Scott & Tanya Card RV9A build log (N4822C)

Week two without the plane has passed. Scott’s taken that time to work on the 8. I can also be caught in the garage from time to time. Another week of extremely hot weather is making this a little easier to take. Instead of sweating at the airport, the air-conditioned garage has been the place to be.

We had a friend that is a spam can driver visit us last night. He is considering building a 10, so we did or best to encourage him to come over to the “dark side”. A planned “short visit” turned into a 5 hour chat that lasted until midnight! Yet more proof that these things can be addictive.

Ugh. One full week since we dropped 22C off at the paint shop. It is a real bummer not to have it available to fly. It is a little disturbing the “personal” connection one can form with a machine. My anticipation grows with each day. I hope I can still remember how to fly when it is time to bring it home. Luckily, the afternoon temperatures have been solidly over 100 degrees, not great flying weather.

This week Grady at GLO Custom called and said it was time. Tanya and I took the day off of work and she hit the road before 8am. I was wheels-up in 22C by 11am to deliver the plane to Grady at Northwest Regional (52F) at 12:30pm. Grady seems like a really great guy. We spent about an hour and a half with him going over the plane and fessing up about its flaws that need his cosmetic attention. He seemed genuinely interested in being sure that we got what we wanted.

After all of the poking and prodding of the airplane, we went up to his air conditioned office to get down to the real details of why we were there. Tanya picked out colors and we talked about paint. We left Grady with a whole lot of leeway for him to apply his skills. I’m just as interested to see what it looks like in a month as you are.

We headed out to the airport today to go fly some more laps. First, we needed to adjust the nose wheel as it was a bit wiggly down the runway the last flight. The plan was to push down on the aft end of the plane to lift up the nose gear so that Scott could test the breakout force. That didn’t get us enough leverage, so it was off to find another plan.

I put in the tail tie-down ring, hooked up a rope, and sat in it like a swing. That still didn’t get us there, much to my surprise. Needing a little more weight on my frame (not exactly sad about that fact), I went hunting for something that was heavy and compact. The lead shot was back at home to be available for tasks on the 8. What I did find was a 40 pound bag of salt. So, I am sitting in the ‘rope swing’, holding a 40 pound bag of salt, and STILL not enough weight to fully lift up the nose. Fortunately, we were close enough that Scott was able to push up on the nose gear enough to get the wheel fully off the ground.

I am incredibly happy that nobody walked by to witness this amusing situation. But now we know, it will take about 180 pounds on the tie-down ring to put our O-320 and constant speed prop in the air.

With Tanya doing all the flying lately, I was starting to feel like I left my mojo on the end of the runway somewhere. So last night after work I went out to spend some quality time with my machine and the runway. I did laps in the pattern for about 40 minutes nailing a bunch of really good landings with a little crosswind. It was time for me to go out and do some concentrated approach and landing practice in every configuration that I could come up with. Somewhere around the 10th lap with the controller clearing me for the option each time around on my turn to downwind, I asked him if he was getting dizzy yet :). Ahh, I feel better now with a skills refresher and my mojo retrieved from the end of the runway.