10/1/11-The Trip Home

When I first got to Glasair I was very disappointed-the "to do" list that I left them with a couple of months ago had not been completed. So we went to work and with 4-5 people working on the plane we had everything pretty much buttoned up in a day and a half-except some avionics issues. So I flew the plane down to Aurora, Oregon where Pacific Coast Avionics is located. Within a day there they had me back into the air with the issues pretty much resolved. My flight back went something like this. KUAO to KCOE. KCOE to 6S3. 6S3 to KRAP. KRAP to KFRM. KFRM to KIKK. KIKK to KADG. I was lucky and had good weather all the way back, until the last day when the winds really picked up. The landing that I made at Adrian was not one of my best, but I had a close to 20 mph crosswind. NOT fun!

The plane after final paint-NICE!

You definitely want to fly in this stuff when you can see-those rocks look crazy hard!

9/19/11-More Paint

As you can see they have made good progress on the fuselage. They are supposed to have everything finished at the paint shop by this Wednesday. Then it takes a couple of days to get it back together. I'm flying out to Washington next Monday, the 26th and by Tuesday, depending on weather, I should be able to get in a couple of test flights to verify everything is ready to go. Then its back to Michigan in the next couple of days-(again depending on weather).

9/14/11-Painting!

Finally they are beginning to paint. Estimated time of completion = (2) weeks. Maybe I'll get it home before it snows.

8/30/2011

School starts tomorrow and the plane is still 2-3 weeks out from finishing paint. To say that I'm disappointed would be a huge understatement. I know in the end that the wait will be worth it-but right now I'm not in a good place. This will obviously make getting the plane back to Michigan a much more challenging affair. Stay tuned.

7/13/11-Last Day in Arlington

I got weathered out today-so I got some business settled on the plane and am preparing to get back to Michigan tomorrow morning. N449MF has about (12) hours on it's Hobbs meter as of today. The plane will spend the next 5-6 weeks here in Arlington finishing up some minor items, getting flown another (20) hours by another pilot (Alan Negrin), and getting an oil change at (25)hours. It will go into paint with about (32) hours on the clock and when it comes out of paint I plan on coming back out to Washington, finishing up the (40) hour FAA initial requirement and then flying it home. All of this is dependent on my school schedule. It is going to be really close to see if they can finish while I'm still on break.

7/12/11-Day Two of Flying

I got 6.9 hours on the plane today-that is a lot of time in a spam can! But it needs to be done to satisfy the FAA requirements before we can take it out of unpopulated areas.

Had some clouds today so we had to spend some time VFR on top of the cloud layers

This little island is the farthest Northwest point of the continental US (excluding Alaska). Go across the channel and you're in Canada

151 knots ground speed converts to 173.8 mph-not too shabby!

How flying in the mountains looks on the GPS

How the mountains look from outside the window

7/11/11-First Flights

The damn thing actually flies! We put about five hours on it today. For about the next 25-30 hours we're going to be getting the engine broken in correctly. We basically have to run it between 75-85% of full power while watching the cylinder head and exhaust gas temperatures to insure that the rings seat in correctly. Once the oil consumption begins to stabilize that's when we'll know that the rings have seated. Not many pictures of this momentous occasion because I was actually busy flying and paying attention to the engine gauges. Maybe when we get to setting up the autopilot I can take some more pictures.

View outside over the nose during a climb. Notice the glareshield that goes on top of the panel is missing. We'll add that later.

View of the panel-We're at a little over 3500' in this shot. Notice the big hole in the middle of the panel-that is where the back-up attitude indicator goes-we had to send it back to the manufacturer to get replaced-the first one was "toast".