Picture Progress Post - Tackling The Engine

Or, And This Was Just Monday.


The wings are waiting for a paint shop slot to open. So, I tackled the airbox - here we see it lying on top of the engine, back from having two bad welds redone by Atlee Dodge. (They are Good People, and good at fixing parts!) The exhaust, also back from Atlee Dodge after being checked for leaks and rewelded, has already been installed.

Here's one of those grand times it pays to either have a friend, or wonder why designers think airplane mechanics have six arms, each six feet long with three elbows and five-jointed fingers including two opposable thumbs. Despite having the strength of titans and being impervious to pain, the impermeable, uncuttable appendages are also supposed to be maximum 1.5 inches in diameter. Just you try holding up an airbox while holding a screw in place while threading a washer and locknut on the other end, and tightening them. For example, see the clearance for putting on the nuts.


After I got everything on, my IA came in. I reported what I had done, and briefly puzzled over the odd gouges on some of the old nuts in a circular pattern. My IA eyed the airbox, and informed me that was because the last person to replace the hardware had done it incorrectly; instead of one thick washer, I needed a thin washer and a star washer to lock everything in place. Time to redo everything! This time, I only changed one bolt at a time, so I didn't have to hold the airbox in place.


The next step was to re-attach the Aeroduct, or high-temp resistant ducting to the airbox. (It's also called SCAT tubing, and the extreme-temp stuff is SCEET tubing. I don't know what it stands for, and don't click any non-obviously-aviation links if you don't have brain bleach handy. Just search for Aeroduct on Univair or SCAT on Aircraft Spuce, and marvel that there's not a wikipedia page on it yet.)

These are all the burnt-orange slinky-looking hoses you see in airplane engines. While air is normally rammed into the airbox through the filter up front, if that plugs enough to not draw sufficient air (waterlogged from flying through heavy rain, iced, clogged with dirt, dust, cottonweed fluff, corpses of a thousand thousand mosquitoes and black flies), we need another source of air to feed the engine. If the outside air is humid enough that it causes/risks causing carburetor icing, we need the secondary air source to be hot enough to melt (or prevent) carburetor icing. Therefore, air is drawn from a little higher up the cowl, through a length of aeroduct, and run down the length of an exhaust shroud to heat, and fed back through more aeroduct to the airbox. Pull the carb heat lever in the cockpit, and a wire directly attached to the handle will move a lever from filtered air to heated air.

(Side note: As one exhaust shroud, pulling half the engine's output, is dedicated to carb heat, this leaves only half the engine's output, off one lone exhaust shroud, to provide cabin heat. This is part of why the Taylorcraft is famous for having so much cabin heat it can just barely warm your right big toe. On the bright side, it isn't known for being prone to insufficient carb heat. Yeah, I'm not looking forward to that aspect of flying her in winter.)

The first hose I pulled looked like this - note the the shiny wire coils on the section near the rim of the trashcan are internal.


Well, one hose replacement led to another. And when the two that obviously needed repairs were finished (My carb heat should be Much More Effective now), I asked my IA what he thought of re-attaching the rest. He looked at them carefully, then looked me in the eye and said, "They are airworthy. If you're fine with your work looking trashed and shoddy, you can reinstall them."

There are definitions of airworthy and unairworthy conditions, and then there's learning to make judgment calls. So, after replacing all the scat tubing, a poor picture of a beautiful engine looks like this:



This is the hardware leftover in the bag after the airbox was on the engine. Not to worry; I still had a filter to buy, and a grate to install; I knew this hardware would somehow fit with that project for tomorrow.


Ladies and Gentlemen, meet my gascolator. I thought this was going to be my biggest problem, and took quite a few pictures to document the safety-wiring so I could re-create it once I figured out how to get the thing apart and cleaned. The gascolator is the lowest point on a gravity-fed fuel system, and therefore is the perfect point to put a filter to catch water (heavier than and non-miscible with avgas) and any debris (cottonweed fluff, glacial silt, corrosion, etc.) that might get into the fuel system. (Well, normally the lowest. There's this bypass to a boost pump that is lower, with its own filter and drain to check. The boost pump is a long story.)



In order to work on the gascolator and boost pump, the first step is to shut off the fuel and drain the lines. So, I leaned in the cockpit, reached over, and flipped aside the tab that keeps pilot or passenger from accidentally pulling the fuel shutoff control.
Then, I pulled on the knob - or rather, I strained and grunted, and strained, and the knob went nowhere. This is a Bad Thing - the ability to shut off the fuel flow in a hurry is not only darned convenient when working on a plane, it's critical to killing an engine fire, or avoiding a post-crash fire. This means the ability to quickly and easily pull that knob or the three individual levers are critical action items on the Avoid Burning To Death checklist.

I called my IA over, wondering if I was missing something really obvious. He looked at me, flipped the retaining tab out of the way, and pulled on the knob. It didn't move. "Turn the shutoff valves." I went under the dash and pulled on a wing-like handle to shut off the fuel coming from the wing tank on my side. See blurry out-of-focus knob in the next picture:


"Um, I can't move it. You have more strength - can you try?"
With gentle and Extremely Firm Tone, my I.[inspection]A.[authorization] pronounced his judgment upon the airplane. "You are the pilot. If you can't shut off your own fuel, that is an unairworthy condition, and must be fixed. Immediately."

Righto. That wasn't just me missing something, then. Time to drain the tank, then take these stiff and stubborn assemblies apart!

Not that they cooperated any more in coming apart than they did in turning, but that's why we have big adjustable wrenches, fuel & oil absorbent pads, flashlights, and Words My Father Doesn't Approve A Christian Young Lady Saying.

Side note: The green you see under the various controls is my main tank - 12 gallons of Avgas. The fuel shutoff control goes back on a long rod to a lever on the shutoff valve between the tank and the fuel hose through the firewall to the engine. Each wing tank shutoff valve lets fuel powered by gravity drop into this tank. This is why I can't simply slap the radio and transponder under the panel - there is nothing structural to attach to, and I'm in no hurry to try welding or drilling anything to a gas tank, or slap-dashedly try to reroute gas lines where the shutoff valve might not be so easily in reach.

With much wrestling, the valve cores were removed.

Trick to remember later - one wrench on the valve body, one on the valve stem nut, squeeze together. This provides much more leverage than lying on your belly with arm outstretched, trying to muscle the valve. It also stabilizes the darned thing so it doesn't flex against the thin walls of, say, the main gas tank, for the main shutoff valve. Wish I'd known that trick years ago - it's under the "work smarter, not harder" files now!

Here are the guts of the valves. Note the insides are not a shiny brass color, except where gouged. Okay, maybe don't note the gouges as it's out of focus. By this point, I was woozy from gas fumes inside a cockpit - even with both doors tied open, it's still a small space. Time to declare victory, go home, and clean them on Tuesday.

Progress Post - wings are ready to paint!

After the initial fabric is put on and attached with super-seam on the front & rear, then doped and ironed, it's time to cut lengths of 2 inch wide tape to use, and protect every edge that can chafe or wear through.



Once the rings and seaplane grommets for the drain holes are laid out (and two more acquired), and their fabric covers nearby, I know I have enough.



My IA checks my work, and leaves notes or flags problems:



Underside finished, ready for a last inspection of both sides (which will reveal two missing tapes).




For more room to work on the other planes, they have been moved to a side room.



I'm not completely done - I'm still eyeing them and adding a little dope here, a little ironing there, trying to get all the pinked edges to lay flat and stay that way. And now we need to focus on putting the engine back together,



and on finding somewhere in this panel to put a transponder and a radio.



That said, I'm still thinking about adding another couple inspection rings to the right wing, for ease of maintenance down the road. Just 'cause.

Watch This

MattG brought a most excellent video spoof on old media flaunting the excesses of new media. It's hilarious and I highly recommend watching it, but that's not the video I say you must watch.

No, the videos below are an interview, split into two parts, with one of the rarest and most highly respected of people - a living Medal of Honor recipient. In this age we live in, from the comfort of your home or office, you can share a moment of time with a man who humbles me in every way: Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta. If you do not know of this man, you should - because this is a man who is the best of America.





hattip to Blackfive

On the naming of things

Tam and Brigid have weighed in on opposite sides of why they will or won't name things.

For me, I take a third road. While Brigid is very right that to name something is to claim something, to make it theirs, to name something is also to give it an existence separate from the mere fact of itself, to give it a story.

There are many cats, but there will always and only be one Mouse Patrol for me, with his raging defiance at the redtail hawks that would steal his prey, his bloody smug pride at defeating river rats, and his utter contentment in sleeping on top of the air compressor or the welding bench, startling the hapless welder who didn't realize the utter feline indifference to noise and sparks less than two feet away. He passed away quietly in his sleep almost two decades ago, but still he lives on in stories.

Stories are powerful things, breathing life into the inanimate, bringing meaning and pride and love and luck to memories, hopes, and dreams. The best stories outlast both their makers and the things which they relate - to name something, therefore, is to give it an immortality that the unnamed tool next to it will never have. And once so named, a thing often takes on the personality and gender seen in the owner's relation with it - for it becomes a character all its own, and english has no respect for a neutral gender.

I did not name my plane; she came to me already named, with a tale of the trials of her engine and the places she would go, the mishaps she has been through, the triumph achieved in her. Her prior owner, as he was telling me the story of their time together, was deep in technical details when he paused, and in a soft voice, told me her name. My IA has worked on her for two owners before me, and one day a man came in to see who owned her now. He was a little uncertain on my name, but he asked for the plane's owner by her name, and told me that if I could get her back in the air, it just might make him cry.

To name a plane is to love it.

There is this, as well: An owner of a P51 Mustang once noted that after a certain point, you are no longer the owner of a plane - you are the caretaker of an irreplaceable piece of history. While he was speaking of a beautiful fighter that makes young boys excited by the very sound of her engines, and old men who once flew her smile very quietly as they are helped into the cockpit and realize that they still can find every control, and their hands and bodies remember all the flows - mine is a much more humble machine, pressed into service after Pearl Harbor to train young soldiers who might have then gone on to fly fighters like his. Still, he has a valid point, and all the hopes, dreams, fears, and joys of the men and women who have encountered her have left her with a story as complex as the inner structure of her wings.

Progress Post

Thursday, doping the tapes gave the boys bad enough headaches (hint: wear your darned respirator! Even if the girl is, too!) that they decided to not come in Friday while I continued doping. My IA was unaffected, and it was a strangely quiet day at the shop. Productive, but very quiet. Around 5, I was completely exhausted - dope doesn't give me a headache, but it wears me out worse than biking up hills in twenty-first gear, and breathing through a respirator is sneakily tiring with every extra effort for every breath. By 5:30, I was ready to pack it in for the day. My IA noted he couldn't afford another day with all of the mechanics gone, so would I please come in after the boys knocked off for the day?

So I did, today. The upside: I got to sleep from 10pm to 12:30pm without feeling guilty. (Dope really wears me out.) I got to spend time with my hosts, and do the dishes and laundry. Time, precious time to do errands. (Though I found out that the bookstore doesn't have a US road atlas. I'll have to find it elsewhere.) Went into a wonderful military thrift store called The Dropzone - you could call it army surplus, but unlike the tourist-friendly, high-priced, neatly organized "army surplus" with barely any military gear downtown, this one had a staff full of nice, well-muscled young men with millimeter-long haircuts who addressed me as "ma'am" by reflex and were very friendly, if opinionated, about the best thermal underwear for flying down the alcan, and I will be bringing a gun if I'm doing this alone, right, ma'am? Well, they had a very small section of non-military clothes, tucked right by the socks and the hemocrit bandages - 5.11 gear.

Then back to the hangar for doping edge tapes,



cutting out the strut attach brackets, ironing the fabric down, and doping patches on.


Then, I laid out inspection rings and seaplane grommets for tomorrow - aside from one small tape I overlooked putting on earlier, I only have the tip bow, leading edge, top of the aileron cove edge, and three tapes on the top to do. I think I can get almost all, if not all of the inspection rings and seaplane grommets on after I get the tip bow taped tomorrow.



As a side note, I have a new tailwheel tire, and half the tailwheel replaced. See why?

Things I've learned from liberals, and from life

(Title (though not content) from http://www.blogtalkradio.com/b-b-and-guns ).

"Everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten" is a popular poster, catchy phrase, and full of wonderful platitudes about playing nice and sharing, not stressing out and enjoying life. I realized that it perfectly sums up the worldview of my liberal friends, on an utterly fundamental level. That is the touchstone of their identity - their ten commandments.

The problem is not that the things they believe are untrue, and when dealing with civilized, polite, productive working society, they are not necessarily wrong. It's that this is not all you need to know, even if it is all you want to know.

Life is not kindergarten, and there are fundamentally destructive, selfish, immoral, and evil people out there. There are fundamentally morally corrupt, sick, and evil cultures out there in the wider world, and here at home. People without integrity respond to incentives regardless of their destructiveness to self or society. The world itself is not a nice place, and nature is harsh from microbiology to hurricanes. If you think that the world plays by the same rules you want to, and fundamentally believe that everyone wants to be nice and decent... you have yet to graduate from kindergarten.

Which explains why my friend is still chafing at the unfairness of the world, and wanting someone, somewhere, to enforce fairness - for "the government" to step into the role of the kindergarten teacher. It's why some people are trapped into wanting, not the freedom to be themselves, but wanting to be the teacher's pet with their freedom praised and celebrated at the expense of others. Why some are working so hard to declare themselves as the cool kids, the elite, at the expense of everyone else.

Life isn't fair. It isn't safe. It's full of ugly parts, and stinky messes, and hurt, death, anger, pain, and tragedy. It's full of joy, wonder, beauty, unlooked-for blessings and unhoped-for miracles. If you accept the painful, thorny gift that is adulthood, and bear the responsibilities and burdens of maturity, then you will find a life full of laughter, friendship, exploration, joy, thrill, and love that you could not even dream of from the small self-centered coddling of childhood.

On a personal note, life has brought crippling injuries, and chances to climb mountains. It's brought bad love affairs brought to messy ends, and bittersweet partings that led to good friendships. It's brought chances to fire submachine guns, and cross-country road trips to friends I'd never met but already knew. It's brought the opportunity to move to Alaska, and the motivation to leave. It's brought a man from the other side of the world who loves me til death do us part, and being parted for more than half of our first year of marriage. (Words cannot express how deeply I appreciate and rely upon his love and support while we are apart.) It's brought friends who are amazing and beautiful souls, wonderful, creative, interesting people. It's brought chance encounters with the most fascinating people, and kindnesses from strangers. It's brought a plane whose wings were built by one of my grandmother's schoolmates as Europe went down in flames and the Japanese plotted to attack Pearl Harbor. It's brought malnutrition, and it's brought fresh-baked bread by my own hands. It's brought the aurora dancing across the sky all around my plane, and it's brought being stuck with good friends in ren faire garb by a broken down van on the inside lane of heavy highway traffic. It's brought a bone-deep pain that will never go away, guaranteed to get worse as I get older, and friends who welcome me into their home as a several-month-long guest.

But most of all, it's brought opportunity - and life is what you make of it. All I'm guaranteed is a birth and a death; the rest is a gift in all its pain and beauty for me to explore to its limits and relish. I wouldn't trade it back for a childhood for anything - there are so many more things to do, to see, to try! So many places to go! So many memories to make with my Calmer Half!

I'll never get a single second back, and while it hasn't been fair, it's amazing. I can only hope that when I go, I leave this world a better place than I found it, and that when God brings me to that final accounting for all the rights and wrongs I have said, thought, and done, he has mercy upon my soul.

Rib Lacing Finished

What took seven days last time took three this time. My fingers and wrists are sore, so a night of sausages, chocolate ice cream, and very sporadic chatting on #gbc it is.

Tomorrow, cleaning up the balled wax from the ribstitching cord, wiping down the wing, doping and applying tapes.