It’s been a busy few weeks. I was in Wichita, KS for three weeks flight testing a major update to the avionics for the Bomdardier Global 6000 large business jet. It is almost impossible to keep up with the myriad marketing product names. I first heard the “Global 6000” designation during this trip. Up to now they called it the “Global Vision” variant of the Global Express, and the latest avionics fit was called the Global Vision Flight Deck. The avionics are from Rockwell Collins, and they call them the Pro Line Fusion avionics. The renaming of the Global Express as the Global 6000 wasn’t completely unexpected, given that the short fuselage variant is the Global 5000, and the future models are the Global 7000 and 8000.

I got back about 10 days ago. The first weekend back I changed the main landing gear tires and tubes on the RV-8, repacked the wheel bearings with grease and inspected the brake pads. The brake pads were in good shape, but one of the calipers was jamming up against the bottom aft corner of the landing gear leg. I knew there wasn’t much clearance there, but thought there was enough. But, the caliper wasn’t moving freely, so I used a file to put a small bevel on the corner to ensure the caliper would slide correctly.

The left main gear tire was wearing strangely on the inboard edge. It looks as if something was rubbing on the edge of the tire, but I can’t figure out what that might have been. There is no sign of any rub marks on the edges of the wheel pants and the flexible brake line isn’t long enough to reach that far. I never heard anything rubbing was I pushed the aircraft into or out of the hangar. I’ll keep a closer eye on the wear pattern of the new tires.