ • AVAILABLE FOR IMMEDIATE SALE • Long EZ N367MS 0-320 powered nose gear 170/180 knot cruise • Contact William R. Oertel, Owner - located Norco, CA USA • Telephone: 951 751-8627 . 951 738-8300 • Posted April 17, 2019 The second airplane Oertel is selling recently. Good chance to compare them.

If you had 10-15 hours in the airplane, would they insure you? If so, just fly it 10-15 hours and reapply. Or just fly with Marc’s Cozy guy for a couple hours. I have never had hull coverage on my Cozy III, Mark IV, or Long-ez. With your experience, you should have no problem. $95,000? I hope he is using a gold brick for ballast!

I think I saw about $550 for the kit ----------------- I installed a Uavionix EchoUAT and SkyFYX-Ext in the Cozy. It was a pretty easy install but after five flights I have not been able to get a good FAA Performance Report out of it. I am seeing targets in Foreflight, Greensboro Approach told me my UAT was working, and a couple of airplanes said they see my info. The Uavionix App shows the correct monitor data. Very frustrating because there is no good way to troubleshoot this. Today I found this map of ADSB towers. https://www.dropbox.com/s/v350zbnxlelowr9/user_waypoints.kml?dl=0 It can be opened in Google Earth. I see that my airport is between towers. Next time I'll keep real close to a tower. BTW, the EchoUAT can "sniff" the transponder code and simultaneously transmit its own data. My Garmin 327 has an RS-232 output that can be wired to the EchoUAT in lieu of the "sniffer" but it took a $180 software upgrade to the Garmin. It's always something! 😞

An interesting project in California (where else?) 🙂 In an age of pre-punched and molded kits, it's interesting to see a one-off like this. (from Barnstormers)

Mike, The O-360 overhaul manual gives a spec for backlash of the impellers (.008-.015" or .008-.012", .020 max). The Superior O-360 OHM calls it "backlash and end clearance" with a slightly different spec (.010-.030") but I imagine that covers impeller backlash and impeller-to-housing clearance. When I took my O-320 apart it was obvious the impellers rub against the housing a bit and leave a round mark on the housing but as I recall, it was just a nice clean rub pattern--not like that guy's. There are AD's out for those impellers. Generally the aluminum and sintered iron impellers were replaced by steel.

File this under: "THE ENGINE IS TRYING TO TELL YOU SOMETHING" : A poster on another site has 170 hours on an overhauled Lycoming with abnormally low oil pressure the whole time. For the past year the best he can get with warm oil is about 57 PSI. The Lycoming minumum on a plain O-360 is 55 psi and around 90 is what I usually see. He has futzed around asking how to adjust pressure all over the internet for the past year. Recently he showed his oil pump which he says had "new" impellers at overhaul and says "The housing looks clean...just some expected wear marks but not deep or like there was metal spinning around." Really?! Pic 2 is a new pump and impellers. I am not an A&P but looking closely at his pictures, his impeller looks worn out. The left impeller's teeth show an irregular pattern as if it's not meshing correctly with the other impeller. There are deep score marks on the sides of the impellers, in the housing and on the shaft. If you expand the pic you can see ragged aluminum in the housing left from the scoring. It's not surprising to me that this pump is not making adequate pressure. If this chap had done a proper inspection a year ago, he might have had recourse to go back to the overhauler for an explanation. Now he's run it on low oil pressure. Maybe the scoring also result from metal floating around in the oil and metal has also embedded itself in the bearings and scored the crank journals.

I can understand CS props on airplanes that burn 20-50 gph or cruise above 200 kts but for airplanes burning 8-10 gph or cruise <150 kts I don’t see how the tiny fuel savings or small boost in speed can justify CS.

This is a little more like it : An older EZ, N3223P, (you can tell by the P-51 scoop) but priced about right. http://www.aviationdb.com/Aviation/Aircraft/3/N3223P.shtm I am not a fan of the silver paint, though. It seems to add about 15 deg to the skin temperature https://www.canardzone.com/forums/topic/31195-its-been-12-years-since-someone-started-a-can-i-paint-it-x-thread/?do=findComment&comment=59015 I suppose the surface temp will stay below the Tg but why heat up a plastic airplane? See p. 12 here http://www.cozybuilders.org/Oshkosh_Presentations/2006_EpoxyDoDonts.pdf LONG EZ 0-320, FRESH INSP. • $39,900 • FOR SALE • LONG EZ O-320-B2B FRESH COND INSP • $39,900 • O-320, +/-330hrs smoh, (Compression: 79,75,68,70). VFR, MGL Xtreme EFIS, MGL V6 Radio/Intercom, IFLY 720 GPS w/ panel mount, Dual Tosten Stick Grips, Aveo Powerburst LED lights, New ignition switch, B&C Spin-on Oil Filter, Jack Wilhelmson Heavy Duty Nose Gear w/auto exten, Roncz Canard, Armpit scoops, Heated seats, Bag/pods, 3-blade prop, Hershey spinner, Ram Air, complete plans, logs & newsletters, canopy cover. Beautiful, real head turner. Serious inquiries only! • Contact Ray D. Brown, Mt. View, AR (7M2)• Telephone: 870-615-1964. • Contact Ray D. Brown, Owner - located Mountain View, AR USA • Telephone: 8706151964 . 870-213-8657 • Posted April 11, 2019

One time a buddy and I were rafting down the Rio Grande near Del Rio and we came to a weir. It looked fairly benign--just a foot or two of smooth water moving over a low dam. We hauled out and debated whether we could raft across it. Decided not to try it. Best decision I (we) ever made. 🙂 In the past few days I've seen several videos of weirs or weir-like situations killing people, like the poor guy in this video. In the other videos, moped-riders trying to cross a flooded road got swept in the rotor. How do you learn this stuff? Youtube, in spite of all the crap, has done us a great service by showing many ways to die. https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=RyOK_1554971362

I remember seeing this one under construction about the time I was building my Cozy IV. N654EZ http://www.aviationdb.com/Aviation/Aircraft/6/N654EZ.shtm Builder built some interesting intakes and I took a pic (#4). He lost his medical and had to sell. It was well built and has had a nice cockpit upgrade since those days. I copied the gray paint and his nose-shape on the EZ I built. 🙂 I figure a good EZ can be had for $40-45K then add $20K in avionics so the price seems ambitious. GORGEOUS 2006 LONG-EZ • $79,000 • FOR SALE • A Once in a lifetime opportunity to buy 1 of the BEST Long-EZ's in the USA! She has an IO-320-B1A, Dual EFII Electronic Ignition, ALL NEW Avionics, 2020 Compliant, Dual Axis AP, VP-X Electronic Circuit Breakers, 10.4" & 4.3" GRT EFIS, Trig TT-22 Trans, Trig TY-91 VHF Radio, VAL NAV-2KR, Garmin 430 WAAS, PS Eng PMA 8000BTi Audio Panel, Tosten Military Style Grip, Dual AHRS, ARTEX ELT 345, 700 TT, Leather Seats, 2" Wider & Longer than Standard Long-EZ, AveoFlash Ultra LED Wingtip Lights, Koger Sun Shade, Baggage Pods, Oversized Canopy, Matco Brakes. Gorgeous, Very Fast & Fuel Efficient! • VISIT MY WEBSITE • Contact Bill Earlywine, Owner - located Oxnard, CA USA • Telephone: 805-669-8870 • Posted April 9, 2019

This Ellison TBI today. Heck of a deal, they sell for over $2000. I like my Ellison (is is a 4-5). I estimate it gives about 85% of the fuel savings as you'd get with fuel injection. About 1 gph improvement over a standard Marvel carb. ELLISON THROTTLEBODY INJECTOR • $800 • FOR SALE BY OWNER • Ellison Throttle Body Injector Model 4-5 Unused Excellent. Call / text for info 812-767-3545 • Contact D. L. Pohle, Owner - located Butlerville, IN USA • Telephone: 812-767-3545 • Posted April 7, 2019

Some thoughts on that Commuter Craft Innovator that crashed: I am getting way outside my knowledge base but here goes: They had a prototype #1 that flew (pic below) however they apparently wanted more horsepower and stretched prototype #2 by three feet (pic above). I imagine that was for weight and balance. Then they widened the nose A LOT but it appears they made the front canards smaller. They also moved the horizontal stabilizer out of the clean air above the aircraft and down behind the prop. Now, I'm thinking that a wide nose at a positive AOA is a pretty good additional lifting surface and the horizontal stab (H.S.) in the prop blast is pretty effective at controlling pitch but what happens if you would get a little negative AOA on that nose? Does it become a negative lifting surface? As the AOA changes relative to the nose, is the wide nose going to amplify the pitch change? Are the canards powerful enough to counteract a negative pitching moment? Also, If you had the controls positioned for a steady climb and pulled back the power, would the H.S. lose effectiveness and result in an out-of-trim pitch change? The H.S. in P.#2 must have been highly affected by prop blast. It is said, I think, that surface area ahead of the aircraft center of pressure is destabilzing. They added a whole lot of that in the pitching axis while subtracting area from the front canards that would control pitch. Then there is the Center of Gravity. It has to be somewhere in front of the axles to make the aircraft sit firmly on three wheels. I could not find any good side views of P.#2 that would let us judge the relationship of the CG, wing Center of Lift but the pic above seems to suggest the CG might be at about the fuselage station where the strake leading edge is. Perhaps the aircraft depended on lift from the nose and an effective H.S. to maintain balance. If either of those goes away, it might pitch over. They flew 1/3rd scale models of their first prototype. I could find no reference to model-testing of the 2nd prototype. Perhaps P.#1 flew well enough that they didn't see the need to model P.#2. Interesting to think about, eh?

Just reading about the crash of this prototype, killing the head man/designer. They have a done a lot of work on it--built molds twice and are gearing up for a builder center. Now this, the 2nd prototype (pic) crashes just after takeoff and they probably have no idea why. What is interesting is that the pilot designer only had 370 hours TT and 4.7 hours in 2018. His last medical was in 1999. The crashed example had only flown .3 hours previously. I would guess he felt some pressure to get it ready for SunNFun. http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2019/03/fatal-accident-occurred-march-23-2019.html https://issuu.com/inflightusa/docs/online_issue_march_faber https://www.commutercraft.com/features-2 The test pilot who flew prototype #1 reported I know that when I don't fly for a month or two, I can tell it. I feel rusty and not as comfortable. Well, maybe it will go on without him.