FEATURED STORY

Fiberglass 102 As ye olde airplane project gets closer to finishing, fiberglass cannot be put off any longer. There are empennage and wing tips, and the canopy fairings, not to mention a big honkin' piece of fiberglass that covers the engine. I read as much as I could about fiberglass from Tony Bingelis, I also read -- many times -- one of the best online tutorials about working with fiberglass -- Fun with Fiberglass. And a year or so ago, my friend Darwin Barrie, perhaps the RV world's premier fiberglasser thanks to his years assembling RC airplanes, wrote a terrific piece on the RV builders Yahoogroup. I also stopped in to the composite workshop during AirVenture 2008, and I bought Sam James' Fiberglass 101 video, which, while interesting, didn't really help me that much in preparing to make my fiberglass fairing for the canopy of my RV-7A. Another interesting source is Leo Benetti-Longhini's how-to on installing the rudder fairing, which he wrote in 2000. Pictures of the processes are hard to find. Who wants to expose a nice camera to the goo of epoxy? Apparently, quite a few people as this week's experts attest. (More)

Seriously? I don't think the guy ever stops. Pete Howell's latest project is a plenum. It needed to be reversible in case he wanted to go back to baffling, and it needed to be cheap. No surprise to anyone who knows Pete, he did it. (VAF)

Greetings from Land of Enchantment '08
From all accounts, the annual Land of Enchantment RV get-together was another winning weekend, with charities being the chief beneficiaries. Fortunately for those of us who didn't attend, there are a few write-ups and videos put together by those who did.
Larry Pardue's write up and pictures
Doug Reeves' Saturday pictures
Doug Reeves' Sunday pictures
YouTube: LOE '08 video

Two steps forward; 100 steps back
For builders like me, the big day is first flight. You've got the whole RV grin thing (I hear), posts on the bulletin boards, the big congratulations from everyone and that's that, right? Wrong. It's hard work testing an RV and Kevin Horton is going a great job keeping us informed. Check out his post on what happened during a recent flight. (More)

RV building history
Alex Sloan tells the story of finally being ready for his first flight in his RV-3. He planned it for Dec. 17, 1983, exactly 80 years to the day after Orville and Wilbur Wright's first successful flight. And, wouldn't you know it, "I woke up that morning to see snow on the ground," Sloan said. In Alabama. (Florence Times)

Builder profile: Jim Wallace
EAA Chapter 292 in Independence, Oregon carries a fine story in this month's chapter newsletter on RV-9A builder Jim Wallace. Included is a story of the first flight with a plugged pitot. He says he worked as a trucker to support his bagpipe habit. A wonderful profile. (More)
Related link:
Evan McDougal: Potential builder

Know your equipment
We equipped our RV-10 (N425BZ) with an Advanced Aero EFIS, a Garmin 430W, SL-30 and a 496. John Nys talked us into a Trac II autopilot to round out the panel. Problem: how does one learn to use all this equipment by just reading the book? The fact is that the F-15 does not have as sophisticated a panel as this RV-10 in some respects. (Terry Boswell in EAA Chapter 10 Newsletter)

RV Daytripping
Here are this week's trips around Planet RV taken by those who have built, allowing us who are building to keep pounding... and dreaming.
Pix: Blue Ridge Mountains (Radomir Zaric)
Camping at Wolf Run (Garret Smith)
Pix: Cedar Mills fly-in (VAF)

Wire stripping facts and myths
Tool catalogs and the shelves of tool stores are replete with examples of what tool designers hope are the greatest wire strippers ever invented. The purpose of this piece is not to praise or disparage any particular tool or technique. My intent is to study and illustrate the physics of wire stripping. Armed with understanding, you're better prepared to evaluate any wire stripping tool and decide for your self if the tool's cost/benefit ratio is worthy of your time and dollars. (Shop notes from AeroElectric Connection)
Safetying cotter pins
If you're like me, you figure the technique for cotter pins is shove it in the hole in the bolt, bend it, voila! There are actually two methods for safetying cotter pins. The proper technique involves bringing an end around the top of the bolt; the other gets bent down and is trimmed. But that's just one method. In the latest EAA homebuilders hints video, Joe Norris shows how it's done. (See video)
RV-8 baggage mod
I was going to build a golf club carrying mod like Doug Bell did but the golf store only had 6 tubes left. So instead I decided to do what Scott Hersha did for his new RV8 Fastback. It involves hinging the aft baggage panel and providing a shelf at the next bulkhead aft. The golf bag then lays over the top of the elevator push tube. The bag is strapped down at the aft baggage shelf and at the new shelf further aft. The pictures should be self explanatory. The camlocs that replace the top 2 nutplates require a slight elongation of one of the former nutplate rivet holes to accept the camloc receptacle. I used a fairly light weight carry bag and put 2 sets of clubs in it, with the idea of also carrying a collapsible"Sunday" bag if two travelers wish to play. I am going to add a reinforcing angle under the hinge to support the aft shelf. My aircraft is very near the forward cg limit so this mod may not be advisable for people with a more aft cg. (More pictures on VAF)

A fix for loose RV-10 steps
One of the known issues with the RV-10 is that the entry steps can get loose over time. I believe part of the root cause of "wiggly step syndrome" is that the bolt that holds the step to the step mount really doesn't have anything substantial to work against when it is tightened. As you tighten the bolt it just crushes the step tube and bracket, making it oval instead of round. So here's my solution. Turn a solid bushing that fits inside the step tube to give the bolts something to work against. With the bushing pressed inside the tube a real clamping force can be established between the step tube and the step bracket. The following pictures show the bushing being made and then ready to press into the tube. NOTE, I drilled the hole in the bushing LARGER than the actual bolt so it easily will pass thru with any difficult alignment issues. This worked very well. The hole is 1/4" the bolt is an AN-3.(More)

PICTURE OF THE WEEK Found on Flickr by photographer Stephen Hubbard. See his photostream