First Flight Schedule

We are going to attempt first flight this weekend Dec 5th at/around 4PM at KEQY.  If you would like to come out please let me know by posting below.

The weather is forecasted to be extreme VFR this weekend so it's shaping up to be the perfect calm weekend to test fly the plane.

Sign off and first flight!

Good news!

We received sign off on the plane this past Wednesday, however being that it was right before the holiday I was unable to get the insurance changed over and all of the paperwork finished before I had to leave town to spend time with the family.

The current plan is to fly the plane for first flight on Saturday Dec 5th at/around 4PM.  This will be heavily dependant on the weather and specifically the winds.

 I realize it's pretty late in the day but if you would like to come out for the flight please just drop me a note below.  Everyone is welcome and if we get enough I'll grab a pizza or two :)

I will post updates as we get closer and closer to this weekend and as the weather situation gets more and more exact.

Cleaning up

Starting to clean up and put everything back together on the inside of the plane.

She is starting to look less like a project and more like a real airplane again.

New vac pump

Well we knew that eventually as we continued to run the plane that little things would start to shake out.  Tuesday we were running the plane and I noticed that I had lost all suction.  

A quick inspection and we confirmed that the vac pump had failed.  These guys are mostly plastic so this we to be expected as the plastic was hard and brittle.  

A quick trip out to aircraftspruce.com and another pump was on the way!

We installed the pump today and she ran great!  Suction was good and all the instruments came back alive.

Small update and more crazy pictures

So just a quick update on the Cherokee.  Now that airshow season is behind us and the shop seems to be settling in for the rest of the year I spoke again to the Senior AP and he asked that that I 'run the mess' out of the plane this weekend doing as many run ups to full power (no more than 2-3 minutes) at a time and running it up and down the runway.

If everything checked out then he would try and take a look at it Monday/Tuesday and get me all signed off. 

We went out yesterday and ran it really good, her pedal brakes are a little softer than I would like but the parking brake is strong.  That tells me I have probably got some air in the pedal cylinders so I'll need to bleed those brakes one more time to see if I can get it all buttoned up.

Other than that she ran strong and well. 

As most of you guys know we had an airshow on field last weekend and word quickly spread through the performers about the little cherokee.  As a result she had quite a weekend where as a majority of the performers at one point or another wanted to go over and take a look at it.  The rain caused the main show to get shortened and caused us to have long stretches of downtime, the Professional Photographer asked if I would like to have some fun and take some pictures with my plane.  Of course I said "SURE!"  when else am I going to be able to get fancy pictures made.

I must say they turned out pretty hilarious just the absurdity of taking pictures like they do with warbirds made the cold and wet of the weekend worth it.

Rainy Airshow

 

When your airshow gets rained out you end up taking ridiculous pictures of your airplane with the professional photographer. Thank you Ricardo von Puttkammer for the photoshoot! I feel all important and stuff....

More pictures coming

Small update...

Even with the preparations for the airshow well underway I was able to sneak in some time on Saturday to finish up a few minor things.

We were able to get the newly energized ELT reinstalled in the plane...and we were able to put in the last replacement piece of air tubing under the cowling.

That's pretty much all the repairs that needed to be done...I have informed the senior AP on field that I am now ready to get "on the schedule" for final inspection and sign off.

I don't anticipate anything will happen this week or next week due to the insanity that comes with putting on an airshow.  But hopefully by mid Nov I will have more updates and possibly a date for the test flight.

New ELT Battery Ordered

I have placed the order for the new ELT battery.  That is important because it signals that we are in the final stages of intitial restoration before first flight.

Hopefully, the battery will arrive this week and we can get it installed this weekend.  After that we have a few airshow weekends so work will pause during that time.  Then we will be back at it getting ready for the first flight.

Finally getting those wing tips

After months of talking about it we finally put our heads down and started removing the wing tips. 

We were able to easily still out all of the screws on the right wing tip (26 in total) we removed the tip itself without any issue and replaced all of the nut plates.  We also took the time to clean out any debris that had accumulated inside the wings (fortunatly there was just some dirt) and inspect the wings again for corrosion.  Which none was found.

Now at least the right wing has shiny new screws and washers....we are going to try and finish up the left wing sometime this week before the cold sets in.

After next weekend ts going to be several weeks before we get to work on the plane again as we focus all our attention on planning for our airshow in November.  

On another note the plane did great during a quick run up and taxi. She's still showing strong engine power and all her mag checks and carb heat checks are in the green.  

The struts are still holding just fine and the brakes are strong.  

Finally a clear weekend

After some historic rain over the last few weeks we were finally able to get back at the plane.  

We got all her panels back on and are in the process of getting her all buttoned up.

We've got her strut covers back on and were able to clean the plugs again.   She's running very well and strong and I'm hoping we will be able to fly her in the next few weeks. 

Rain rain go away

Well, we had every intention of working on the plane this weekend but the rain just made doing anything outside miserable.  

Maybe we will have better luck next weekend.  

Brakes are done!

Well I was able to get after it again yesterday and we've got all the brakes fixed up.  The senior AP showed us a trick on bleeding the brakes on a Piper, that helped us finally get all the air out of the system.  That was the last major hurdle for getting her all ready!

HOWTO Video ADS-B Build

I was getting notes from people interested in the ADS-B build but unsure of how to get started once they received their kits from Amazon.

I did a quick 10 minute video that should give you a good overview of what to do with all the parts and how to get started on building the final unit.