Kneeboard Notes

When I was a young pilot growing up in Minnesota, winter never stopped us from flying - at least not for long once we'd shoveled the snow out of the way of the hangar doors.

No, I'm not being nasty - I'm just finishing up studying the material for the FAA's A&P Powerplant knowledge exam, and finding out all sorts of interesting things that the FAA wants me to know about propellers.

We're all craftspeople, right? When building airplanes, we work to tolerances of a 64th of an inch, we don't accept dents or nick, and scratches are anathema - so naturally, we all like to have workshops that are spotless and tools that are organized - and of the highest quality.

Yes, I've been wrenching on airplanes for nigh on 45 years now, so you'd think I'd know all of this stuff - but as anyone who has ever taken an FAA knowledge exam (of any kind) knows that what you learn and use in the real world has no bearing on what you will find on the test.

For the first time in many years, I find myself studying for some FAA written exams - sure, I've done license upgrades and type...

One of the things we all have to do when fight testing an airplane is to fly it across the entire CG range - from full forward to full aft. In the case of a side-by-side two-seater, this generally isn’t too hard, because the CG range is actually fairly short. With a large four-seater (plus baggage), it can take a little more creativity to safely hold enough weight to get to the aft limit.

Cockpit ergonomics are a big deal to me - and they are a slippery problem. I spent much of a career helping designers refine designs for man-machine interfaces, and part of the problem we had is that everyone had different opinions of what was "good."

The Monday after Christmas dawned clear, calm , and cold here in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains of Nevada - perfect for flight testing (assuming you have thermal underwear and gloves)! It was time to get our Dream Tundra back in the air after significant belly skin upgrades.

I've written a couple of notes in the past few months about repairing the minor skin buckles in our Dream Tundra. It turns out that Dream has re-designed the belly skin, doubling the thickness, then adding another doubler over that. We asked them to double the skin thickness for the chin skin - and when all three part showed up, the number of holes to be matched, and the number of rivets that had to be drilled out and replaced was daunting.

Meeting your heroes can turn out to be a disappointment, a let down. But this is not always the case. And the news of John Glenn's passing reminded me that yes, indeed, there are heroes that live up to the name.