Early B-Day Present & a Flat Tire

Since the annual, I've been spending quite a bit of time at the airport doing a little flight testing. In addition to that, my super-duper-dandy wfie Sandi got me a new Turn Coordinator as an early birthday present so I spent some time today getting that installed. That fills the blank I had in the panel. I do have an GPS/NAV annunciator to get installed but haven't done that yet.

This weekend also conjured up a flat tire on the nosewheel. It was low last Thursday when I went flying, so I put some air in it and by Saturday is was completely flat. Fortunately, I had a spare tube and was able to get it changed without any down time. Getting the tire off the rims was certainly a challenge. A combination of two bench vises and some C-clamps finally resulted in getting one side off. Going to have to invest in a tire remover or make one maybe.

The weather is starting to improve somewhat from the bitter cold we've had for the last couple of months. Of course the Spring weather brings lots of t-storms and the like. Sandi and I are gearing up and planning our trips for the 2007 flying season. Our next planned trip is the Wild Onions ‘N Eggs Fly-in Breakfast, Saturday March 17, 2007 at Tenkiller Airpark (44M) in Oklahoma.

Back in the Air!

The annual turned out to be a rather long one when we discovered the #4 cylinder had really low compression (53). After a few failed minor attempts to fix it easily we pulled the cylinder and sent it back to BPE. The exhaust valve was leaking, evidenced by the air rushing out of the exhaust pipe. Allen confirmed the exhaust valve had major carbon buildup. Essentially he overhauled the cylinder and sent it back, with a note to lean more. :-) Thanks Allen!

Getting the cylinder off/on wasn't necessarily hard but you have to take off so many other things... baffles, exhaust system, oil drain lines, etc. I spent most of yesterday, with the help of the local airport bum getting the cylinder back on. This morning I pulled it out the plane and did a quick ground run to make sure everything was OK, then cowled it up and flew around the airport for 30 minutes.

Since the cylinder was essentially 'new' again, it needed to be broke in. Sandi and I had decided on Saturday we'd make a trip to Illinois to see Gianna (new grand baby) if the weather held and the plane was ok. So after my short hop around the airport, we hopped in and headed north with the throttle all the way forward, leaning agressivley! :-) A 3 hour visit with Sandi's family and back in the airplane headed for home. The trip was great... that would have been 12-13 hours of driving, all done in 4 hours of flying.

(Gianna and me!)

(Missouri River)

Side Note: The RV community is a pretty close one, we all pretty much know each other. Living in Kansas City provides a bit of unique opportunity since Kansas City Center (ZKCC) is here in town. Nathan flies an RV-9A and is a supervisor at ZKC. Brian is nearing completion on an RV-7A, is also a supervisor. Andy is a controller in training and building and RV-7. About every other cross-country trip, we end up yacking with a controller who has Brian or Nathan standing over their shoulders pointing on the RV's. This trip on our way back we heard a call from N55BC, an experimental. One of the controllers got on and asked what make/model, was an RV-6. I had to announce we were an RV-9A and that started up a whole conversation since Nathan knew we'd been down for a bad cylinder. (Did you know the FAA can know do an inflight compression check??!) It's pretty cool to have RV buddies. We got the biggest kick out of their last transmission "Matthew and Sandi RV contact KC Center on 123.45".

We had a great day, got in some good flying and the annual is completet!

PS - The airport bum noted above is J.C. He flies an Aircoupe. Last weekend I piled in with him for some flying around the patch and he let me fly for 30 minutes or so including the landing... which was the absolute smooooooothest landing I have ever made in ANY airplane. I literally didn't know I was on the ground until I was going to slow to even be in the air. Seriously... it was insane... I didn't feel anything. I couldn' believe it. I think I even impressed JC.