Not much to report this week. I didn't hear anything from the painter guy at all. If they are on schedule, he should start spraying paint this week.

I was in Wichita from Monday to Thursday evening, flight testing a prototype Synthetic Vision System on a Head Up Display. Bombardier and Rockwell Collins are developing the technology for a big update to the Global Express. It isn't ready for offical type-certification flight testing yet, but they wanted to give us a look at this initial version, as it is easier and cheaper to make any big changes now than it will be later.

Yesterday and this morning were spent working a "Honey Do" list, but this afternoon I headed to Smiths Falls. RV-9A builder Phillip Kaye had a big bunch of local builders gathered in his hangar to help him install the wings on his aircraft. There were the usual little hicups, but things were progressing well when I left around 3 PM.

The weather was absolutely wonderful here this weekend. Sunny and unseasonably warm. Terry and I took the opportunity to go for the first walks together we have done since the car accident, almost one year ago. We didn't go quite as far as we used to go, but my ankle did very well. It got a bit tired, but there wasn't really any pain.

In other news, Terry's recovery has progressed enough that she went back to work Friday, the first time she has done that since the car accident, almost a year ago. She took it pretty easy, just doing checkups on patients. She had a bit of pain, but not too bad. Next Friday she'll try again, doing some easy drill and fill. She gradually ramp up the number of hours per week, and the difficulty of the procedures she does, until she figures out what her back and neck will tolerate.

This was a huge milestone. Terry was very happy to be back at it, finally.

I took some comp time Friday afternoon, and dropped by the paint shop to see how things were going. The guys have spent quite a bit of time tidying up the fibreglas, and masking off the cockpit, engine, prop, etc. They hope to start spraying paint in a week or so.

I shipped the EIS 4000 back to Grand Rapids for a firmware update, after carefully recording all the configuration settings, as I suspect those will be zeroed out.

The weather was pretty terrible most of all week, including the weekend, so I didn稚 miss too much good flying weather.

The aircraft is at the paint shop - I delivered it Tuesday morning. It was very strange having a weekend and not planning to go flying. I thought of a few more little odds and ends I need to talk to Korrey about, so I値l almost certainly head back out there sometime this week. Korrey痴 guys will be working on the fibreglas, and he said that he hoped to start spraying paint around the 1st of March.

I pulled the EFIS and EIS 4000 out of the instrument panel before I pushed the aircraft down to the paint shop. I知 going to send the EIS back to Grand Rapids for a firmware update, and I will experiment with reading serial data from the EFIS with a Propeller microcontroller - the first step to a potential pitch axis autopilot I am pondering.

I spent all day at the hangar the last three days. Thursday and Friday were spent trimming the top edge of the lower cowling, so that there was enough clearance between the upper and lower cowlings. I then did a detailed inspection of the engine, put the cowlings back on, and did a short 20 minute flight late yesterday afternoon - just a few loops and rolls and three quick circuits. That is the last time the aircraft will fly until it comes out of the paint shop.

Today I removed all the control surfaces, fairings, access panels, spinner, etc. I also removed the UHMW tape that protected the leading edge of the flaps, and the temporary wing walk material on the wing roots. The aircraft is all ready to go into the paint shop - I'll push it down the taxiway to the Kolorfast hangar first thing Tuesday morning.

I spent most of the day at the hangar, working to open up the clearance between the upper and lower cowlings. Korrey, the painter, commented on the fact that the edges of the upper and lower cowlings touch all the way along the horizontal line where they meet. There needs to be a gap between them, or the paint will chip.

He said that he had faced this issue on some other aircraft, and had used a needle file to open up a gap with the cowling installed. I didn't want him to do that, as the hinge eyes could be scored, which could eventually lead to a fatigue failure.

I attacked the problem this morning - I decided that it would be best only remove material on the edge of the lower cowling, as that would also help solve a problem I had with the hinge eyes interfering with the edge of the lower cowling when installing it. I marked a line where I wanted the new edge to be, then removed the upper cowling. I used a thin feeler gauge to slip between the hinge eyes and the inside surface of the cowling to protect the eyes as I used a needle file to remove material. It worked, but it was very, very slow. It would take over a week to finish at the rate I was going. I eventually got brave and very carefully used a Dremel tool with a small cutoff wheel to remove most of the material, and only had to do a bit of cleanup with a needle file. I got the left side finished, then stopped for the day.

Originally, I had hoped to get a short aerobatic flight off this afternoon. I had flown on seven of the last nine days (six times for work, and once in the RV-8), and really wanted to go up again today. But I ran out of time. It has been many years since I flew that many times in a few days. Oh well - it was a good run while it lasted.

I got a surprise e-mail from Korrey, the owner of Kolorfast yesterday. He will be painting my RV-8. Originally, it was supposed to go in for paint sometime in February. Then he said that they were behind schedule, and they wouldn稚 be ready for me until March. But yesterday, he said that they were ahead of schedule, and he wondered if I could bring it in ASAP. Someone else must have cancelled at the last minute.

The sooner it goes in, the sooner it comes out, and I壇 rather have it down in the winter than in the summer, so I decided to go for it. I知 taking the next two days off to do a few odds and ends that I need to do before it goes in for paint. This weekend I値l remove the control surfaces, fairings, etc, and Tuesday AM I値l push it a few hangars down the taxiway to their paint shop. It should be out of service for six to eight weeks. I値l miss flying it, but it will be nice to finally get the painting done. I知 really looking forward to seeing how it looks in the Golden Hawks paint scheme. I知 hoping it looks as good as Hawk One, which is the Vintage Wings restored Canadair Sabre (a Canadian built variant of the F-86 Sabre, with a higher thrust Avro Canada Orenda engine).

I got in a fair bit of flying for work this week, with trips to transport people for meetings in the Cessna C550 Citation II and the Beech King Air C90A. Saturday it was clear and cool here, so late morning I headed to the airport to fly the RV-8. I planned to do some more cruise performance testing with wheel pants OFF. The data I got on January 24th looks really, really clean, and I wanted to see how well data from another flight at another altitude would match up to the previous data.

I left the aircraft to preheat while I had lunch, then did a walk around, pulled it out of the hangar, and climbed in. I strapped in, and reached down to grab the headset, and it wasn’t there. I had taken it home as I wanted to try it in the King Air, and had forgotten to bring it back to Smiths Falls. I went back in the hangar, hoping that perhaps my old David Clark headset was in there somewhere, but no luck. Drat. Drat. Drat. I pulled the aircraft back in the hangar, and pondered my next move.

It would take an hour and a half to drive back home and return with the headset, and I really didn’t have that much time to spare, nor did I want to do that much driving. I called Terry to tell her that I wasn’t going flying after all, and she offered to bring the headset to me. What an angel! Thanks Terry.

After Terry arrived with the headset, I launched. I dropped the idea of doing more cruise performance testing, as that would take more time than I had to spare. I simply flew up to Ottawa and did two practice ILS approaches, then did a few circuits at Smiths Falls, taking advantage of the left crosswind to get some practice in crosswind landings.

The ILS approaches went well, but I definitely need to get some more cockpit storage pockets. If I am solo, I can put things in the passenger footwells, which are right beside my seat. But that won’t work when Terry is along.

Lessons Learned:

1. Make and use a “Going to the Airport Checklist”.
2. Leave all critical items such as headsets in the aircraft.

I didn't get flying this weekend. It was bright, sunny and cold on Saturday. I could have gotten flying mid-day, but I knew that the taxiway to the hangar would fill up with cars parked for Andrew Phillips' memorial service. There would be no way to get back to the hangar before the end of the afternoon, and Terry and I had another commitment which meant I needed to be on my way home by 1530. Oh well, there is always next week.

Andrew Phillips was killed when his RV-7A crashed on Saturday, 23 Jan. No idea yet on what caused the accident. He was flying back from Lindsay to Smiths Falls, in the company of two other aircraft. They were talking back and forth on the radio, and suddenly he was no longer answering, nor could he be seen. The other two aircraft searched along the ground track, but didn't see any signs of a crash. They then headed for Smiths Falls, hoping to find that he had experienced a radio failure, and that he had already landed. But, he wasn't there, so they went online to check his Spot track. The Spot hits stopped about where he was last seen, so they phoned the Trenton Joint Rescue Coordination Centre to report him missing, then they gassed up and went back to search some more. A Search and Rescue aircraft from Trenton found the wreckage at about 10:30 PM. Andrew's body was found in the remains of the aircraft. Read news stories and his obituary.

I had spoken with Andrew a few times, but certainly didn't know him very. He was a very nice guy, and was a tremendously enthusiastic member of the local RV community. My heart goes out to his wife and two young sons.

Andrew's memorial service was held at the Smith's Falls airport Saturday, in the Classic Wings hangar. The turnout was huge, with all the chairs filled, and a large crowd standing at the back.

I've lost a huge number of friends and acquaintances in aircraft accidents over the years. I was counting them for awhile, but stopped counting when I hit twelve back in the early 90s. Flying certainly has its risks - you can greatly minimize the risk by using best practices for everything, but you can never completely eliminate the risk. Everything we do in life has risk. You can die in a car accident (as we almost did last year), you can be killed walking along the street (as happened to a neighbour a few years ago), and you can expire in your sleep. In the end, you need to live your life. Be smart and careful about what you do, and how you do it, but don't stop living.