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Day 6-18
Discipline. As I had learned on the first day at the lakebed,
TOC preparation includes a good deal of discipline. While taxiing
out to fly a flight I noticed that the airframe was shaking a
little more than usual. Well, I thought, "heck, I'll just fly
since I need the practice; I can check it out after the flight."NOT!
I slapped myself, shut off the engine, and, sure enough, the mounting
bolts were loose. Visions of a 200 CC motor flying off the front
end of my 48-Lb airplane send shivers up my spine. Discipline.
We spent the next hour and a half taking everything apart and
tightening up the engine. We flew twice more before heading over
to Bill's to continue rebuilding the Edge. My wife sent cookies
and we got them that day. I think that I lived on those cookies
for lunch and dinner during the next 3 days. Day 6 through 8-
the usual misery at the lake bed.
Day 9, we had
to fix the muffler in Vegas, so we did that and also checked out
the Hoover Dam. No flying that day. We also bought a boom box
to prepare the freestyle. Day 10, we flew but it was too windy
and cold to practice freestyle. I still was not used to the plane
and freestyle characteristics. Day 11 was too windy to fly at
all. Big dust clouds blowing across the lake bed.Day 12. I stayed
up late composing a freestyle song from day 11. Yes, that's right,
to give you an idea of what lack of state of preparation I was
in, or should I say, how little time I had available leading up
to the TOC, we did the best we could. Actually, it was very similar
to the successful freestyle I did at the Masters (Greenville,
SC, USA) in 1999. There was no time to start from scratch. After
two flights, disaster! The tailwhe el
assembly had come loose and because of the strong crosswind (landing
coming straight toward me) I did not notice it missing, so the
landing resulted in ripping the rudder off, stripping out one
of the 4 rudder servo cases, and scraping the bottom of the rudder
bad. Now that tailwheel assembly must have been dangling in back
of the plane for a while before it fell off, because the ball
link held long enough for the steering pushrod to unscrew out
of the linkage. In the strong wind, you often cannot see as well,
nor hear the plane very well. I certainly couldn't. Anyhow, we
drove around the lakebed for an hour til we found the tailwheel
assembly and spend the rest of the day fixing the rudder, etc.
Peter Goldsmith, wondering what was going on, came over and helped
re-hinge the rudder. Thanks Peter.
Day 13. Unlucky
13. Yes, I did not realize it was the 13th day until I started
to write this! The keyway wallowed out on the crankshaft on the
second flight and we were grounded for the next 2 ½ days. It was
comical to see me trying to start that engine and the prop kept
inching back until I had to flip it from the top (it would not
fire by this point). You have got to picture me trying to start
this thing- it was not funny at the time but I can't help but
giggle about it thinking back. Now, the weather was getting very
nice; mild temperatures and light wind… and I was grounded! We
spend the next two days finishing up rebuilding the Edge while
we awaited parts. Sometime during this period my birthday took
place. No time for birthdays. Now if you have ever seen a Q-200
(maybe someone took a picture of the one we had on display at
the TOC and can post to a website) it has two identical crankshaft
sides. Kind of like spare parts built into the engine. Necessity
is the mother of invention…so we flipped the crankshaft around,
rotated the jugs, and when we got the new mag hub and keys, put
th em
on and we were back in business. While disassembling, we noticed
that the inside of the engine was pretty much flawless after the
15 hours of operation. I suspect this engine will last many, many
years. BTW, I will not downplay Quadra; the engine ran flawlessly
in the desert up to this point and ran flawlessly after this point.
So aside from the keyway issue, the engine was a low maintenance
item in Vegas, just as I had predicted. Day 15. By this time some
other TOC fliers were showing up. I think there were 7 of us at
that lakebed by this point. We completed rebuilding the Edge.
When we were done, it was hard to tell that it was crashed. I
just wish we had time to re-paint the cowl. Now it's 3 days before
the TOC. A couple of checkout flights on the Edge and - a muffler
falls off. My dad and I were at our limit. We find the muffler…looks
like another 3 hours of
maintenance.
HOWEVER…reinforcements
were arriving! Alex Bruhn, my caller, and Yuri Higuchi drove up
just as I was getting the timing set on the Q200. As they got
out of the car and started walking toward us, think of the scene
of the movie "Full Metal Jacket" where the Sarge says, "welcome
to the country club". That's the first words I uttered to Alex.
Now there were lots of spectators appearing at this point. I think
Doug sent out an e-mail asking folks to not come and bother the
TOC pilots. I don't know how the other pilots were doing but trust
me, by this point I was a vegetable. Kodak moment-Tony Kreg takes
a picture of me working on the plane. I think, "Great, that's
what I'll be remembered by: 'Men at Work'." Well, Yuri and Alex
were not idle for long. They went to work on maintenance. At last,
I could rest my weary bones. The weather was perfect and time
was quickly slipping away. We get the CAP flying- two flights,
the sun sets, and its dark…we stumble our way out of the lakebed
in the dark (not fun trying to drive on the lakebed when its dark).
Day 16, we got
the CAP back into the air and kept practicing. We lost a half
day trying to figure out why I could not get my 10 of an 8 with
all 10 points, until we realized that there was a plug cap loose.
I must say that the JR radio has been flawless, and with all the
radio frequency interference coming out of the plug cap, it hardly
affected the range. I am very impressed with the JR Radios and
very happy that I am flying JR. After tightening the plug cap,
everything was back to normal. We go through the freestyle routine
a couple of times before the day ended.
 Day
17 and 18- we practice. We struggle with getting the smoke system
working. After two days we isolate the problem to a filter clunk
in the smoke tank restricting flow. Meanwhile the Edge is fixed.
John Krohn is back to help and he changed the carburetor…Yuri
adjusts it, and the replacement works great. We don't need the
one Dave Johnson from Desert Aircraft sent us. BTW, talk about
one heck of a guy, he overnighted me a carburetor and I don't
even fly DA. What a person; this one act speaks volumes. Another
checkout flight and we were done. The Edge flies very, very, well.
On purpose, I only fly non-aerobatic passes back and forth, climbing
and diving to check out the engine. No aerobatic maneuvers on
this flight. Don't want to mess up timing and have to re-learn
the CAP the day before the TOC. Decision time, Edge or CAP? Can't
change mid-stream, so I decide to fly CAP in the TOC. We flew
the Cap again. We were done… done all we could do. It was almost
an empty feeling. Like graduating college. No more lakebeds…we
gave it our all. Gentlemen, that means SHOWTIME!
TOC
Logo edited from Desert
Aircraft
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