Van's RV-9A in Aurora

The Big Picture

The Big Picture
Flying! 8/28/2011

Sunday, March 22, 2015

Annual condition inspection finished.  Actually there are a few items I'll continue to work on.  I decided to fix a crack in the nose gear fairing.  After flying today, took it back off and started sanding down to raw fiberglass.  Got the epoxy layup gear all ready to go.  I'll get the layups done over the next week and it will be ready to go by next weekend.

Nice weather today in Central Texas, first really nice weekend day in a long time. We've had a long stretch of really crappy weather. Perfect for doing work on the plane!

Haven't flown 77WE in a couple of weeks. Having trouble coordinating with the instructor, the plane, and the weather.

Sunday, March 8, 2015

No flying in Cav in almost 3 weeks.  The weather has been mostly low IFR, and I'm in the middle of doing the annual.  Done with main gear, wings, empennage and rear fuselage (including new ELT batteries), starting on the cabin items.  Removed the flap actuator since it had grease dripping out of it, but the motor was fine, and the jackscrew doesn't seem to need maintenance.  At least I could not find any info on it.  Put that back together today and it's still working great.

Got in 1.9 in 77WE on Saturday morning.  A perfect day for flying, OVC 8500, light east wind.  Practiced all the commercial maneuvers, nailed one power off landing (out of 4).  Managed a passable Chandelle, I think Lazy 8's and 8's on pylons will work too. 
Was losing altitude in the steep turns, and the steep spiral kind of sucked.  I thought I had those under control.  but it's time for a review with the instructor.

I now have over 700 hours.