It's finished.

Today was a perfect evening for Cub flying, my friend Scott flew the airplane while I got some movies. The sun was going down and I did not know how to trick the camera to work into the sun. The movies start out dark then get OK when I turn away from the sunset. Here he is taking off.

This is proof that it actually flys. Here is a low pass.

He finished off with a near perfect 3 point landing.

On Satruday I flew down to Wakefield and flew the Trojan for a few minutes. Here is a shot of the planes together.

Po Boy Preoiler

Since I did not take many pictures, it's hard to describe the work that took place between the 18th and the 23rd. It is amazing how much work you can get done without the great time waster(computer). I would be at the airport at 8 AM and would not get home until 8 PM , or until I ran out of water. I completed the cowl mounting and installation, the breather system, the exhaust system, all the heating and ventilation ducting, and the ignition system. I came up with a new strategy for visitors,  I would stop working and set down my tools , 9 times out of 10 after 5 or 10 minutes they would realize that they were hindering progress and leave. I never came up with a good answer to the inevitable question that only people that have never built an airplane ask, "when will it be done"? With all the systems complete it finally came time for the flame test. I like to pre-oil my engines before the first start and depending on the method used this can be a messy task.  I had been thinking about this since we did Scott's Dream Machine motor where he pumped oil in the pressure line with a old oil pump can. I came up with this brain storm that I call  the Po Boy Preoiler !

You can see , it's a length of 4 inch pvc pipe with one end a cap and the other a sewer clean out cap. I drilled and tapped two places for 1/8 pipe thread fittings. The top hose terminates with a Milton #2 air  fitting and the lower goes to a 3/8 pipe plug that screws into the front engine gallery. Here is a better picture of the engine fitting.

This worked great, unscrew the top, make sure it's perfectly clean, pour in a quart of oil, connect an air pressure source of 20 psi and wait. I pumped in an entire quart and as soon as air showed in the line I disconnected the air. This fills the entire oil system before start and gives you a test of the oil pressure line and gauge since it should read the air pressure applied. The only mess comes when you remove the fitting and install the regular pipe plug.
With this complete it was time for the flame test. I called my friend Claude and he did the cockpit honors while I pulled the prop and watched and listened for problems. The first run was 5 minutes @ 1000 rpm per Continental instructions.

 Here is the happy owner just after the first engine run.  Check out those old man boobs I'm growing! Another 10 years and I'll have to start getting mammograms.

That evening I came out and completed the second run of 7 minutes, that included a magneto check and a short static runup. Everything checked out and she is ready for a test flight when the weather conditions are just right. Here are a few shots of her on the evening of the 23rd. Not perfect but not bad either.

The plan was to come out early Friday morning when it was cooler and complete the first flight, however I worked so hard on Thursday I could not muster the energy to get up that early. The first flight was completed on Friday evening .

I'm back

The new Dell arrived today and it's up and running. The Cub is finished and flying and I have about 12 hours on it now. The first flight was on the evening of June 24, 2011. I flew for 1 hour and everything went smooth. I have had some problems during the test period, but they are slowly getting worked out. I will go back to June 18 and pick up where I left off. With the computer inop. I did not take as many pictures as usual so it will be a little jumpy. When I left off I was waiting for the magneto drive seals to arrive. I installed these and finished the magneto overhauls . Here are a few shots, the first is during setting the "E" gap (point gap) using the Bendix tool.

In this shot the mags are ready for installation, I ended up using the old harness from the Champ engine. The blue leads really do not look that bad. You can see the Lone Star Aviation magneto filters installed to reduce ignition noise from the radio, more on that later.

At this point everything started to come together and I was working at the airport every day. Here is a shot of the left side with the mags , exhaust and lower cowl installed. I have one plug in and I'm fitting the eyebrows for the ignition leads.

In this shot of the right side you can see the eyebrow fitted. I made a mistake here in that the test engine had flat valve covers and these are the flanged type. There were some areas where the eyebrows rubbed on the valve covers, so they had to be relieved for a little clearance. I managed this without messing up the paint too much.

 Here is the exhaust pipe fitted. It's a little closer to one side but not too bad.

The air filter fits good should not be any problems with rubbing here.

I had to manufacture the left front cowl pin mount. The one I bought from Univair was for a C-65 engine and the crankcase is different on the C-85/90 engine. This left pin bracket sets the cowl location and the right pin is free to float for alignment. It took some time but it came out pretty good.

Here's a few shots of the cowl fitted. I still need to finish the eyebrows, run the ignition leads, finish the "P" leads, and make the breather tube plus a 100 other items.