steampunk in motion

I have to admit, I like the look of steampunk - each piece that comes up on the net is often creative, thoughtful, meticulously done with attention to detail, crafted with care and passion.

That said, I also have a great love of automated assembly - what robotic assembly lines lack in craftsmanship, they gain in interchangeability, reliability, and affordability. Now, the designers must craft the love and passion to be replicated a ten thousand times over - and when marketing doesn't understand the materials they're working in, you get cheap cameras that break in your hand, and cool-looking cell phones that do everything you could want poorly, and still drop your calls.

My plane was the best, or worst, of both worlds - even today, all planes are made by hand. You can tell - though made on jigs that allow very little variance, when you repair a plane, each piece has to be carefully fitted, often adjusted or slightly altered. For mine - I am just now replacing her spars, stamped with serial numbers from original installation at the factory. The replacements are close, but took some work with file and varnish to fit the hardware.

She came, once, with a lush headliner and insulation, probably wood veneer panel, leather-wrapped yokes, cushioned foam seat... But by the time she came to me in Alaska, every ounce that could not be justified had been stripped out to save weight. Now, sitting in her canvas sling seat, you can see the bare bones of her welded fuselage and wooden stringers between holding the shape of her skin, fabric pinkish-brown on the inside still showing its origin stamped on the fabric. Her instrument panel is a far cry from modern six-pack instrument layout (she predates that design by decades). It's black-painted metal with the mandatory labels glued down and peeling, curling at the edge. Even her yokes are stripped-down, bare-bones.

She is still beautiful to me, for the possibilities, the dreams, the motion inherent in every line, the freedom of the skies. I like the way her clean curves arc down the length of her body, the simplicity of purpose and design, the arch of her airfoil and the golden gleam of her new spars, shimmer of colors in the cadmium wash of her new hardware. Was it Heinlein who once advised to love a woman, and you will come to find she is beautiful?

Still, I am looking at steampunk - an aesthetic which likes to make gears and dials and bare bones beautiful. With a a lot of thought and care, I would like to decorate her bare bones, without adding heavy weight that would retract from her performance. (As if, being female, I wasn't having a hard enough time deciding what to paint her!)

So I'm gathering ideas, in much the same way we shop for our next outfit and hairstyle by people-watching. And I'm looking at her instrument panel, and looking at this page. Clearly, I'll need the designs and labels selected and laid out, panel cut not only to the plane but to the instrument's holes, and it'll be a much larger-scale piece of metal... but I don't plan to touch her fuselage for three years, and I may have it worked out by then.

What do you think?

Metal , Wood, and Cloth

Drag wires are stripped, all the paint brushed out of the threads, nuts loosened and checked, repainted, and on the right wing.

Aileron control rod replacement is in from England. (The internet is so cool - you can get parts anywhere, as long as they exist and your owner group is strong!)

Yesterday, learned how to use a shear, a brake, and rollers for cutting, bending, and curving sheet metal. Learning how to use and mastering are completely seperate states. I have a lot of work ahead if I'm forming new aileron cove. I wish I could re-use the old cove, but whoever took it off the plane was, ah, less than careful.

The new leading edge will be interesting. In 1941, they used 0.012 inch aluminum - yes, twelve-thousandths of an inch thick. This is roughly as thick as a pop can's side walls. See, back before World War II, Aluminum refining had not yet been perfected, and it was not that common a material - so it was expensive! Therefore, very thin sheets were common - you wanted to use the absolute least amount of this rare, expensive material necessary to get the job done. These days, aluminum is extremely common and cheap - but you can't find anything thinner than 0.016 - that's, what, 25% thicker? Heavier, which is bad, but far sturdier, which is good.

If you're wondering how the leading edge avoided being dented when it was pop-can wall thick, the answer is that when covered, the cloth and dope went over the metal, providing a second layer of reinforcement for strengthening, stiffening, and protection against corrosion and collision with bugs. As for accidental knocks when clearing snow off with a broom, or dents from being leaned on or bumped when fueled? Well, those were just a part of life. Be careful or you get 'em.

The aluminum was also SO, or as jewelry-makers call it, full-soft. It can be bent and shaped by hand, and stays bent. This is also called, on the T Hardness scale, T0. (T0-T6) T1 & T2 are darned rare and hard to find, but T3 & T6 are common - or "half-hard and full-hard" to jewelers. So, I'm planning on replacing the first 4 feet of the leading edge with 0.016 T3 Aluminum, or much harder, dent-resistant, thicker aluminum than was originally on it. This way, should someone lean an elbow on the wing while putting gas in (like yours truly, who has dislocated her right shoulder before, and it'll never be as strong again for hefting jugs of gas), it won't be thrashed and dented for the next 8 years until recovered.

The rest of the leading edge I'll likely get in S0 and form by hand on the leading edge. It's easier, and more correct to original form.

The old aileron cove looked like swiss cheese - because in 1941, airplanes were covered with linen or cotton, and a highly flammable dope (glue.) How flammable? Google Hindenburg. The dope didn't stick to metal, so they laid a second piece of linen on the back of the aileron cove's convex curve, inside the wing, and glued it down. Then, when the doped cloth was laid on the outside of the wing, over the aileron cove, it stuck to the doped cloth on the inside through the holes.

These days, we have options like Poly-Stits and Ceconite. Not flammable, or not nearly so, and it sticks to metal. Interestingly, this means that unless I duplicate the linen-on-the-back trick, all the swiss-cheese holes will now detract from the ability of the fabric to stick to the metal while the metal is held in shape. Hmmm.

On grinding - my right rear spar was 1/4 inch too long. Clearly, the person who cut them was better at woodworking than me, but not as perfectionist. So I got a miter saw, discovered that the amound to be cut was half the blade width, got two files, and carefully took off the offending 1/4 inch by hand. It is now varnished, and when the varnish is dry, I'll put the butt attach fittings on.

...It's so close I can taste it, though the completed wing is still months away. Tonight, priming the wingtip bow that defines the rounded edge of the wing, and seeing if I can figure out how to put it on.

Fixxer Upper

One of the time-honored ways to get as much house as you want - as opposed to the house you can afford - is to get a fixxer upper. Of course, the corollary is that it takes twice as much and five times as long to fix up as you think - and you learn a lot of skills along the way. Heck, how many guys and gals got cars that they learned to keep rattling along just ahead of breakdowns for their first car?

Vickie, my plane, is sitting on the tiedown without wings, looking folorn. I received her wings in twelve different tote boxes and several long bundles, carted over to the hangar in the back of the prior owner's truck. Friends are awesome: we set up the shop, put things away, hung the pictures on the wall of the teardown for reference, and started fixing and repairing parts. We laid out the old spars for the right wing, and put the repaired ribs on them so we could see the wing growing as we repaired each piece.


Some of the repairs were pretty trial and error - others we asked for advice on the internet and had handy how-to's ready to apply. Two steps forward, one step back, but progressing every week! Best of all, compared to a fixxer-upper house; I don't have to live with the work in progress affecting the heat in the winter or ability to take a hot shower!

brief interlude

The day had started out grey and gloomy, but by lunch the clouds had broken overhead, and the banks of cloud hiding the mountains had been pushed back by winds and rising weather to mere strips of fog, clinging to the valleys and leeward side of ridges. JB had emailed me, sounding full of delight - let's go flying! I called him back, this stranger off the internet made friend by our shared ownership of Taylorcraft, and we made plans for after work.

By the time I got off at six, the weather was coming back down, drizzling rain by the mountain making a warning haze. It wasn't raining yet at Lake Hood, but the wind was full of the scents of rain and snow on the mountains. I knew when the clouds lifted, the snow line would be a little lower, winter creeping toward the sea. I parked by the plane, a yellow F-19 on floats, rising high above its neighbors by height of trailer and floats. she is a beautiful yellow and black bird, looking very much in the fuselage like my own - but her wings are on, spreading wide over thirty feet. JB greeted me enthusiastically, and I didn't have to work to smile back.

Due to the accident, I was barely able to walk after trying to work a full shift, so I stood by as he trailered the plane to water and put her in. Taylorcraft are light planes, and graceful - and standing there in hip waders, he was guiding her around, moving her with little effort. They're also blessed with doors on both sides, unlike Supercubs and related ilk, made more gracefully for getting into. With one crushed knee and one unhappy knee, it was still a challenge, but I have enough upper body strength and ingenuity to grab and haul myself in. It gave me a new respect, though, for those folks at Able Flight who manage their whole training and flying by hauling themselves out of their wheelchairs and into their planes. As JB put the truck and trailer away, I sat quietly, looking around, touching and comparing his bird to mine.

We taxied to the end of the lake, completing all the runup on the go (there are no brakes when you're on floats), and when tower cleared us, turning and taking off. Grey sky above, grey water below, nipping wet day... can do nothing to diminish the joy of slipping gravity and soaring up as the world seems to fall away. A flock of Canadian geese rose off the lake, disturbed by our bigger bird roaring toward them. I tensed as they wheeled up into the sky in a cloud, but they broke right, diving again back to food and rest as they readied for a long migration south. Given two people, lots of fuel, and the massive drag of floats, we did not climb quickly - nor did we need to, for the sea below held far less fear than it would for a wheel plane. If the engine quit, we'd be... just fine.

My legs wouldn't work well enough to use the rudders, but once on the other side of the Knik Arm of the sea, north of the power lines running from Beluga to feed Anchorage, he turned the yoke over to me to carefully try holding her steady, climbing and turning, feeling out what kind of personality his lady had. She's not snappy-quick and agile like a Grumman Yankee, but neither is she slow, lumbering, and requiring lead-handed controls with lots of lead-in and lead-out like a Cessna 172. She flies more like the Piper PA-12, Super Cruiser, roomier sister to the Supercub. She'll climb plenty fine - mine with just me and light fuel will make like a homesick angel, but she'll also trim for a steady cruise and treat me gently if I respect her. We talked of her handing characteristics, her habits, the fact that his heater was a lot nicer than I'd been led to believe, the insulation he'd put up on the inside, the custom fishing-rod holder he'd put in.

Alas, it was not a day for straying far from the airport - the curtains of rain were reaching out from the bad weather against the mountains, and more than half the city was now under acceptable visibility with only the glow of streetlights and headlights showing dimly through. We turned and came back across the ocean, not pouring power on but certainly not dawdling, and headed in. Somewhere behind us a Cessna 180 was reporting a hair's-breadth after us, and we added a little more power so the faster plane would not have to swing quite so wide with spacing maneuvers. Over the ballpark, setting up for a long landing, listening to a tower frequency busy with people trying to come in before the rains hid the lake.

Touching down long led to a fairly short taxi back to the public ramp, and I very carefully, stiffly slid out onto a float and staggered back to shore, wishing I could move well enough to help as he again gracefully moved the plane back onto the trailer, winched her down, and pulled her out. Back we went to his parking spot, tying down the plane, and I thanked him sincerely. It was wonderful - not only to see what another plane was like, and what mine will do when she's restored, but also simply to fly. We parted ways, and no matter the pain, the smile still quirked and tugged at my lips as I drove home into the rain.

Clamming At Polly Creek

Out in the Aleutian Mountains, where the waters of Polly Creek flow from Redoubt Volcano into a bay, joined by the glacial meltwater off the Tuxedni Glacier, low tide pulls back a long way across tidal flats, revealing running ridges of sandbars. Once a month, by the pull of the moon on the earth, the tide is especially low. Astronomers call these "neap tides". Folks round here are much more practical; we call them clamming tides.

The red and white supercub ahead had picked a sandbar a mile out from shore and already landed as we came around - with the angle of the sun on wet sand, it looked like he'd gone in the water. But the tide book assured us he wasn't wrecked, as well as the presence of two small figures getting out. From further out in the bay, we saw two boats - commercial clammers - heading over quickly. Up here, lone folks get checked on to make sure they're not landing for engine trouble - when the tide comes in, it comes in at four feet an hour, and the cold water can and does kill. We set up for a nice long approach, taking every advantage of the nearly thousand feet of sandbar and lack of any obstacle nearby. As we came in, the boats peeled back out to the business of making money, satified that we were there intentionally, or at least the first guy was getting checked on.

The wet sand looked flat from altitude, but up close, it was covered in thousands of inch-high ridges, and landing on it was like landing on hard, rough concrete. As we went over a low spot, the tires flung muddy sand and glacial silt up with corrosive seawater onto the wings and struts, and I silently thanked the heavens that we were going straight to a place where we could hose down both aircraft well after this. Then we were stopped - on a sandbar this wide, no need to even turn around first - and getting out into the salt sea air, handing out buckets and shovels. Undeneath that sand (just don't dig where a tailwheel's going to drop in) there were thousands of razor clams, waiting to get into the buckets and become food.

Three hours later, as we were getting exhausted, and the buckets were nearly full, I frowned at the latest hole in hard-packed sand. "Water level's risen in these holes."

"It has?" My digger (my arms were too sore now to wield the shovel, so he dug and I pulled the clam out as it tried to escape) looked at me, then around at a sandbar that looked like it had been swarmed by giant gophers, for all the holes dug.

"Water's coming up behind J's plane, too." I added, kneeling on the sand because I was too tired to get up. About three hundred feet down out of the thousand feet of sandbar, a curving crescent of water was now shining in between the ridges of sand over half the runway.

J's father nodded, then, and called out to the other two. "All right! tide's coming back in! A dozen more, and we're out of here!" He looked back down where the weight and vibration from my body had disturbed the sand, and saw two dimples where clams had sensed me and tried to move away. "There's two right here."

A dozen might have been ambitious; the water comes back in at four feet an hour on a clamming tide, and the sandbar was at most six inches above the retreating sea. As the other plane had two guys in better shape than me, they got everything packed and away first, taking off quickly; we were slower, and threw up a little spray as we roared into the sky. I sat back beside a very cold bucket of clams, reached forward and shifted J's gun barrel so my left knee could rest against the seat, and curled my bare toes around the rudder pegs. Cabin heat, bless the man, flowed back to me, while the window was expertly cracked to keep him cool. All in all, a great day - even though hours of cleaning clams after thoroughly rinsing the aircraft lay ahead.

It can Happen to you..

"Everybody knows" that planes are fabulously expensive things that you must have a heck of a salary to support, right?

Except I'm working retail, on the floor, and I just bought a plane. She's a project, which is akin to a "fixer-upper" in house parlance, as her wings were taken off and disassembled to be overhauled. All the parts are there, and there are even new parts to replace the old - but I bought a jigsaw puzzle, basically, that takes power tools and patience to put back together. Oh, and I don't have the picture (blue prints, or complted wing) to look at. 

On the other hand, I just bought a plane. A plane!

She's a 1941 Taylorcraft BL12-65. When she was first turned out of the factory, she wasn't intended to last more than 5-10 years; as she's still around, like Ming vases and Papyrus Scrolls, she's become something to cherish and preserve, protect, and fully fly all I can out of her. She started life in Alliance, Ohio, when the Japanese were a distant threat over the horizon, months before Pearl Harbor, and Europe was in a war that we were refusing to enter, stating our oceans would keep the Natzi threat far way.  She now lives in Alaska, a state where the Japanese landed and occupied in that same war.

The key to putting her back in the air is persistance - steadily working a little bit each night.  So that's what I'm doing. Pictures may follow.

(After all, if I can do this, anyone can.) 

Flying around Denali National Park

If you've been flying, hiking, or climbing on and around Mount McKinley (Denali to the rest of us), or within the confines of the park, the Denali National Park & Preserve Aircraft Advisory Council is meeting Thursday, Feb. 7th, in the Best Western Lake Lucille Inn from 1pm-4pm.

"The council will identify and address the impacts from aircraft flight over Denali National Park & Preserve." For any non-resident treehuggers out there: before you get vapors, please remember that the federal government locked up six million acres of land, and only 14.8 miles of road are publicly accessible within it (aside from a 400-car road lottery that lets the lucky ones in once a year). This isn't Yosemite with traffic jams at the gate; most of the only way to see this state is by air. Even the climbers have to take air taxi to get to Denali (Mt. McKinley).

The aircraft overflight working group consists of scenic air tour operators, commercial operators, general aviation organizations, and other concerned parties.

In other words, flightseeing charters, airlines whose polar flight routes go over DNPP, airlines who ferry folks between Anchorage and our second-largest city, Fairbanks, those of us who want to fly out and see it ourselves, land on the backcountry strips, or just fly from Fairbanks to Anchorage and back to see a dentist and get some shopping in, the folks the government hasn't forced off the land yet when they declared it a national park, the climbers who want to get to denali, the wildlife folks who are torn between getting in by air to study wildlife and the concern that aircraft noise might impact wildlife...

This is democracy in action. If you have a stake in it, or you're just interested, the meeting's open to the public!