Trial fit foam cores.

Before I join the carbon fiber spars, I thought it prudent to trial fit the foam cores to see if everything was fine.  Overall, not too bad, but just loosey goosey for now.

Hot Wiring

Today we made a significant accomplishment, we got most of the hot wiring done.  It was no small task dusting off those old cobwebs and trying to remember how it was all done.  I also relived the frustration of the poorly written and illustrated plans.  

Anywhoo, we got er done.

The baby steps.

My rebuild had to take a pause while I fulfilled a promise I made to Sandy a year and a half ago.  I installed the new patio and retaining wall.  That was a project in itself, and you can see the detail here, if you are interested at all. In the meantime, Bob already had the engine, so at least something was getting done on the plane.

Now, back to the plane.

The AvTech department at SIU was kind enough to donate some heated space, so I will be able to work all winter.  Pretty neat.  I started by building the canard jigging table, and today I was able to start fitting the carbon fiber spars.  Next on the list is to get some hot wiring done and cut out the foam cores.

It has been 30+ years since I made the first canard, so even though I understand the big picture, quite a few of the details on how to do it are a bit hazy.  More than a few cobwebs need to be cleared out of the old brain.

The Engine

My friend down in Texas, Bob Malechek agreed to inspect my engine.  Bob is a long time hot rodder from way back and he knows performance engines.

Even though the prop strike was "minor" it warranted tearing the engine down.  Generally, it looked pretty good, most noteworthy, the crankshaft was not bent! Bob did find some issues with the crankcase, and sent it to Divco for repairs.

As of today, most of the components are back in Texas and Bob will start putting it all together.

Good progress.

More getting started.

Pulled the engine and Pat McGuire helped my haul it to Mexico, MO, where Bob Malecheck just happened to be attending a LSA exhibition. Made it a lot easier than driving all the way to Dallas.

Dan Yeager supplied a new set of paper templates.  These are for the jigs that will support the canard during glassing.

The Rebuild Begins

A bit of a progress report here.  Again, I want to thank EVERYONE who has been helping.  Fantastic!  Because of all of you, there is no way I could close the chapter on my Quickie.

Amputee

So far, I have located a virgin Q-2 kit, firewall aft, with spars and foam.  BTW, I will sell the parts I don't use, but that will be a few months down the line.

I put a dial indicator on my crankshaft flange and the runout was 0.001". The TCM spec is  0.000" - 0.005".  This is really good news.  The engine is likely fine, but I am going to have Bob Malechek do a teardown inspection anyway.

I sent Craig Catto some pictures of my prop, that he just refinished for me earlier this year. I asked about possible repairs vs. the cost of a replacement.  Craig said it was time for me to upgrade to his newer design, and that he would sponsor a new prop for me! Another WOW!

What you can't see in this photo is the 6" delamination.

It looks like I'll be able to use the SIU Aviation Technologies facilities over the winter.  The hangar is heated, so work should be pretty much uninterrupted.  From time to time, I will be able to enlist students in the project and they'll get a little practical experience that they could include on a resume.

Looks like I'll be using this space in the Jet Engine lab at SIU's Aviation Technologies.

I'm also getting big help from Chapter 277, C-Rod, Charlie Johnson, Mike Bergen, Dan Yeager, Harry Fenton, Pat McGuire and Terry Crouch.  Really, the list goes on and on.

So folks, it looks like I'm on the way.

Here We Go Again

It was too good to be true.  Plane was running great and Sandy agreed to accompany me to the Tandem Wing Field of Dreams event, held this year in Orange, MA. Our annual gathering of Quickie type aircraft. Orange was going to be a long trip, but I have never flown the Quickie in that part of the country before, so we were planning a little additional sight seeing.

It was a nice day and the weather looked good for the whole route.  Actually, my fuel injected Quickie Q-200 has enough fuel to make it non-stop, but we decided to take a break and land at the Zelienople Municipal Airport. Try and pronounce that name.

When it was time to depart, I used Rwy 17.  Since there were hills around and the light winds were shifting, I elected to use the displaced threshold, which is about 500 feet long.  I put the pedal to the metal and accelerated normally.  All of a sudden we veered to the right. WTF?!?! We went into the grass, across a connecting taxiway and down a shallow embankment. We hit pretty hard and the left canard broke about 20" outboard of the fuselage, which in turn, caused a prop strike.

It turns out the right gear hit a two inch deep puddle of standing water, which caused the sudden veer to the right, directing us off the runway. The water has been there a long time, as evidenced by the Google Earth photo below.  It turns out they will be replacing the entire runway next year - about a year too late.

We were uninjured.

Long story short, single Quickie driver and racer Nathan Peck came to the rescue and hauled a trailer all the way from the St. Louis area to pick us up and drags us home.  What a guy!

As always, click on the photo to see it better.

On our way to Orange, MA.  Little did we know...

This is why we fly!

Pool of standing water.  Since there had been recent rain, it was larger the day of our incident.

Taken perhaps five minutes after the incident.

Duck tape won't fix this one.

What fun is a runway excursion without a prop strike? This will require an engine tear-down and inspection.  I only had 30 hours on that prop since I had it refinished.  Rats.

Fortunately, there just happened to be a crane on site.

Our rescuer, Nathan Peck

Ready for the long drive home

2013 AirVenture Cup Race & Oshkosh

This was my 10th running of the AirVenture Cup race, and the 22nd year my Quickie and I attended the EAA convention at Oshkosh.

For the front part of this year I had been quite lazy and hadn't been doing anything aviation related.  I drained the oil last October, and didn't get around to finishing my annual until June.  Shameful.

Since then, I've been pretty busy. I did the Firecracker 100 in Marysville, OH and have been getting things up to snuff, with an overstuffed to-do list for the plane.

Eric Whyte heads up the AVC staff, with his usual expertise and good humour. My wife thinks Eric sounds like Johnny Depp.

Eric claims that the briefings should take longer than the race itself, but sometimes I wonder.

This year's AVC was located in Mt. Vernon, IL, just a 20 minute flight from my home base.  That was kind of a nice change from having to fly 500+ miles to get to the starting line, as in previous races.  The Course went from Mt. Vernon, to Dixon Illinois, west of Rockford, to Wisconsin Rapids, north of Wisconsin Dells, to the finish line at Waupaca, WI, northwest of Oshkosh. My Garmin GPS says I flew 483 miles.

Not exactly sure how many planes flew the race, the initial list was 55 aircraft, but there were some scratches. We had five entered in the Sprint class.

• Sam Hoskins - Q-200
• Dave Adams - Long Eze
• John Keich - Midget Mustang
• Jerry Peck - Long Eze
• Leif Johnson - Vari Eze

I can carry 32 gallons of fuel, so I was confident about running non-stop.  Eric doesn't want guys stretching their fuel, so he built in a couple of no-penalty fuel stops at Dixon, IL and Wisconsin Rapids, but I just overflew them.

We had headwinds, so the only strategy was to fly low. I generally flew about 1,000 AGL. I guess I could have been lower to get a little more out of the winds, but I didn't push it.  One fun part was flying over a wind farm in southern Wisconsin.  It was directly on the course and I got a pretty good look at the spinning blades.  I heard things on the race frequency like "Q. What is the brand name of the wind turbine? A. Suzlon". "Okay - what's the model number?"  "For extra points, what is the serial number?"

I got to pass a few people, which is always fun, but shortly after flying over the Dixon airport I got passed by someone flying a bit lower and off to the right of me.  The old phrase "He passed me like I was tied to a stump" came to mind.

I had a persistant problem with cylinder #2 overheating.  I have seen this before, but having this long run at full power allowed me to dig in a little deeper.  Most of my cylinder temps were around 375F, but #2 wanted to slide to to 425+.  I was able to keep it cooler by increasing the fuel mixture.  At on point, I tried switching from my primary injectors to the single throttle body mounted back-up injector.  This instantly cooled all the cylinders.  I'm pretty sure the #2 injector is running lean. I will swap that injector with one of the other cylinders and see how that pans out.
Edit: I swapped injectors #2 & #4 and flight tested it.  The overheating stayed with cylinder #2.  Probably a baffling issue, but I can manage it.

The last leg was only 35 miles, but we had a neat tailwind for it. At one point I was seeing 230 mph ground speed, but my GPS record says, somewhere along the line, I hit 244 mph!

Waupaca was shockingly cold.  The racers were lightly dressed, fortunately I had a light jacket in the plane. As we were standing, waiting our turn at the fuel pump, some kind soul brought out hot pizza!

Lee Behl taxis out in his beautiful GP-5.  You should hear the music of that engine! Lee turned over 324 mph!  Click on the photo to get a better look.

When the results were tallied, I took first place in the Sprint class.  My closest competitor, Dave Adams, had ignition problems in his LongEze and had to drop out with a precautionary landing at Dixon Illinois. I was showing a True Airspeed of around 211 mph, so 205 with the headwind wasn't too bad.

2013 AirVenture Cup race results

All together, another great race.
 The arrival at Oshkosh was fairly non-eventful.  The Fisk controllers called me a Vari-Eze, AGAIN, but I'm used to being mis-identified.

Stumbled cross my ol' buddy, fellow skydiver and roommate, Mike Starck.  It's great who you come across at Oshkosh.

One of my great Oshkosh pleasures is to hang around the Quickie and see who shows up.  We get old friends, people whose names I should know but I can't remember, people who purchased a kit and never finished it, and other people who have a big look on their face and say something like "What the hell is that?!"

For additional entertainment, I came out of Pyro retirement to hang with Rich & Dee Gibson of Rich's Incredible Pyro fame.  I did my first pyro show with Rich somewhere around 1981-82.  Rich and Dee are retiring out of the airshow business, so I just had to hang around with them and the crew one last time.

Here is a great article, and some spectacular photos, about the airshow and the Pyro.

The guys preparing the det cord charges. We call this phase the Det Cord Party.

Lots of goodies, ready to go.  This stuff is powerful.

Storing the bombs and other charges for later.

Filling fuel containers which will be used in the Wall of Fire.  Each container has five gallons of gasoline and a powerful explosive "launcher".

So, another great year.

Plastic Explosive, with the race planes, a couple of hours before I headed for home.

2013 Mt. Vernon 100

As you can see, I seem to have missed posting anything in the past year.  At this year's Oshkosh, several people told me they read this blog, so I should get something up in writing.

About two weeks before the 2013 AirVenture Cup Race Eric Whyte called me and asked if I would put together a short SARL race, the day before the AVC race.  At the time, I was in charge of publicity for a Commemorative Air Force event we were having here in southern Illinois, but what the heck.  How could I say no?

So, I quickly hashed out a course and started working on the race materials.  It was a short 126 mile race, with turn points at local airports and at both ends of Rend Lake. My organizing effort was kind of slap dash, but with the assistance of the AVC crew and local volunteers, we got the job done.  We had 24 racers, and it was well received.

This was the first time I've done a SARL with another Quickie.  Nathan Peck brought his Rotax powered single place Quickie, which was fun to have. 

Here is the course and race results for the 2013 Mt. Vernon 100:  http://sportairrace.org/sarl/node/386

A real highlight for me was taking AVC race director Eric Whyte along for the race. Eric said he had been wanting a ride in my plane for many years, and this seemed like the ideal time.  Our speed for the race was 211.91 mph, so I would have to say his extra didn't make much of a difference.  Fortunately, I made one of my best landings of the year.

So, we ran a no-frills down and dirty race, and all had a lot of fun. I wouldn't doubt that Eric would want to repeat the SARL race next year.

As always, racing is about the people. (and machines).

Texas was well represented with Bobbie Bennett & Alan Crawford.

AnnElise Flickinger Hopkins Bennett got lots of pictures.  AnnElise raced with Bobby in the family Bonanza.

First timers and old timers.

AnnElise documenting some fancy cowling voodoo.

2012 AirVenture Race is right around the corner.

The Air Venture cup race is Sunday, and I'll be heading up to Mitchell, SD tomorrow.   http://www.airventurecup.com/. I believe this will be my ninth run in the race and my Q-200's 21st appearance at Oshkosh.  Time flys...

I balanced the prop to 0.01 ips (as good as this instrument can get it), and gave it a wax job.  Even bought current charts, so I should be good to go.

I'm never quite sure exactly who is showing up, but I do know that Klaus Savier has moved up into the Formula FX-Blue class (see http://www.sportairrace.org/id178.html), so I won't have him trouncing me this year.  I'm sure he will be giving the very fast Hammer Brothers Racing Team a run for their money.  Klaus' Vari-Eze was named "The Delaminator".  I heard his new plane is called "The Deliminator".

Here is an unofficial list of all the entries: http://www.sportairrace.org/id93.html

Historically, I always beat Dave Adams in his Long-Eze by about three mph. Given the fact that this is a 450 mile race with varying winds, if I pick the wrong altitude and he picks the right one, I could definitively be at risk.  Plus, he carries oxygen, so he could go really high if he needs it.  This all makes it interesting.

Looking at Who's In there some other cool races going on, most notably three Rutan Defiants and the Rutan Boomerang!  That should be noisy.

I'll be at Oshkosh till Thursday morning. Come by the race planes and look me up.

You think this is fun?  Just a little.

2011 SARL Wrap-up Video