FEATURED STORY

Living with your RV airplane Aviation is a series of dreams. It starts, perhaps, with a youthful bike trip to the airport to watch the lucky folks, the ones with airplanes. Then, a pilot certificate. Then, an airplane -- either by writing a big check or by building it yourself and writing a series of smaller checks that add up to the same amount. At some point, it's a hangar. For many RV airplane builders, somewhere near here comes another dream: Living on an airpark with neighbors who are also pilots and builders. (More)

The ELT debate
Do you have an ELT for any other reason than you have to? How much of your installation is based on it working vs. the visual appeal? It's a subject I started thinking about this week as I looked at various installations and realized most conflict with the instructions for my way-pricey ARTEX 406. So I started what's turned out to be a fascinating thread on the best working installation. There's some good information there. (RV-List | Subthread)
Related links:
EAA seeks GA relief from proposed Canada ELT rule (EAA)
SPOT vs ELT analysis (derkeiler.com)
406 mhz vs 121.5 analysis (NOAA)

Probe of Dan Lloyd crash could end "within month."
“It’s still an open investigation,” said Todd Gunther, a National Transportation Safety Board investigator from the agency’s eastern office in Ashburn, Va. But he says a final report on the crash of Dan Lloyd, of Hermitage, PA., could be out within the month. (The Herald)
Archived thread: Dan and his RV-10 (VAF)
RV-10 List: N289DT accident

Daytripping
Date night in an RV
With night currency updated, Tom Velvick flew across the Phoenix valley to Falcon Field airport in Mesa, AZ. There is a first class Italian restaurant right on the field you can taxi up to and park at. The full moon didn't hurt. (More)
Related threads:
Sunsets of molten lava (VAF)
A B-17 visit (VAF)
Pix: Ohio RVators birthday (Ted Chang)
Flying to breakfast and lunch (GolfSierra.org)

Formation school
Here's a short pictorial essay from October formation day in the UK. Another school was planned for early November at North Weald. Some details on that are here as well as a formation guide. And here's a downloadable video from the October school.

Iowa breakfast run
"A gentle tap on my airspeed as I roll down the runway and as I get to 65 mph. The pavement and stripes move in front of me as the taxi lights in my peripheral vision move faster and faster. I hold gentle backpressure on the stick and the nose begins to elevate and then the rest of the plane follows..." (Minnesota Wing newsletter)

High flyer
Air Force Maj. Chris Mallory’s excitement is building as he nears the completion date of his RV-8 airplane. Mallory began assembling the RV-8 "two PCSs, two wars and six hurricanes ago." (Leesville Daily Leader)

N460DP
Regular Hotline contributor Don Neuberg brings his photographic expertise to bear as he meets N460DP on a ramp in Georgia. (See images)

Myths of multiple battery installation
We occasionally hear comments that two batteries in parallel cause problems for the alternator or that the two batteries "wrestle" each other for superiority. To mitigate the myths floating around in the ether, our friend Bob Nuckolls at the Aeroelectric Connection put together a document explaining the myths and facts with dual-battery installations. (Vertical Power)

Failed test of static system
Awhile back I took my RV-8 in for the bi-annual pitot/static and transponder check. My Garmin 327 transponder checked out perfectly. (The avionics technician said he NEVER sees problems with Garmin transponders.) The static system test was another story: The test equipment (vacuum line) is attached to one of the static ports via a rubber cup that fits around the static port on one side of the aircraft and is held in place by a tripod with suction feet that stick to the side of the airplane around the static port. The port on the opposite side of the tail is covered with a piece of electrical tape to seal it shut. Several tests are done to check the accuracy of your altimeter and I won’t go into that, but a leaky static system will spell FAIL right away. For the leak test the altimeter is taken up to 1000 feet above the ambient pressure altitude and a valve is closed at that point to isolate the static system from the pump. The altimeter must not lose more than 100 feet in one minute. Well, mine went down like a two-bit streetwalker on Friday night! FAIL! I didn’t have time to chase down the leak right then and the tech was nice enough to only charge me for a transponder check. My bird was not legal to fly IFR until I got the leak stopped and a valid test completed. (Ron Schreck on VAF)

Electrical "how-to" videos online
This week, I found an interesting site with storage of small how-to videos for working with electrical components. It's elementary stuff, but then again, I'm an elementary builder. The videos are all in QuickTime format and are not on a streaming server. So your best bet to view them is to go to the list, "right-click" on the video and download them to your computer. If you just click the link, it'll take forever for the videos to show up and you won't know the progress of the download. Subjects include soldering technique, tinning wire, series and parallel resistors, Molex-type connectors and basic circuitry. They appear to be stored on the heli-chair.com site. (See the list of videos)

Internal rudder stops
Here's one of those "I never would have thought of that" things. Craig Vincent of Stockton, California has designed these rudder stops that go on the brackets. "Several months ago, we manufactured and sold about 50 of these internal rudder stops here on VAF. Today I found 6 more in a bag that I'd forgotten about. If more than 6 builders still want them, we can make another batch. He's offering to sell them to you or you can make your own with the plans he posted. (More on VAF)

Switching wires on the S701-1 contactor
A builder asked Bob Nuckolls this week what's the best way to handle the diode and jumper wire on a S701-1 contactor because he'd heard it would be OK to switch the fat wires. Bob replied, "You need to reverse everything in the picture. Diode flips over, jumper wire moves to the right-hand terminals, battery fat-wire now goes on right fat terminal, system fat-wire goes on left fat terminal. Alternatively, you can simply turn the contactor around on its mounting bolts and leave it wired as shown in the
photo. (AeroElectric List)

PICTURE OF THE WEEK   I don't understand a single word of the Russian Web site where this and many other pictures of the first Russian RV-10 are located. But it looks like paint might be cheaper there.