I've been putting together this Summer's list of improvements to the aircraft, and it's fairly short - but involved.

The last flight around I took the little lumbar pad I've been using and flipped it sideways so it ran all the way up the seat with much relief. Yeah, I'm a little slow sometimes and should have figured out I could do that a long time ago. So coming up with a pad for the seat back is pretty high on the list.

Part of the discomfort is that I tend to really crank down the shoulder harnesses, probably tighter than they need to be. However, this habit served me well on the morning when I inverted the aircraft on the ground. So thick padding it is.

I'm going to cover the wheels. It's an afternoon's worth of work, but one I've been putting off for no particular reason. Purely aesthetic, as the plane is such an exercise in drag that I don't think it will seriously improve airspeed.

While I'm at it, I need to replace the wheel bearings again. They're really inexpensive, so I bought a bunch of them and it's dead simple to do. It doesn't take much on the grabby grooved pavement to make them sloppy. Fifteen minutes for all four.

Replace the oil cooler with a standard sized one. This winter I blocked off most of it and still didn't get up to full operating temperature. It did get closer, and with it the oil pressures approached more closely to what is optimal. Whipping up a mount for it to hang below the engine will be a snap.

Here's the big one - pull the fuel tank. The flashing from the welding on the neck on the inside makes putting in the cork float a real pain, and the only way to file it down and remove the slivers of aluminum is to flush it completely. So the wings come off, the rivets drilled out for the top of the fuselage, and up and out it goes.

I'm toying with rotating it 180 degrees and putting in a sight gauge. The issue is that Robert put the access for that on the opposite side of the fuel output at the bottom, meaning I'll have to either work out some sort of system to work the fuel cutoff lever or do without it completely.

I will also make a neck to fit the top of the fuel tank that accepts an actual gas cap rather than some cobbled together PVC fittings.

Since the wings will come off, they'll have to go back on, which leads me to my last real task - properly safety wiring the turnbuckles. My current job is barely adequate, so I'm going to use the double wrap technique to hold them more firmly (as I did the turnbuckles for the rudder cables).

Oh, and touch up paint all around.

See, that is where having built your own plane separates you from us “store bought” airplane fliers. You say it matter of factor where I would look on that as a monumental task and risk.

In your shoes I would just put up with that difficult location.

Now touch up painting I can do.

Meh. It's just an airplane. One fixes it just like any other machine.

That bi-annual flight review is today!

Every time it rolls around I try to do something different to stretch my skill set, and this one is in Tuscaloosa, the nearest controlled airfield to me (besides Birmingham, and nope). I did the studying, so talking to ground and tower shouldn't be that big a deal.

Yesterday was kind of funny. The weather forecast was for a pretty windy day, but I had to drive up to the airport to fetch my logbook for the flight review. It pains me to drive all that way not to fly, but hey, I should have been thinking ahead.

Well, surprise, surprise, surprise! The weather broke in my favor for once, and it was fairly light and variable wind, so up and around I went for about an hour. With all the controlled burns they're doing in the national forests, though, there was a lot of smoke. The upside was that it pretty clearly showed an inversion layer full of bumps, making for a pretty smooth flight.

Going to be weird piloting an airplane with a steering wheel, flaps, nose gear, etc. Oh, and doors. Doors on airplanes! Weird.

Could you smell the smoke ? I often look down at the large forest fires and think of flying during WW2.

Yesterday was my bi-annual flight review, and as always I threw something new in the mix - talking to a tower.

Not really a big deal in Class D airspace, that's for sure, but I'd just never done it.

We flew in a Cessna 152, which is pretty fancy. In addition to all sorts of whiz-bang gizmos (artificial horizon, vertical speed indicator, built in radio), it had other odd stuff like a yoke, flaps, trim, and even a mixture control, but I managed not to become overwhelmed by it all and just fly the airplane.

As we're doing the paperwork afterwards, another instructor came in and asked what we were doing, and my instructor said that "He's a Sport Pilot doing his Flight Review. He's surprisingly good."

That assessment of my skills in the air was instantly hard coded into my memory.

Seamlessly transitioning from your bebe to a C 152 a big deal IMO. Did you fly it all(recently) prior to the check ride?

What's you total time as PIC now Dart?

Funny story about that. I had flown the week prior, but winds were too high beyond that.

So the day before my Flight Review I checked the weather forecast and it said projected 13 mph winds. Ug. But I had to drive up to the airport anyway to grab my logbook, and was a bit miffed over it.

On the way up I started to notice the flags at various places weren't flapping so much as just being pushed around their poles. I started to perk up. Got to the airport and the windsock was sort of just milling about.

Well, simple enough for that - up and around I went for an hour!

On the C152, since I wheel land the Nieuport exclusively, landing a trike is no problem. It's exactly the same, really, in that after the mains stick one gently moves the stick forward. Rather than falling back on the tail wheel, it just sticks the nose wheel instead.

I've got about 115 hours, with almost 45 of it in the Nieuport. It's a little crazy to jump into a squirrelly little airplane like mine with low hours when one thinks about it, but then again I never really grasped the whole danger avoidance thing very well. I fully embrace risk mitigation - I'll scrub a flight before it begins if something doesn't feel right - but on balance I accept the risk that has to be mitigated.

It is true that it's not the hours but what one does with the time. I normally have a pilot skill that I practice while I'm flying around, so it might just be a 45 minute flight that goes nowhere, but it's quality time.

I did make the instructor chuckle once. We had done the standard "perform a 45 degree turn in a circle to the left, then right," blah blah stuff and he said "Turn one eight zero and maintain direction and altitude for three minutes." Oh Lord. "Straight and level flight? I had no idea you were going to demand witchcraft!"

Normally one is asked to perform stalls, but he didn't. I asked afterwards why not, and he said if a pilot can perform coordinated turns consistently through all maneuvers, including climbing and descending turns then stalls are just icing on the cake. Plus we hit a nasty bit of chop in the air that I had to do pilot-y stuff to put right that seemed to make him confident in my ability.

Of course I'm an old soldier, and know that half of any examination or inspection is attitude. One has to be confident without being cocky - I went with "we're both experienced pilots, one of which needs simple validation of basic skills and the other that is going to do just that." Worked a treat. It didn't hurt that I pretty much aced the radio work, which is why I was there instead of someplace else. Not that Class D airspace with light traffic is stressful - not like when there's three in the pattern to land and three on the ground wanting to take off on an uncontrolled field.

Is that bi-yearly review exclusive to the Sports Pilots License? Glad to hear - but not surprised - you made a great show of it.

No, here in the USA all pilots have to do it to remain current.

I know a couple of folks who are way past due that still fly, heedless of the regulations, but if there's a wreck they are in harm's way and open to all manner of legal problems.

One can't fail a flight review. The worst that can happen is the instructor refuses to put the magic BFR in writing, and insists it is simply supplementary training.

Then the savvy but weak skilled pilot insists the instructor credits it on the FAA WINGS website, takes a few online courses and maybe attends an FAA seminar, and the FAA gives him BFR credentials anyway.

Shop press? Bah, I have a rubber mallet.

Loved the little jig coming back to the painted wheel.

The nice part of knowing beforehand that everything will be at 8 times speed is I can play music while I work.

One of these days someone is going to catch me dancing around the hangar on video.

Lol, I have no idea why that should be a posssible concern you. I don't think anyone can post anything that you wouldn't post yourself.


Wheels

Oh, that's not dancing - that's just kind of shuffling around. But to answer the question, yes, one can two-step to K-pop.

Here's part two to the covering:



A few notes:

1) I should have covered this side first, so I could cover the wheel completely and still have access to the nuts for the bolts of the brake drum.
2) I could have simply put the drum over the side I had already covered, but I didn't want to paint over the stripe or have the air hose hole patches on both sides (though I would have left them uncut).
3) I managed to bugger up the painted side even though I put down a moving blanket on the bench, and went back later to touch it up.
4) I wound up tightening the fabric a little once it was done, which wasn't a big deal. Latex paint is extremely flexible so no cracking.

And last, to make removing the wheels easier, I had to loosen the brake cables. So they need to be re-adjusted, which is a two man job - one at the brake end and one on the lever inside to ensure that they're grabbing okay (but not too much) and the same amounts. Both brakes go to one handle, so the latter is pretty important.

What ??? No dancing ?

No dancing on film....

After "helping" Mike remove and replace all the seals on his C150's nose wheel strut, we spent some time sussing through where to put a sight gauge for fuel in the cockpit and how to run the lines.*

I think we came up with a solution to where it will be along the right side of the fuselage, running along one of the vertical tubes just in front of the seat.

It's this year's Big Project with the aircraft, and a result of not knowing what I didn't know in the first place. It's probably a week's worth of work - one day to take the wings off, remove the sheeting and then the tank; one day to clean the tank up, fabricate and install the filler neck; one day to install the tank, fabricate the sight gauge, and install it; one day to put the sheeting back on, mount the wings, and re-rig the plane. It could go faster or slower depending on how it goes and life's demands.

I also want to come up with some sort of filler neck to where I can easily be filled up at an airport. As is stands now, there's not enough room between the upper wing and the fuel tank to fit a standard AVGAS nozzle. I managed to sort of crook the nozzle and put gas into it when I did my trip up to Gadsden, but it was goofy and terrible and I wound up with some spewing back up onto the aircraft.

Before that, though, I really have to improve the seat cushioning. It sounds silly, but if I'm going to fly in longer stretches it's got to be done - as it is, a couple hours in the seat gets downright painful to my back, enough to where I'm actually sore the next day.

Part of the discomfort is the fact that I snug the shoulder straps down, which means I'm pressed against the back of the straight metal sheeting in kind of a bend. As I learned rather dramatically, it's better to put some padding on the back of the seat than to keep the straps loose.

While the aircraft's controls are light, one is constantly piloting while in the air, unless it's perfectly smooth....and it's rarely perfectly smooth. My last hour was a damned wrestling match against moderate turbulence the whole way!

Not to say I wasn't having fun, mind you - she's just a gem to fly!

* Mostly I "helped" by digging into my toolbox and scrap pile, drinking coffee, and watching.

I tackled the back seat cushion, and in typical fashion completely throw out the original plan and just make something dead simple instead:



Not shown is making a holder out of that exercise mat for the two buckles of the shoulder straps that adjust the initial length. They were at just the right length to where occasionally they'd rotate and poke me in the shoulder (they route under the back of the cockpit and then up). After making a simple rectangle with some slits in it for the strap to wind through, I covered it in duct tape and then a strip of faux leather to make it look less crappy.

This morning had weather one doesn't even dare pray for...

Isn’t that marvelous. What a wonderful feeling and view. It is truly a special thing.

Babette is all in pieces, as I decided to knuckle down and improve the whole fuel tank issues.

I've got all the hardware assembled for the sight gauge, and an actual filler neck is on order, so I'll go up and work on that tomorrow or the next day.

I was pretty surprised at how far off from what I thought was in the tank and what was actually there. I had guessed about four gallons, but it was seven!

The good of that is that I had more than I thought; the bad is that I was shorting myself two hours of flight duration.