Canard Aviation

Courtesy of a German flyer, this excellent picture of Kent International Airport (formerly RAF Manston), just round the corner from my birthplace. Note the very long runway, and lots of space for aircraft facilities. This is a tragically underused asset, but nobody seems to have a bloody clue how to make the best use of it...

This NTSB accident report, concerning the crash of an RV-10, killing the pilot, is a cautionary story about the negative impacts of impatience.
The moral of this story - if you get impatient and start short-cutting things, it can kill you...

We went down to the hangar last night and washed and inspected the plane.
One thing to be aware of - landing and taking off in the Bahamas is hard on your prop if you fly a canard pusher. I found a number of small dings on the outboard ends of my prop. Most of them were just nicks in the painted surface, but one leading edge ding had penetrated to the composite core. I will fix that with some flox before painting over it.
While I was on the flight line at Fort Lauderdale, I wandered down to inspect Bill Allen's similar Long-EZ (N99BA) to see if my piloting technique was deficient. His prop appeared to have the same number of dings in it as mine, which suggests that either we're both doing the right thing or both doing the wrong thing...I taxiied with my speed brake extended to reduce damage from surface grit disturbance, but you can't take off with the speed brake extended, so there is a limit to how much you can protect a prop on a canard pusher. The runway surfaces in the Bahamas have a lot of lose grit (mostly small pieces of coral limestone), and this is tough stuff - if it hits your prop you can expect surface damage.
I will be applying a lot of small touch-ups to the prop this weekend...

To get back from Tallahassee FL to Lancaster TX, we flew N131JF for a new record time of 4 hours and 45 minutes on Monday. The FlightAware flight track is here.
We took off from Tallahassee with 42 gallons of fuel on board. Once at 6500 feet it became clear that we were heading into a ludicrous headwind - for a while the ground speed was barely breaking 130 knots while running 2550 rpm. After a while it rose to 139-140 knots, but at that rate of progress we were due to run out of fuel around 40 minutes out from Lancaster. I briefly descended to 4500 feet after 1 hour, but the ground speed was no better, and I was right in the middle of the scattered clouds having to dodge them, so that would have slowed us up even more, so I climbed back to 6500 feet. At that altitude, the sun was shining, it was smooth - but it was slow going.
After a couple of hours slogging along at 6500 feet, I descended to 4500 feet because I was getting cold. The outside temperature had dropped to 40 degrees from 50. At that lower altitude, the ground speed rose to 145-148 knots, which improved the fuel situation. For a while, I was weaving in and out of the clouds, then, as the cloudbase lifted over Mississippi, we ended up below the cloud base. There was more turbulence, but the ground speed increased to around 150-153 knots. That speed increase gradually improved the fuel situation, until with 2 hours to go we were actually 10 minutes ahead of fuel exhaustion. This further improved to 20 minutes with a re-calibration of remaining fuel onboard. The JP Instruments fuel flow meter is set to run slightly conservative, it shows more fuel used than actually burned. As you descend into the destination airport, you further improve your fuel situation.
We touched down at Lancaster with 2 gallons in the left tank and half a gallon (I think) in the right tank - right on safety margins. In reality, we were OK on fuel, since I remained at 4500 feet until 15 miles out from Lancaster and we were within gliding distance of 2 nearer airports with fuel (Terrell and Mesquite). We also had the fuel in the common sump (2.5 gallons), which is not counted in the onboard fuel amount.
That was the longest single flight leg I have ever flown in the Long-EZ. I could not have gone much further - my bladder was OK, but my legs were seriously stiff from confinement in the nosebox. I had to walk off the stiffness on the ground.
We parked the plane and will clean it up today (Tuesday). The plane accumulated just under 23 hours of flying time on the trip, and functioned very well, apart from a brief outage of the Navaid wing-leveller into Tampa on the out leg. That appears to be an intermittent contact issue in the wiring connector to the Navaid control unit in the panel. I shall work on that issue in the next few days.

New Bight MYCB
1. The runway at New Bight has been extended twice since the airport was originally constructed, from the West to the East each time, so the extensions are at the east (09) end of the runway. The first extension is poorly constructed, with numerous ruts and depressions. The second extension is of much better quality, better than the original main runway.
2. Like many airport runways in the Bahamas, there are no painted numbers or markings on the runway.
3. The ramp is of a reasonable size, and the off-ramp surface is hard-packed, so planes can be pushed onto the off-ramp and parked or tied down there.

Hawk's Nest MYCH
1. The runway is well-constructed, it seems to have been built from asphalt instead of the more usual island method of flowing tar and sand on top of packed coral.
2. 1500 feet at the Western end is a displaced threshold. This is of the same surface quality as the rest of the runway and can be used in emergencies or for takeoffs.
3. Despite some listings on the internet, there is no 100LL available at Hawk's Nest. The manager at at the Hawk's Nest resort office told me that they have not sold 100LL for 4 years.

Arthur's Town MYCA
1. This is a long runway, but there are no buildings on the airport at all, just the runway and the ramp. No attempt was made at a landing, so the quality of the surface could not be verified.

Cutlass Bay MYCX
1. THIS AIRPORT IS CLOSED. Ignore any comments to the contrary, including the Bahamas Piloting Guide. The main reason for the closure is that the Cat Island police placed 2 concrete blocks at the East end of the runway and a 56 gallon drum at the Western end of the runway. This happened 2 years ago. It is not currently possible to land a fixed-wing aircraft here.
2. The runway surface is in good condition, but grass is growing in cracks and at the edges of the runway.
3. The Easterly end runoff area is in poor condition, it has been torn up by the driving of heavy earth-moving equipment and trucks across it as a shortcut to the airport access road which leads to the (also-closed) Cutlass Bay Resort.
4. There is a tall sloped-roof t-hangar at the airport on the South-East corner of the runway. This is the only hangar on Cat Island. The hangar is owned by the owner of the Olivia D'Windriff estate (3 beachfront holiday homes east of Cutlass Bay).

We moved the plane to Hawks Nest Resort today from New Bight. This is because most of the group, who were staying at Fernandez Bay Resort, moved to Hawks Nest resort today. Four of us who have been staying in rented houses on the South shore of the island moved our planes at lunchtime. Of course, we felt obliged to tour the coast en route to Hawks Nest. Pictures will appear on the gallery in due course.
We pulled the plane out and went for another tour of the South of Cat Island after lunch. We were forced to endure the sight of after mile of beaches, blue-green seas and coral lagoons, yachts moored in bays, and beachfront properties.
Then we went snorkeling for the afternoon, followed by dinner back at Hawks Nest. Another shitty day in paradise.

We are currently in Fort Lauderdale, getting ready to go to the Bahamas on Tuesday. We flew out of Dallas on Saturday to get ahead of bad weather, stopping overnight in Bay Minette AL.
We arrived at Fort Lauderdale Executive at 3.30 pm on Sunday. The plane is now sleeping at Banyan FBO. No real issues on the flight down, except for the usual afternoon turbulence running through Florida.
Today is a preparation and plane squawk removal day. I have an intermittently operating wing-leveller, which needs to be fixed if possible. The Grove brakes are operating beautifully.

I have been operating N131JF frequently over gross on takeoff in recent years. With an empty weight of 960 pounds and a placarded gross weight of 1420 pounds, operating the plane with pilot and passenger and more than minimal fuel puts me above gross weight on takeoff.
There is no structural or performance issue with increasing the gross weight by 200 pounds. Many Long-EZs are placarded in that weight range, and there are numerous instances of Long-EZs operating at close to 2000 pounds takeoff weight, for long-distance flights.
The main limitation is the landing gear and brakes, which were originally designed for the Vari-EZE, a plane whose prototype weighed only around 700 pounds empty. The increase in empty weight equates to double the kinetic energy on landing for a well-equipped O-320 Long-EZ operating with pilot and passenger.
My Long-EZ was fitted with Cleveland heavy-duty brakes rescued from a Piper Tomahawk. The brakes were fitted over 15 years ago, and if one adds the age of the Tomahawk, these brakes were close to (or past) 30 years of operation. I have been replacing the o-rings once a year at the last 2 annuals because of leakage. The brakes were worn out, they still worked, but at the least they needed an overhaul. The high-spec Grove brakes offer 2.5 times the kinetic energy dissipation, and are better made. So...I bought a set of Grove wheels and brakes, and decided to fit them before the Bahamas trip.
The most important take-away from reading about fitting Groves on the Canard Aviators board is that the caliper float brackets are slightly different to the Clevelands. While you can theoretically fit the Groves to the existing Cleveland float brackets, the slight dimensional mismatch leads to brake binding.
The process of fitting the Groves is therefore a three-step one:

1. Remove old wheels and break down, fit tires and new inner tubes to new wheels
2. Remove axles from gear legs, remove Cleveland float brackets, replace with Grove float brackets, re-fit axles
3. Remove old Cleveland calipers, fit new Grove calipers, bleed brakes

Everything went OK except for the following issues:

- I positioned the float bracket on the left-hand wheel in the hardware sequence attached to the axle. As a result, when I fitted the wheel and trial-fitted the caliper it became clear that the caliper would not be in the correct position with respect to the brake rotor, the caliper was sitting too far inboard for the outer part of the caliper and brake pad to fit around the rotor. This was visually obvious. I had to remove the axle hardware and correct this. No big deal, it was good that the issue was visually obvious.
- When bleeding the right brake circuit, I ended up with a bubble in the line somewhere and a very spongy brake pedal. We tried to bleed the brakes from the top and the bottom, but the sponginess remained. We let the plane sit overnight, came back the next day and re-bled the circuit from the bottom and then the top, then the bottom again. This seemed to cure the problem.

After completing all of the installation and ground checking, I went out and bedded in the brakes on a low-speed taxi run, by dragging the pads to heat them, and performing several hard stops. Then I did a high-speed run down the runway to complete the bedding-in. After that, I safety wired the caliper bolts, and we were ready for action.

Impressions?
1. The pedal is slightly spongy with the Groves relative to the Clevelands. This is probably due to the greater fluid volume in the caliper, since the Groves are twin-piston calipers.
2. When you press the pedal, the plane steers and brakes immediately. With the Clevelands, there was always a perceptible delay before the plane responded
3. The braking capability is far superior. Relative to the Clevelands, the Long-EZ with Groves feels more like a road car. The nose dive is also far greater under heavier braking.

The increased heat dissipation of better brakes is a concern when you have a glass gear strut. There have been instances in the past of pilots overheating gear struts by heavy braking, which resulted in gear strut deformation. There are aluminum heat shields between the brakes and the gear strut on the plane. I beefed up the heat deflection capacity of those shields by gluing a sheet of FiberFrax to the inside of the shield (between the shield and the gear strut) with high-temperature RTV.
I do not intend to engage in heavy braking with the Groves. The purpose of the upgrade was to give me more braking power if I needed it in an emergency. On numerous occasions recently I was using the Clevelands to their limits - there was no additional braking power available. With the Groves, I can use them normally to the same extent as the Clevelands, and have ample emergency braking power if I need it.

The next Graham Hangar Party will be on Saturday 4th April 2009, from 12.00 CST to 18.00 CST at Hangar #11, Lancaster TX (LNC).
All canard pusher owners welcome. Sympathetic owners of "normal" planes and past friends are also welcome.
Contact me via my personal email for further details, or write a comment to this thread.

Since last Fall I had been noticing bearing looseness in the front nose wheel. I could tell that there was an issue because I would hear a whizzing sound from the nose wheel when I lowered it to the ground after landing.
The connecting bolt for the nose wheel that secures it to the nose gear fork is an AN4-40 bolt, secured with a castle nut and cotter pin. The castle nut squeezes the fork against th wheel bearings, and there should be no float and only 1.5 to 2 turns possible if the wheel is spun by hand.
I removed the wheel and the bearings in December and checked them carefully to ensure that they were not wearing out. I found no significant play in the bearing races, so I repacked the bearings and re-fitted them to the nosewheel.
The clue as to the root cause of the problem came when I discovered when tightening the castle nut that the torque on the castle nut would rise, then slacken off, then rise again. This pointed to either a worn-out castle nut or bolt, or both. Examination of the castle nut and bolt threads showed that they were both severely worn. I replaced the castle nut, and this supported an increased torque limit, but then the nut would jump across a thread and the torque would drop again. Because of the worn threads there was insufficient squeezing force on the fork to tightly clamp the bearings into the wheel, hence the small amount of bearing float that was leading to the whizzing and chattering noise.
On Saturday I managed to locate an AN4-40 bolt from a guy who owns a workshop adjacent to the Lancaster Airport. I repacked the wheel bearings, and fitted the new bolt and a new castle nut. I was able to load the castle nut torque to a value where there is no longer any bearing free play, and the wheel spins for 1.5 - 2 rotations when spun by hand. I performed several full stop landings to check the operation of the nose wheel. The noise has gone, and everything seems to be operating normally.
The worn-out bolt had been on the plane for 14 years and 550 flying hours. It is difficult to know exactly how many times it had been removed from the plane, but I would guess that I have been removing the bolt at least 2 times per year - once at the annual, to repack the wheel bearinsgs, plus some other removals due to nose gear maintenance.
I would recommend that this bolt be lifed at 10 years maximum. A replacement will cost $1.50 from Aircraft Spruce, so we are not talking about spending much money here.

On December 30th I flew to David Wayne Hooks Memorial in Houston to see a friend. The intention was to travel down at lunchtime, and return in the evening.
All went well, until I prepared to leave at 8.30pm. I put 20 gallons of fuel in the plane, since the self-serve fuel price at the airport was an extremely good $2.85. After completing fuelling and external pre-flight, I lowered the nose gear, got in the plane, cycled through the checklist, fired up, and went to move off.
As I was slowly getting under way, the nose of the plane abruptly dropped to the ground with a dull thud, accompanied by a "zzzzziiiip" noise. I was probably doing about .5 mph at the time, so there was no damage except to the nose snubber (a piece of hockey puck), which was knocked off in the impact.
My immediate reaction was "that shouldn't have happened"... I cut the engine, begged off my clearance conversation with the tower, and alighted from the plane. The nose gear strut was almost all of the way retracted, the forced retraction having stopped when the nose snubber contacted the ground.
A couple of guys from the FBO helped me to lift the nose and move the plane off the ramp to a parking area. Once there, I opened the nose panel and removed the gear cover. As I suspected, a feel of the underside of the worm gear wheel confirmed my suspicion - the teeth had stripped from the gear wheel. Almost certainly this occurred because the gear was not over center and locked when I got in the plane. A classic error that I had avoided making - until now.
Anyway, here I was, at 9pm on 30th December, away from home, with a damaged plane. What now? On a dark and cooling night, there was no point in attempting any repairs immediately. I phoned Mary with the bad news, and went back to my friend's house to stay the night.
Time to start ringing around. Ironically, I had a 2009 Central States Association roster in the hangar - but in Lancaster. No roster in the plane, but some phone numbers in my cellphone. I started making calls. After a while I got a message back from James Redmon with a list of numbers. Doug Bryan responded to a call from New Mexico, and gave me more phone numbers. I talked to Jesse, who reminded me of the 180 gear flip option.
In the morning, I started getting calls back from people. I talked to Bob Sudderth, who confirmed that I would need to remove the retrac mechanism from the nose box to work on it. We agreed that removing the canard was also likely to be needed to provide sufficient working room.
Jim Voss and Ryszard Zadow called me back. Jim offered to donate his entire manual retrac mechanism, that he had removed from his plane when he installed an electric nose lift. Ryszard, fresh from an early morning duck hunt, but needing to go to his day job, passed my details onto a friend resident at Hooks.
By 11 am I was back at the airport and a plan was taking shape. Jim Voss would fly his replacement retrac mechanism into Hooks for me at lunchtime if I needed it. Chuck Scott, Ryszard's friend, showed up with his friend Mike Hergenrather. By the time they arrived I had already removed the canard and was working on removing the retrac mechanism from the nose box.
The retrac mechanism is attached to the nose box by 5 bolts - 2 through bolts with spacer s that position the mechanism accurately, and 3 bolts that additionally secure the frame to the nose box.
The challenge when the gear teeth strip like this is that in my case, the gear mechanism became locked, since the stripped teeth were stuck in the worm gear. Additionally, the gear is not fully retracted. This in turn creates the issue that you cannot easily remove the bolt connecting the gear strut shock absorber mechanism to the retrac mechanism, because the bolt is not aligned with the removal hole in the side of the nose box. I was able to only get the bolt part-way out. This left me with the retracted strut, shock absorber and pivot creating a large block to undoing 3 of the attach bolts. I have small hands, which helps in a situation like this, however, it took a long time, with much use of words of which my mother would not have approved, to undo the 3 reinforcing bolts. I eventually did it, after which time I discovered that moving the mechanism around inside the nose box freed up the worm gear mechanism, which allowed me to wind the gear up to the point where I was able to remove the attach bolt for the strut. After I removed the bolt, I was able to then rotate the crank mechanism to the point where I was able to remove the bolt connecting the worm gear universal joint to the crank arm. After doing that, I was able to pull the entire mechanism out of the nose box.
Inspection showed that the cranking worm gear was undamaged (clearly that is a lot more durable than the gear teeth...), but that 120 degrees worth of gear teeth were stripped from the gear wheel. The repair was either going to consist of using Jim Voss's replacement mechanism in its entirety, or flipping the gear wheel 180 degrees to use undamaged teeth.
At this point in time, I took Mike up on the offer to use his hangar. We attached the nose of the plane to his low-line trailer with straps from the trailer to the nose bulkhead, with the nose resting on tarpaulins and towels. We then towed the plane to the hangar at the other end of the field. We proceeded at 5 mph down the taxiway, with me sitting on the nose of the plane to hold it in place, doing my best Slim Pickens impersonation, waving to puzzled spectators.
Mike lives in a superb hangar home on the South end of Hooks field. We pulled the plane into the hangar, then went back and picked up the canard. Shortly afterwards, Jim Voss arrived, having commandeered the Gill Aviation fuel truck on arrival to travel to the hangar. He handed me a complete retrac mechanism in a box, then headed off to Austin to visit family.
I compared Jim's mechanism to my removed mechanism. It was identical to my mechanism, but a couple of the attach holes seemed to be slightly differently located when I trial-fitted it in the nose box. This led me to decide to try the 180 degree flip on my gear wheel instead.
The gear wheel is fixed to the rotating gear lever shaft with 4 screw-bolt fixers. I removed the screw-bolts, rotated the gear wheel 180 degrees, re-attached the gear wheel with new locknuts on the screw-bolts, checked that the full up and down travel did not result in stripped teeth on the gear wheel contacting the worm gear, greased the mechanism, and then began the process of re-inserting it in the plane. Mike was providing sage advice and a large tool store, derived from years of fixing many different types of planes. He also picked up the bolts that kept falling down to the bottom of the nose box, due to being dropped as we tried to manouver hardware into confined spaces...
The ability to move the shock absorber out of the way and crank the gear pivot up and down made re-inserting the mechanism somewhat easier, but still a physical challenge due to the confined space in the nose box. I still have the bumps, scratches and bruises on my hands as proof as I write this...
By 5.30pm we had the entire mechanism re-installed. Ironically, one of the most frustrating parts of the repair was an entirely peripheral issue - when I tried to move the blocked mechanism by rotating the hand-crank in the morning, the flip lock-lever on top of the hand-crank popped out, with the circlip. Getting those small parts back in place proved a challenge, due to the lack of a suitable tool, and Mike ultimately did it by hand (I'm still not sure how).
Some test cranking showed that the re-installed mechanism was working well. The big question that I was not sure about was whether there was still the correct tension in the shock absorber mechanism, which might have moved during the nose collapse. I could not see any evidence of movement of that assembly, so I decided to conduct a ground test of the repair.
After adding more grease to the worm gear and gear wheel, we re-installed the canard and I fired up the plane and went for a taxi test. During the test, I deliberately ran over bumps on the taxiway, and the cats-eyes on the yellow line in the taxiway, to test the ability of the gear to resist the bumps (although logically those stresses should be taken by the mechanism, not the gear, if the gear is over-center and locked.). Everything felt good.
So...at 7 pm on New Years' Eve, I lifted off from Hooks field and headed back to Lancaster. An uneventful flight, and a very smooth landing at Lancaster (it helps when there is no wind...). No issues when I lowered the nose...
The lessons? The main one is that the canard aviator community has a tremendous support DNA. I was deluged with offers of help, from all over the USA, and I am still getting phone calls asking me if I made it home OK. The most amusing call was from Bill Allen, who phoned me from Paris to wish me a Happy New Year, and then asked "how's the plane?".
The second lesson - never get in the plane without verifying that the nose gear is over-center and locked. The gear mechanism is merely a means to raise and lower the gear, it cannot take the load of the plane and passengers. I somehow avoided making that mistake for 8 plus years..but I eventually did make it.

...is contained here.

For some reason, I started to read about the Aleutians this weekend, and it expanded into a posting on my "other" blog here.
One of the items that I ended up reading about was the operation of secret reconnaissance aircraft out of the island of Shemya in the 1960's. The two aircraft that were operated out of the base were highly modified one-off RC135 aircraft, Rivet Amber and Rivet Ball.
Operating in a challenging environment that was both meteorologically and geopolitically turbulent, both aircraft met untimely ends. Rivet Amber disappeared while on a ferry flight from Shemya to Fairbanks AK for routine maintenance in 1969; no trace of the aircraft has ever been found. Rivet Ball slid off of the runway after landing at Shemya due to hydroplaning; the aircraft ended up in pieces at the foot of a 40 foot cliff, with a broken fuselage. Fortunately there were no casualties, although the aircraft was a write-off, and was broken up on the spot.
Shemya continued to be used as a US Air Force base (supplemented by its use as a refuelling stopover point for some commercial flights) into the 1990's, before the US military withdrew. Operations out of Shemya are hazardous even for large aircraft; Cobra Ball II, a replacement aircraft for Rivet Ball, crash-landed at Shemya in 1981, destroying the aircraft and some crewmembers lost their lives. I have already decided that I shall never operate a canard pusher out of that airport...

I have been reading about the Aleutians, that interesting archipelago West of Alaska where the wind never stops blowing, sometimes at a ludicrous average speed.
This book explains some of the interesting features of Aleutian Islands weather and how to cope with them if you are a pilot...
A number of the airports in the Aleutians exist because of US military activities in the islands, initially during World War II, but later during the Cold War, when US reconnaissance aircraft flew missions to watch Russian missile development and testing activities. Several large airports and their facilities (notably Shemya and Adak) date from that period.
Flying in the Aleutians is a difficult proposition, especially if you have a small airplane, partly because the weather is challenging (for "challenging" read "often downright dangerous").
Here is a sample METAR weather summary for Shemya on 1st December 2008:

PASY 012235Z 03033G45KT 7SM BKN028 OVC032 01/M02 A2982 RMK

The wind report is wind at 030, 33 knots gusting to 45 knots (!). The runway orientation is 10-28, meaning a colossal, gusting crosswind. Not the sort of place to be testing your plane's crosswind limits...

The other factor making flying challenging is that Avgas supplies are extremely limited. In most of the Aleutians, the only piston engine fuel is Mogas. A quick look at the Airnav database entry for Adak, which was a US base in the Aleutians, and is the best airport in the Western Aleutians, shows that Mogas is the only available fuel for piston engines. There is no 100LL available at any airport west of Unalaska (Dutch Harbor). If your plane cannot operate on 87 octane fuel, I suspect that you cannot operate west of that point, unless you can find a source of premium Mogas near an airport.

Mary and I flew down to Marathon FL for a snorkeling trip in October 2008. Sadly, bad weather meant no snorkeling...a large disappointment, but that simply means we will have to make another trip down there soon...
We flew the plane from Lancaster to Dothan AL on the first flight leg. That flight leg was pretty uneventful, except that we had a headwind for most of the way, which is not usual (Murphy's Law strikes again!). We flew at 7500 feet for most of the way. At Dothan, a large headwind and some turbulence made the landing a wee bit exciting, but the headwind resulted in a short roll-out.
After grabbing a bite to eat, refuelling and adding a quart of oil, we headed for Titusville (Space Coast Airport) for an overnight stop. Because we had left Dallas 2 hours later than planned, the last hour of this flight leg was in darkness. We got VFR flight following the whole way into Titusville, which meant we got a clearance through Orlando airspace. We landed in a stiff headwind to the West at Titusville (out over the bay towards the Shuttle landing center, u turn over the bay to final), parked the plane, found a hotel and spent the night unwinding.
The following morning, we got up late, ate lunch at the airport cafe, put some fuel in the plane to get us to Fort Lauderdale Executive (where cheap fuel was advertized on Airnav) and took off for Fort Lauderdale. The flight down to FLL was uneventful, except that we got handed off a lot of times between the various ATC zones, being on VFR flight following. This is a busy ATC area, and it was clear from some of the conversations we could hear that a number of pilots were far from proficient at dealing with ATC, mainly becauee English was not their first language.
The fun began to start after touchdown at Fort Lauderdale. On switching to the Ground frequency, the conversation went something like this:

Me: 131JF wishes to taxi to the FBO
Gnd: Which FBO? We have 5 FBOs on the airport
Me: The one offering cheap fuel
Gnd: Don't know which one that is. Which FBO do you want?
Me: um...er...

I ended up picking an FBO, which turned out to not be the FBO offering cheap fuel. Their 100LL was $5.50 a gallon. However, they were really nice people, not afflicted by the "go away little guy" mindset that seems to afflict many big-airport FBOs, so we bought some fuel from them rather than start taxiing all over the field.
I also discovered that the right hand wheelpant screw securing the wheelpant to the wheel had departed somewhere in flight from Titusville. I did not have a sufficiently long spare screw in the toolkit. Fortunately the very helpful FBO guys rooted around in a scrap fasteners bin in the FBO hangar, and found a screw that I was able to use as a replacement.
Upon getting back in the plane, we had to talk to Departure Control to get a clearance to depart. This is often a step that I forget at big airports, and Ground always has to send me off to Departure Control to get a clearance - my bad. On receiving the VFR clearance, I noticed that it called for me to climb to the North-East, although Marathon is almost due South of Fort Lauderdale. When I inquired "why this direction", the controller explained that they always send aircraft out to the North East for Fort Lauderdale Approach to pick them up.
I lined up, took off, turned North East and switched to Fort Lauderdale Approach. They asked me "coast route or westerly route?". I responded "coast route". I had asked for 2500 feet heading South which Departure Control had read back to me. However, Approach now told me "head for center of Fort Lauderdale at or below 2000". My GPS line of flight would take me to the West of the city, so I settled down on the GPS route. I was then switched to Fort Lauderdale Tower. I flew just West of the airport at 2000 feet. Then they handed me off to Miami Center.
Which was where the trouble started...after about 10 minutes, this happened:

Miami: "Sir, you are 6 miles inland from the coast"
Me: "I am aiming to intercept the inner coast"
Miami: "You are still 4 miles from the inner coast. Turn East immediately"
Me: "131JF turning left heading 090"

After about 3 minutes, I was approaching the outer coast, so I started to turn South. Less than a minute later, I was in trouble again:

Miami: "We need you out over the ocean. Turn back East"
Me: "131JF turning back East over the ocean..." (thinking: where do they want me? The Bahamas?)

I eventually settled about 1 mile offshore, and headed down the coast. After that little exchange, Miami pretty much left me alone, except that when I suddently had to climb to 2400 to avoid entering a cloud, they asked me if I wanted an altitude change. I replied "need 2500 to avoid IMC" and they authorized it, left me alone for a while, then terminated radar service as I flew over Key Largo.
The good news was that as we left the Miami area, the weather steadily improved; the low clouds more or less disappeared and the light turbulence we had been experiencing all of the way down the coast from Titusville also vanished. We flew the last 50 miles to Marathon in blissful peace over the blue and green waters of the Keys.
Descending and dropping onto long downwind at Marathon, I extended to allow a Citation to depart, then flew around the pattern, touched down unventfully and we parked the plane, tied it down, and managed to get a shuttle bus up to the holiday hotel in Islamorada.

Just before lunchtime, the crisp bark of a Lycoming O-320 was blown across the tarmac by the remains of Gustav at Lancaster Texas.
N131JF was fired up after 368 days of inactivity. Help provided by Jesse Huerta, and the J&S Aviation Pressurized Engine Oiling Kit (see above posting for more details). The engine ran like a watch until we shut it down once the CHTs reached 300 degrees.
In addition to running the engine for the first time, the Annual Condition Inspection was completed and signed-off, and the transponder was re-certificated.
Since I completed my Biennial Flight Review on Labor Day with Gerhard, the plane is now fully legal and the pilot is fully legal. I now have no choice but to fly.
The first flight for a while will occur at the weekend, once the modified aero devices (gear leg fairings, wheelpants and spinner) have been fully primed. That way the plane does not look like a patchwork quilt...

I got a letter today from the FAA enclosing my Third Class medical certificate. This, you will recall, is the one I applied for last September, which was denied because I disclosed that I was taking an anti-anxiety medication (Cymbalta) at the time.
Since April of this year I have been working with Dr. Stephan Kramer of Frisco TX to get my medical certificate restored. This has probably cost me around $1000 in doctors fees so far, including $500 for a battery of cognitive tests that gave me a totally clean bill of health.
Still, the FAA does not seem to be that convinced of my mental state...they have only given me a certificate until 20th June 2009. They also want me to provide another set of medical reports to them "on or about April 1st 2009". I will need to discuss with Dr. Kramer exactly what that set of reports needs to contain. I hope that it is not another $1000 worth of reports, but I fear that it may be. Since I am not consulting with a psychiatrist any more, and I am not taking any medications, this report may be rather small, but I will be guided by Dr. Kramer as to what is required.
In addition, the letter contains this statement:

Because of your history of anxiety, depression and ADD, operation of aircraft is prohibited at any time new symptoms or adverse changes occur, or if you experience side-effects or require a change in medication.

This is an odd statement to make, since I have not been on medication since October 27th last year (and I am much the better for it; Cymbalta certainly eliminated my anxiety symptoms, but it also negatively impacted my creative thought processes). Reading this text makes me wonder just how much the FAA examiner actually read of my medical reports.
So, to sum up: I have my medical back, which is good news. However, the FAA certainly seems to be wanting to convert this into some sort of ongoing "prove your sanity" saga, which is not good.
I am now beginning to understand why many pilots have at best a jaundiced view of any involvement with the FAA...

A start-up corporation named SwiftFuel claims to have the formula for a new non-petroleum fuel to (presumably) replace 100LL. This is a critique of their announcements on their MySpace page and their web site.
Unsurprisingly, many of the reactions are a tad skeptical...

If you have any sense of smell, and you fuel both a road car and an airplane which uses 100LL, you soon notice that compared to 100LL, road car fuel stinks to high heaven. Quite simply, it smells "nasty" when compared to 100LL.
The reason for this is that, compared to road car fuel, 100LL is more tightly regulated. There is a single standard (ASTM D910 in the USA) to which Avgas has to conform. This standard has been in place for a long time, and there are no local exceptions to the standard. All 100LL brewed in the USA has to conform to this standard. As a result, refineries do not adjust the composition of 100LL when they brew it the way that they adjust the composition of road car gasolines. For example, ASTM D910 does not allow the addition of ethanol. It has no "summer fuel" rules, and no state-specific rules either.
Avgas is comprised largely of alkylate, which is a high-octane feedstock produced in an alkylation unit in a refinery. Here is some of a Wikipedia entry about alkylate:

The product is called alkylate and is composed of a mixture of high-octane, branched-chain paraffinic hydrocarbons (mostly isopentane and isooctane). Alkylate is a premium gasoline blending stock because it has exceptional antiknock properties and is clean burning. Alkylate is also a key component of avgas. The octane number of the alkylate depends mainly upon the kind of olefins used and upon operating conditions. For example, isooctane results from combining butylene with isobutane and has an octane rating of 100 by definition. There are other products in the alkylate, so the octane rating will vary accordingly.

Raw alkylate can have a RON (Research Octane Number) of up to 100, but more commonly it has a RON of between 90 and 94. Often the refinery will add some reformate stock to adjust or optimize the octane rating. Finally, a minimum amount of tetraethyl lead is added to bring the octane rating up to the level required in the standard. The standard specifies a maximum lead content, but most 100LL contains a lot less lead than the allowed maximum.
The final result is not only a high-octane fuel, and, because it is usually blended from only two feedstocks, a chemically very pure fuel compared to the road car gasoline that flows out of the pump at your local filling station. That fuel is a blended base stock from a refinery (possibly containing dozens of different feedstocks). To that can be added ethanol, and the garage operator's own proprietary additive package. The result is a reasonably high-octane but also complex (and usually foul-smelling) brew.
The bad news is that alkylate and reformate are both premium gasoline feedstock. Nothing else comes close to them for sustained high octane ratings; therefore the cost of alkylate and reformate feedstocks is high, especially in the summer months, when more of it is used in road car gasoline brewing to meet summer gasoline standards. There is never enough alkylate and reformate to go around in the refining system.
100LL is only produced in batches to meet anticipated demand, it is not produced continously unlike road car gasoline. It also requires purging/cleaning of the refinery hardware used for brewing after use, because of the lead contamination. This, plus the cost of its dedicated distribution network comprised entirely of trucks and storage tanks (no pipelines) gives the three reasons why 100LL will always be more expensive than road car gasoline:

1. Use of premium feedstocks (alkylate and reformate)
2. Special refining procedures based on occasional on-demand production
3. Dedicated distribution infrastructure

While surfing the AOPA Forums, I came across a discussion which includes inputs by folks working in and around the petroleum industry.
One of the reasons why petroleum companies are adding 10% of ethanol to gasoline, making a fuel known in the industry as E10, is that they get a tax credit for adding ethanol. This reduces their cost to blend the fuel, providing them with a powerful fiscal incentive to brew E10 even if there is no legal requirement for them to do so.
However, a more pernicious impact of blending ethanol with gasoline is outlined in a post on the AOPA forums:

Ethanol has a Motor Octane Number (MON) of about 112, much higher than auto gasoline. At the 10% level of blending it boosts the AKI of the resultant blend by about 3, so if the terminal is using 87 AKI stock and adding 10% ethanol to make E10 which is the most common ethanol blend, it is about 90 AKI. Same goes for premium unleaded.
The wrinkle comes when a whole state goes E10. Then the terminals order "sub-octane" blending stock for regular which is about 84 MON, they blend the ethanol and it goes out as 87 AKI.

If this shift to sub-octane blending stock occurs at the refinery level,the refineries will stop sending out gasoline base stock at 87 AKI, and instead send it out at 84 AKI. For premium, they will stop sending out 92-93 octane AKI base stock, and instead sent out stock at 88 AKI. There is a powerful fiscal incentive for them to do this; lower-octane base stock for gasoline is significantly easier (read: cheaper) to brew.
BTW, it is important to note that ethanol is not currently blended with gasoline at the refinery because the increased water absorptions of the gasoline caused by the ethanol makes it dangerous to send it down pipelines...sort of a larger-scale version of the same issue that may affect your plane if you fill it with E10 and go fly...
You can see what is going to happen...if an airport wants to buy Mogas i.e. 91 octane unleaded gasoline, it will not be able to find any...the refineries will all be cranking out 88 octane gasoline for ethanol addition. So, aircraft owners potentially face a "double whammy"; not only is 100LL going to become much more expensive (and it may disappear if demand shrinks enough, as it already has disappeared in parts of Europe), but Mogas could also disappear, at least at 91 octane levels, because no gasoline stock will be available from the fuel suppliers except as a custom order (which would probably price it above current 100LLL wholesale pricing).
My plane's powerplant is a 160 bhp Lycoming O-320, which could be operated on 91 octane unleaded gasoline (according to the conditions of the most common autogas STC from Petersen Aviation). However that option may become moot if there is no 91 or higher octane motor gasoline available without ethanol...
UPDATE - Here is a paper written by the EAA concerning the 2007 legislation that initially mandated the addition of Ethanol to gasoline in Oregon. It does a good job of explaining aspects of the gasoline distribution networks in Oregon, and also shows that in 2007 the refineries were already sending sub-octane base stock down pipelines to distribution terminals.

In September 2007 I was denied a renewal of my Third Class medical certificate by the FAA because I was taking Cymbalta at the time. This is on the FAA list of psychotropic medications. I was aware that anti-depressants were incompatible with piloting according to the FAA, but did not know at the time that anti-anxiety drugs also fell into the same category.
I worked with my doctor to taper off and stop taking Cymbalta in the Fall of 2007 (not just for flying reasons - my use of it was negatively affecting my creativity and drive, which was affecting my work performance). I then got my doctor to send documentation to the FAA in April to request them to allow me to be issued a Medical certificate once more. By return mail I recieved a brusque form-letter dismissal of my application.
Reasoning that, since my doctor is not an AME, he may not have communicated information correctly to the FAA, I am now working with Dr. Stephan Kramer in Frisco TX, who in addition to being an AME who is also a pilot, works regularly with commercial pilots to get their medical certificates restored.
Basically, once you have gone on the FAA radar scope by virtue of a medical certificate denial for mental issues, you have to go through a fairly elaborate exercise to convince the FAA that you have (in Dr. Kramer's words) been "treated to remission". This process involves gathering medical records of all related treatment (in my case, since the cause of my anxiety was my divorce, this involves therapy records in addition to medical treatment records) and having a Psychologist execute a collection of cognitive tests on me. I completed the cognitive tests last week, with excellent results, and we are now assembling the paperwork for the FAA.
This process is likely to take another 2 months, after which time, if all goes well, I will be able to take to the air again. Until then, I will continue to work on the plane, conduct the 2008 ACI earlier in the year, and make sure I am ready to fly again. The only question then becomes one of whether I can afford to do any more than buzz around the patch...

This article at The Oil Drum explains the backround and practical processes for the creation of the commodity known as "Summer gasoline".
Here in Texas, the Summer gasoline imperative is the need to keep emissions below EPA limits in 96 counties in North and East Texas. The EPA regulations require the use of what is known as "reformulated gasoline" in the Summer months. This has a double impact on what is available at filling stations:

1. The summer gasoline blend may give rise to starting difficulties if used in the Winter
2. The Summer blend has up to 10% ethanol added as part of the attempt to reduce the levels of emissions

For most pilots, (2) is the real issue, since ethanol in fuel attracts and absorbs water, which is corrosive to many fuel system components.
The overall situation is complicated by the fact that there is no legal requirement in Texas for gasoline outlets to report whether the fuel contains ethanol, or how much ethanol it contains. Some filling stations have stickers on their pumps saying "fuel contains ethanol" but many do not.
In Oregon, pilots gained an exemption from ethanol addition requirements for gasoline. The exemption applies to a limited number of outlets selling gasoline for aviation use only. No such exemption exists in Texas, so those of us who might want to try running our planes on road car fuel are SOL in the Summer because the fuel is almost certain to contain ethanol.

Collected wisdom from the AvWeb king of reciprocating engine operation...

Since I dig into stuff once I start reading about it, I have been reading about the fun (if you can call it that) of operating the Wright R-3350 engine.
Here is an interesting posting about this powerplant, by way of a comparison with the liquid-cooled Rolls Royce Merlin.

From August 2009 until October 2005 I was a hangar tenant at Redbird Airport (or as it is now known, Dallas Executive Airport). I ultimately moved to Lancaster because of escalating hangar rental rates for no improvement in amenities, and a feeling that the airport was being evolved to cater for business aviation, and us "little guys" were no longer welcome.
When I first told fellow pilots that I was considering renting a hangar at Redbird, I was warned off the airport, with lurid tales of theft of avionics and other malfeasance being produced by way of explanation. When I raised these issues with the rental office, they agreed that, yes, all of those things had occurred, since the hangars had been in private ownership, but the city had repossessed them and was going to ensure that things were run properly in the future. I moved into my hangar, and never had any problems with theft or other malfeasance, although the hangar floors were substandard and the taxiways had been built up through resurfacing, which caused water to drain towards (and into) hangars rather than the other way round.
This article in the Dallas Observer, ironically titled "Deadbird", provides a none-too-flattering history of the malfeasance that occcurred at the airport up to the beginning of 2000. Once again, the race issue is writ large in the history, as the airport amenities became part of the minority business boondoggle mindset that seems to be a perennial fixture in city politics in many parts of the modern USA. Reading this article, one could be forgiven for thinking that Redbird Airport at the time was in some Third World country...

For some time a searchable text file version of CP01-82 has been in existence. Marc Zeitlin has now loaded the remaining CP issues up to his website here.
The loaded files are Adobe Acrobat format and therefore are not text-searchable, but simply having all of the CPs in one place is a very significant improvement. Thanks to Marc and those that helped him.

There is a transition under way from the current generation of ELTs based on the 121.5 MHz frequency to the new generation based on 406 MHz. This promises greater transmit range and reliability. The only snag is that the new ELTs cost more than $1k.
Mark Zeitlin has pointed us to a supplemental solution which is based on GPS technology. The only current drawback is that the unit does not have a crash detector, although it might be possible to connect one to it (assuming that the crash does not destroy the connection...).

...is a solution developed by Tom Staggs for his Long-EZ, which is based in Washington state, and therefore is operated in colder air a lot of the time. I will be seeing if I can retrofit this to my Long-EZ.

Bob Sudderth, Doug Bryan and Scott Carter flew their Long-EZs into Lancaster. Kent and Suzanne Robinson flew in from Plano in their ultralight.
The first batch of photos are up here.

....but I had to smile when I read it...

...before somebody made a joke out of the accident that befell a British Airways Boeing 777 at Heathrow...here is the witty response...

This restricted area is one that I have worked strenuously to avoid over the last few years. It is a 3 mile Prohibited area when the President is not at the ranch, but expends to a 30 mile radius Restricted area when he is there.
Sadly, I might not have worked hard enough to avoid it on a flight to Port Aransas last Saturday, for I found myself greeted by an F-16 on Saturday afternoon while flying to Fredericksburg from Lancaster. What happened next will be summarized in future blog postings.
Lesson #1 - join the AOPA Legal Services Plan. It may be the best $39 you will ever spend.
More news as this unfolds. The good news is that I am alive and well, so is my passenger, the plane and me are not grounded, and I will continue to fly until (or if) the FAA applies any sanction to me. However, I do not expect to be flying anywhere near P-49 in the future.
UPDATE - After exchanges of letters with the FAA, they wrote to me in early December that they intended to suspend my license for 60 days. Since I am currently grounded for medical reasons (I was taking a drug of which the FAA disapproved, and I have to wait 90 days before I can renew my medical certificate) I decided to not appeal, and sent them back my license. I will get it back after 19th February, and since I am still working on the plane, this fits neatly with my plans. I need to conduct a biennial flight review before I can take to the air again, so all of this works out pretty well.

..staying at my parents' house in Margate, Kent. This is just across the Isle of Thanet from Kent International Airport (formerly RAF Manston) which is struggling to maintain a viable aviation business, with several recent attempts at passenger operations having failed.
A look at one of the websites for the airport reveals the reality of user fees at UK airports. If I land my Long-EZ at KIA it will cost me £19.00 exclusive of VAT (add another 17.5% if you pay VAT). That works out at over $40 per landing, even for a touch-and-go landing...if that is what eventually happens in the USA, small general aviation operations will shrink to a small fraction of their current levels.

On Thursday I went off to get my FAA Medical Certificate renewed - it had expired on 2nd September. I duly filled in the form for a 3rd Class Certificate, took all of the vision tests, peed in the cup etc. Then I went for the physical exam. However, when the doc read the form, he said "oh dear"...which is where the trouble started. It emerged that I am currently taking a drug which is on the FAA listed of proscribed drugs. So...no medical certificate could be issued.
I am therefore grounded. I have to stop taking the drug, wait 90 days, and then get my doctor to write a letter to the FAA saying that I am capable of flying, after which time the FAA should issue my medical certificate again. I have to take the drug for at least another month, after which time the 90 day period starts. It looks like the earliest I will be back in the air is the end of January 2008.
However, every cloud has a silver lining...I have a long list of items that I wanted to work on to improve the plane. Now I cannot fly until the New Year, I will be working on them. At the moment the list includes (but is not limited to):

- Baggage pods (already have the kit)
- fuselage pontoons (a la Paul Tackabury)
- new GPS
- move battery to firewall
- new cowlings including better cooling
- cockpit heating via nose oil cooler
- Grove brakes
- completion of gear leg fairing work
- new upholstery
- newer radio/VOR/transponder (I have antique boat anchors)

I will also add a photo album to this blog so that I can compete with James Redmon for documentation of improvements...

Several years ago, Bill Swears, intending to retire to Alaska, set out to fly to the US mainland from Hawaii. Unfortunately he did not get very far before he hit engine problems and had to ditch in the Pacific. Thanks to good preparation and excellent air-sea rescue processes, he was rescued, injured but still very much alive.
This is the best available account of his experience.

At the end of last year I fitted an air/oil separator to the engine. This was an effort to address high oil consumption (1 quart every 3 hours). I was always finding a lot of oil on the lower cowling after longer flights, and also finding oil streaks on the prop. Those oil streaks were unburnt oil.
Until last weekend, when I flew to Santa Fe, Farmington, Aztec and Telluride, I had insufficient operational data to determine the impact on oil consumption from fitting the air/oil separator.
Preliminary data from the trip shows that oil consumption has improved, but not greatly. I am using 1 quart every 3.5 hours.
On Saturday I had John Hooker of J&S Aviation remove and inspect the lower plugs after I had flown up to Sherman running with the mixture full rich. None of the plugs showed any evidence of oil fouling; they looked perfectly normal.
I am coming around to the point of view that I have done all that I can to remedy the oil consumption issue, short of re-honing the cylinders and fitting new rings. I am not prepared to do that right now. The only issue with the current oil consumption level is that I cannot fly for more than 6-7 hours without installing a catch-tank...but since I never stay in the air that long, it is not a short-term issue.

Last year, I finally got around to installing a stereo intercom. This allows for music to be played in both headsets during flight, with an audio mute triggered from the radio for ATC etc. I already had a Lightspeed 3G headset which has a direct music source input, and when flying solo I would use that input (which gives slightly better sound quality). However, for trips with a passenger, a stereo intercom was essential for equitable enjoyment (see the saga of the intercom install here).
I was using a CD player to provide music on long trips. However, last November I finally broke down and bought an iPod for use elsewhere. Currently it has close to 5500 tunes loaded, many of which cannot be purchased in any record store. (For more insight into that form of listening, see my music blog...). Now, with that many tunes instantly available, the CD player has been retired.
I tested the iPod connected to my Lightspeed 3G headset on Sunday and it works perfectly. No more CD changing in flight...less to do while sitting upstairs...I will test the iPod connected to the intercom on the weekend trip to New Mexico.
UPDATE - I am now up to 8200 tunes on the iPod, or more correctly on a second iPod...the first 80Gb iPod has been passed to a lady friend of mine for Christmas, and I now have a shiny new 160Gb iPod.

..by aviation engine behaviour. Once upon a time, I experienced a stuck valve which ended up costing me $11000 (ouch!). This was after the engine had not run for 6 months due to work pressures and some niggling squawks which prevented me from doing any flying. After that incident, I have become more circumspect about engine care and check-overs.
So it was that at the weekend, the time came to perform the interval oil change on an engine that had not turned under its own power since December 31st 2006. After hand-propping the engine for 3 complete revolutions, mainly in order to convince myself that a valve was not sticking, I fired up the O-320 in 131JF at 9.00 pm on Sunday evening. The engine started on the second revolution, caught instantly, and immediately ran like a watch.
Of course, if you read the Lycoming Gospels, they probably say that I violated most known rules of engine preservation for 6 months. Yet, the engine seemed perfectly OK. After a period of running at 1000-1100 rpm to warm up the oil, I performed an oil change, put some Marvel Mystery Oil in the crankcase, and went home to start my paid job.

After a number of stops and starts due to work pressures, I finally finished applying 4 coats of Smooth Prime to the newly-installed gear leg fairings last Sunday. These are the fairings that Klaus
Installing the fairings will be documented here in more detail with photos, once I get this blog properly photo-enabled.
Even though I only had to perform a small amount of sanding, it was tedious enough for me to have acquired a much higher level of admiration for people who have sanded an entire plane (not to mention Jesse who after sanding my plane, went on to sand a Cozy IV...).
More finishing work will be required on the gear legs, particularly where the bottom and top parts of the fairing joined. The fairings are supplied as two moulded carbon components for each gear leg. One longer component is for the top part of the gear leg, and the shorter component is for the bottom half. These moulded parts did not fit together well, which required me to cut away some of the inside gear leg moulding and lay up 2 plies of BID over a carved piece of foam to replace it. That area will require some additional filling and sanding before the gear legs can be painted.
At the moment the tops of the gear legs are faired to flow round the fuselage join, but the bottoms of the gear legs are not faired into a smooth junction to the wheelpants. I intend to build up projections from the wheelpants to meet the new gear leg and create a smooth transition from the legs to the wheelpants. The right side wheelpants will also require some more sanding and preparation before they are re-painted. This was the wheelpant that was left in pieces on the runway at Dallas Executive Airport when I touched down with low right-side tire pressure and the wheelpant hit a piece of loose something-or-other on rollout, which tore it off the plane.
This weekend, however, it is time for some flight-testing of the plane, in the form of a trip to Farmington NM to see Bob Holgate, who just purchased a Subaru engine which he intends to fit to a Long-EZ. More news and views of that trip soon.

I have decided to "go for it" big-time on a bunch of plane improvements, with help from Jesse. I have been trying to work out when to do the work, and decided that there is no time like the present. So, starting this week, 131JF is going to acquire:

gear leg fairings
baggage pods
re-painting of the wheelpants, gear legs, prop spinner and underside of the nose
re-painting of the cowlings

I thought about building new cowlings, and adding pontoons to the forward fuselage aft of the canard a la Paul Tackabury, but there is not enough time to make those modifications.
I need the pods because I am going to be spending time in North Carolina this Summer, and I need the utility of the pods to allow for travel with a GIB (Nova Scotia or the Bahamas are possible destinations for a vacation).
I still have to work out how to add cockpit heating via a nose-mounted oil cooler. That is best done in conjunction with building new cowlings, since putting an oil cooler in the nose will most likely mean that the current cooler on the firewall will become redundant, which will allow for the removal of the air outlet in the top cowling, which will in turn improve cylinder cooling since all of the air entering the lower cowling will go through the cylinders, which may mean that the elbow scoops are not needed any more, which may mean that...isn't aerodynamics a wonderful thing?

James and I both work at EDS...or at least we both used to work at EDS. I spoke to James last week, and he has finally tired of life in corporate America. He left EDS 3 weeks ago, and is going to make canard aviation his full-time life's work.
When I spoke to him, he was engaged in mortal combat with a set of baggage pods, as he tried to complete them in time to use them for Sun'n'Fun. Once he vanquishes the pods, he will be working on completing his hangar-mate's Berkut, which was partly built by the late Steve Drybread, then further built (not very correctly) by some of Drybread's people after Steve's untimely death. After that, he will be working on a project that he cannot tell me about (because if he did, he would have to shoot me).
So...his corporation, Berkut Consulting Services LLC, is now a full-time endeavour. I wish him all of the luck in the world. I may have to consult with him about what words to use when you temporarily tire of assembling and fitting a set of baggage pods...

...where the weather was pretty poor most of the time...it reminded me very much of Manchester, where I went to college in the UK. A lot of dull, overcast days with light rain or drizzle.
Tomorrow (Sunday) I will be re-activating the plane - a preventitive maintenance cycle, oil change and inspection. Hopefully I will then get to take to the air for the first time in 4 months.
After that, I will work on the gear leg fairings. Then...it will be on to the baggage pods. I spoke to James Redmon this morning, and I have never previously heard him use the kind of "industrial language" that he uttered concerning the frustration level he has encountered in fitting pods to his Berkut. He estimated over 100 hours for fitting so far, and a lot of prep work is still not completed. He was hoping to be able to fly to Sun'n'Fun with the pods, but has abandoned that idea. Currently he prefixes every mention of the word "pods" with a word that most likely came out of a "Sopranos" script. Maybe this pod thingy won't be so much fun after all...

As part of the maintenance process that involved the fixing of the oil leak and the addition of an air-oil separator, we fitted the modified carburetor venturi built for me by Ed Spracher from Kenai, AK.
I have not completed any rigorous flight testing. However, initial testing shows that the engine now runs much smoother. The leaning capability is not affected - the uneven fuel distribution still prevents leaning past peak EGT on any cylinder.
More updates as I proceed through flight testing.

...where a city ordinance, passed to prevent a homebuilt aircraft from being assembled in a garage, has been declared to be constitutional.
We (the experimental aviation community) may need to fight this one through higher courts. Clearly, if other local cities emulate that approach, the creation of homebuilt aircraft in garages could become a lot more problematical.

Last weekend the good folks at J&S Aviation installed an M20 air-oil separator for me. I hope to have some photos up here in a couple of days.
The separator is installed on the left side of the engine (looking from the front of the plane). It is clamped to the baffling next to #4 cylinder, and the oil return line drains into the magneto cover plate on the accessory case. We also rerouted the crankcase breather tube to connect to a stainless steel tube which is clamped to the exhausts on that side of the engine. This will result in any remaining emissions being vaporized on their way down the tube. Oil streaking on the lower cowling will be a thing of the past.
Since I have only 45 minutes of flight testing the separator, it is too early to determine what impact it will have on oil comsumption. Given that most of my oil usage seems to consist of unburnt oil leaving the sump by way of the crankcase breather, the impact ought to be significant. More reports as I accumulate data.

(NOTE - Photos will be added to this report once I get the photo album up and running and attach it to the blog).
I flew to Escalante in Utah on 3rd November, returning to Lancaster on 5th November. The objective was to spend a weekend with a lady friend, go hiking in the sandstone hills and de-stress from city life.
Escalante is about 40 miles North of Lake Powell in southern Utah. The plan was to fly from Lancaster to Santa Fe, refuel and then fly from Santa Fe to Escalante.
I lifted off from Lancaster at 10.40 CST on the Friday. It soon became apparent that the new magneto (see previous posting) was making a major difference to the engine smoothness; the difference was very apparent above 2500 rpm, where the engine had previously been suffering from unpleasant vibration.
En route I was forced to divert to Breckenridge to re-seal a loose fuel cap (see separate True Confessions posting). I was fighting a headwind most of the way; after struggling to break 145 knots groundspeed at 8,500 feet over Texas, I descended to 6,500 and promptly picked up 15 knots in ground speed. After the delay due to the stop in Breckenridge, I landed at Santa Fe at 13.45 MST.
I refueled to 42 gallons onboard, bought new charts for the route of flight, and set off for Escalante. I soon found myself battling a headwind, with my ground speed never rising much above 152 knots even running at 2620 rpm. This part of the journey is, however, fairly spectacular, as you fly West of Farmington past Shiprock and to the East of Monument Valley, then over the Eastern end of Lake Powell, East of Navajo Mountain. This is wild country, with sandstone escarpments and ridges, little or no vegetation, little in the way of population centers, and few airports. I was always watching for potential landing sites in case I found myself listening to The Sound of Silence…
The last 50 miles into Escalante are mostly over some of the most forbidding terrain I have ever seen – mile after mile of Navajo Sandstone sculpted into crags, gullies and mini-canyons. There would be zero chance of landing a plane and staying in one piece, so I immediately climbed another 2000 feet to give myself more gliding distance.
When I arrived over Escalante I was 4000 feet above the airport altitude, so I circled in the valley over the airport to lose altitude. I was making radio calls to announce my position, although I realized afterwards that I was using body effort that could be saved for old age – there was no sign of any traffic, the airport has no permanent buildings, and the Airnav entry on Escalante showed a total of 2 aircraft based at the field.
I set up for a left-hand approach to runway 31 and soon realized that runway 31 sloped down to the North. With the windsock showing little wind, I circled and entered base for 13. As I turned from base to final, I saw three vehicles racing down the airport approach road. For a second, I wondered if I was seeing a welcoming committee, who, having ascertained that I am an agnostic, would promptly point me in the direction of away (remember this is Mormon country). However, when I noticed the occupants of two of the vehicles standing on the roof waving at me, I concluded that this was probably a welcoming committee.
After touching down, I found out that Escalante’s runway had grass growing in patches over the surface, and I weaved around the clumps of grass as best I could on rollout. I taxied onto the ramp and parked the plane. The ramp area had recently been re-surfaced, with fresh tie-down markings. However, there are only 6 marked tie-down places. Part of the ramp was being used for girders and other building materials (see below for more details).
The “welcoming committee” turned out to be the local Escalante aviation enthusiasts group, led by Paul Bowmar, a native of California who owns EPM.AV Corporation, a local business making parts for experimental aircraft.
We started talking about the state of the airport and future plans. There is a lot of resistance in Escalante to airport improvements or expansion. The population of 900+ is majority LDS, and a lot of the LDS families are suspicious of and antipathetic towards outsiders. Paul, who moved here over 30 years ago when his father relocated to Escalante from southern California, recounted a council meeting where a councillor (a leading member of the LDS church) looked him straight in the eye and said “you are an outsider. You should not expect to have the same rights as us”.
The following improvements are under way or planned for the airport:
1. Construction of 4 new hangars. This is due to start in about 2-3 weeks. The framing materials for the hangars were already on the ramp awaiting the commencement of work.
2. Demolition of the existing single hangar, which is very old and regarded as an eyesore.
3. Widening of the runway from 60 to 75 feet and extension from 5000 feet to 7500 feet, using FAA money. This is planned to occur in the next 2-3 years.

In the meantime, the runway is perfectly usable for most small planes.
I visited Paul’s machine shop in Escalante . I was greeted by a sleek-looking and friendly shop cat, who I suspect actually does all of the work while Paul and his employees sit in the office, surf the Web, shoot the breeze etc.
After returning to the airport, I was picked up by my lady friend. I found my way to the Boulder Mountain Ranch, where I had rented a 1 bedroom cabin (see picture).
We ate dinner at the Hell’s Backbone Grill, which is an innovative restaurant on the grounds of the Boulder Mountain Lodge. Boulder is about 30 minutes’ drive from Escalante along a road which at times affords spectacular views of the surrounding country, the highlight being the Hog’s Back, a narrow ridge with thousand-foot canyons either side. Boulder occupies several flat areas nestling in the sandstone hills, with the Boulder Mountain Lodge lying towards the North edge of the town. The New York Strip steak was excellent, washed down with a Valpolicella (it’s a horrible job but somebody had to do it).

Saturday
After a leisurely reveille, including breakfast at Hell’s Backbone Grill, we went hiking Lower Calf Creek Falls, among the Navajo Sandstone and the junction with the Red Sandstone.
In the afternoon we drove over to Escalante airport. Caroline climbed into the rear seat of the plane, and we took off, circled in the valley to gain altitude, and flew over the Navajo sandstone crags to Boulder, where we proceeded to buzz the restaurant several times from a progressively lower altitude. I discovered afterwards that this caused a lot of interest.

Sadly, circumstances forced us to yet again eat dinner at the Hells Backbone Grill…another terrible evening…

Sunday
After another excellent breakfast at the Hells Backbone Grill, I went over to Escalante and tried to get Dave (owner of the Boulder Mountain Lodge) into the Long-EZE, but he is 6’ 3” and wider than me, with a longer torso, and did not fit in the rear seat, no matter how much he scrunched himself down in the plane.
Eventually we gave up and put him in the front seat, so that I could take some photos of him in the pilot position.
I added 2 more quarts of oil to the plane, since running at high cruise on the way up to Escalante had reduced the oil level from 5.5 quarts to 4 quarts. (see squawks).
I took off from Escalante at 11.00 MST, buzzed the Hells Backbone Grill a couple of times, and then headed South-East to Santa Fe. This route of flight takes you over a wide and varied collection of geological features, some of which are explained on this web page collection made by a geologist. On the way to Santa Fe I took a number of photos of local geology from the plane, including a photo of
Shiprock .
A direct route to Santa Fe would have required me to climb above 14000 feet to gain enough mountain clearance, so I flew a curved route to avoid the mountains and approached Santa Fe from the South-West. Even this conservative route resulted in a period of flying in light turbulence from the mountains.
I arrived at Santa Fe, and taxied to the fuel self-serve pump. One of the more interesting aspects of Santa Fe is that despite its size, location, and level of activity, this airport does not have radar. The airport draws attention to this in the ATIS message, which includes a section where the airport essentially apologizes for not having radar…
I took on fuel, cleaned the canopy of bugs, and quickly flew out to the South-East. After first trying a cruise altitude of 11,500 feet, I found a larger tailwind component at 9,500 feet. At that altitude, running at 2580-2620 rpm, I saw groundspeeds varying between 175-182 knots. The weather was good all across New Mexico and West Texas, with the afternoon sun keeping the cockpit temperature above the OAT of 42-44 degrees.
On checking in with Flight Watch East of Tucumcari, I was informed that a Sigmet had been issued for an area of storms North of Dallas, centered on Wichita Falls. The Flight Watch frequency was busy with pilots checking in and adjusting routes to avoid the storm area, which included several large cells with tops above 50,000 feet. However, the system appeared to be moving North-East so at the time it did not seem like much of a threat.
As normal, I transitioned through Lubbock airspace and picked up VFR flight following at Lubbock for the rest of the journey back to Lancaster. Once East of Lubbock, the storm system over Wichita Falls came into view to the North-East. Broken clouds began to appear below me at 6000 feet, but I was reluctant to descend at this point because I was rattling along at 180-182 knots thanks to the tailwind.
It looked like the storm system was still to the North of Dallas. A call to Fort Worth Centre showed that the MOAs ahead of my flight path were not active, so I headed through them towards Dallas.
There was an increasing thickness of cloud below me, but there were gaps in this cloud cover. My plan was to stay above the clounds as long as possible and drop through a gap in the cover once I got closer to Dallas.
By now the sun had set on the ground, but the last of the sun was still shining up at 10,000 feet:
I have a rule that I will not fly at night on any route that I have not previously flown during the day. I adopted this rule after a stressful night scud-running attempt over Mississippi that ended with my overnighting in that state when ceilings kept dropping. Since I have flown this route a number of times in the day, I felt reasonably confident about continuing to Lancaster even though it would be dark by the time I arrived there.
About 30 miles West of Mineral Wells, I found that shower clouds were starting to build up above my current altitude of 9,500 feet. I began to climb to 11,500 feet to get over the top of the clouds, but then I noticed that the gaps in the clouds below were rapidly closing up. It looked like the shower systems were starting to build further South along my route. I decided that I needed to get below the clouds before I was trapped VFR on-top, so I told Center that I was descending below the cloud cover to 5,500 feet, and turned to the West to head for a gap in the clouds. This was the last significant gap that was visible, and it seemed to be closing.
I cut the throttle, spiralled down through the gap in the clouds to 6000 feet, and turned back East. However, below the clouds, there was almost no light left, and as I descended further to the East I suddenly found myself swallowed up by a lower bank of cloud.
Since I was under VFR flight following at the time, I made a pragmatic decision to engage the wing leveler and ride out the descent, rather than trying to back-track. One thing I learned in this brief period in the cloud is how spatial disorientation is insidious; I felt like I was turning to the right in the cloud, yet when I exited the cloud about 30 seconds later, the plane was flying the same heading as when I entered. I broke out at 5,500 feet. By now my eyes had adapted to the poor light, and I could see more lower clouds ahead of me, so I kept descending, turning as necessary to stay well clear of the clouds.
By the time I passed Mineral Wells, I was below 3000 feet, and I eventually ended up at 2500 feet as I approached the DFW Class B airspace. My ground speed had dramatically reduced, from 180+ knots above the clouds to 150 knots. It was clearly a damp and miserable night in the Metroplex. Visibility was actually quite good for night VFR at 8 to 10 miles, but there were broken clouds at various levels above me. I descended further to 2000 feet as I encountered broken cloud at around 2200 feet East of Mineral Wells.
As I flew East, I was under the floor of the Class B airspace, so clearances became a non-issue. However, Approach Control told me to fly over Arlington, in order to stay North of the TV towers at Cedar Hill. I turned towards what I thought was Arlington airport, only to be informed by the controller that I was turning towards Fort Worth Spinks. D’oh! There was this lump of technology in the cockpit called a GPS… I dialed Arlington into the GPS, and turned to the North-East to intercept the runway. Approach asked me to switch to Arlington tower. I switched to the tower frequency and informed them when I crossed midfield, at which point they told me to resume own navigation. I switched to VFR own navigation, and at 18.50 CST I touched down at Lancaster in total darkness. The runway and whole airport area were wet from earlier rain and drizzle.
I put the plane away, cleaned the prop of accumulated bugs, oil and soot, and left for home. As I drove home I could see lightning to the North and North West; the storm system was moving South into the fringes of the Metroplex.

When I purchased N131JF from Jesse back in 2000, the fuel caps were not equipped with either grounding braid or tethers. Although the fuel caps on a Long-EZ are outside of the prop arc (and even more so since I now use a Catto prop, which has a smaller diameter but a deeper pitch than the original Performance prop), I was sufficiently concerned by reading accident reports where fuel caps had become loose and gone through the prop in flight to ask Jesse to fit tethers to the fuel caps. The tethers are triangular pieces of metal linked to the underside of the cap by a strong chain.
On Friday 3rd November, I lifted off from Lancaster Texas bound for Santa Fe en route to Escalante Utah (see Trip Report – Escalante). I fuelled the plane to 44 gallons before departure, which is the maximum amount of fuel that I can put in the fuel tanks with the plane “kneeling”.
After 40 minutes, I was at 8,500 feet about 5 miles North East of Breckenridge, when I decided to do a periodic scan of the wings. The left wing looked OK, but my peripheral vision of the right wing seemed odd…A more detailed look showed that the right fuel cap was loose. The tether was doing its job and preventing the fuel cap from flying off, but airflow had wedged the cap against the top of the strake. That was good. What was not good was a steady stream of fuel being blown out of the tank over the wing and into the atmosphere. As the fuel sloshed around in the tank, a spray of liquid and vaporizing fuel would be blown back past the prop.
I immediately cut power, and pointed the nose down towards Breckenridge Airport. Less than 10 minutes later I touched down, pulled off the runway and parked next to the self-serve fuel pump.
An examination of the fuel tanks showed that the right tank (the one with the open fuel cap) was still almost full, but the left tank only contained about 13 gallons of fuel. Because of the difference in the fuel tank fuel levels, fuel was siphoning between the tanks via the common sump tank to equalize the fuel levels (on my plane this can be heard as an intermittent ‘clicking’ sound).
The explanation for the difference in fuel levels was not difficult to work out. With the right fuel cap off the top of the fuel tank, there would be no positive pressure above the fuel via the fuel vent line (which is open to the airflow above the dorsum). The airflow past the open fuel tank was also generating suction. The result was that fuel was flowing from the left tank to the right tank as the fuel was sucked out from the right tank in flight.
I decided to re-fill the plane tanks to 44 gallons, the same level as at Lancaster. This required 17.8 gallons of fuel. Since I had been flying for the equivalent of about 45 minutes burning 8.5 gallons per hour (averaged as I climbed to cruising altitude and descended rapidly to land in Breckenridge), this would have burned 6.4 gallons of fuel. This meant that in 50 minutes of flying I lost 11.4 gallons of fuel from the open fuel tank.
Without my noticing the fuel cap being loose, fuel would have continued to escape from the right hand tank, with fuel moving from the left tank to equalize. This is one downside of a common sump arrangement. Since both tanks are linked via the common sump, I could have lost all of my wing tank fuel load, and I might also have lost the fuel in the common sump area due to the suction effect of air flowing over the strake at normal cruising speed.
It would be difficult to prove or disprove this hypothesis due to the inherent dangers in flight-testing with fuel escaping from the plane in the vicinity of the engine. However, a quick calculation shows that if I had not noticed the issue and diverted, I would have (partly) consumed and (mostly) lost all of my onboard fuel well before reaching the border with New Mexico. That might have ruined my day…
Three conclusions:
1. I failed to check that both fuel caps were secured before I boarded the plane. This item must be on the checklist and you must complete the check.
2. Anybody who owns a Long-EZ with a common sump fuel tank system needs to understand that the linkage between the tanks will result in most (if not all) of the onboard fuel gradually being lost overboard if a fuel cap comes loose or is lost in flight.
3. It is a really good idea to have fuel cap tethers. If you lose a fuel cap completely in flight, even if it does not damage the prop, you cannot really fly the plane anywhere until you fit a replacement. With my current fuel cap tethers, I was able to land, solve the problem and continue.

Those of you who have struggled with oil leaks will know that it only takes a small amount of oil leakage from around an engine to make a mess of an engine compartment; the air pressure and airflow does a great job of spreading the oil everywhere. In my case, I have been dealing with an oil leak from somewhere on the accessory case for over a year.
The oil leak was high up on the accessory case, from somewhere in the Vernatherm area of the ancillaries. However, I was not able to easily pinpoint the source of the leak. All I knew was that oil would appear at the bottom of the front of the engine, and would coat the ancillaries and pipes and also run into the P-51 scoop when the plane was at rest with a hot engine.
In the last 2-3 months the oil leak had worsened, to the point that I found 2-3 tablespoons of oil in the bottom of the P-51 scoop when I removed the lower cowling today as part of the prep for magneto replacement. That much oil in flight will slowly mess up an engine compartment.
With the Right magneto not in the plane due to a replacement process (see previous posting), I was able to determine that the source of the leak was not the Vernatherm switch (which was my initial suspicion), but it was the Vernatherm casing itself, which is bolted to the accessory case. I was able to gain access to the four bolts that hold the Vernatherm casing to the accessory case.
I found that the two bottom bolts on the Vernatherm casing were slightly loose, so I tightened then as far as I could. Only time will tell if this will stop the oil leak. If it does not, I may have to remove the casing and re-seal it. That will be a hassle since it will require the removal of the oil cooler, and possibly other engine ancillaries.

My plane has one magneto (Slick 4370 non-impulse, on Right side) and one Jeff Rose Electroair electronic ignition system.
The Jeff Rose system has performed without any attention apart from the replacement of the flywheel sensor due to vibration damage from a flight test of an unbalanced prop.
I wish I could say the same about the magneto...
I first became aware of magneto issues early last year when I found that there was excessive and slowly worsening engine vibration above 2500 rpm. The condition worsened to the point that on the return from a fly-in at Hondo, attempts to throttle up to more than 2520 rpm resulted in blurred vision when I pressed my head into the headrest. If my head was being vibrated that much, imagine how the rest of the aircraft must have felt...
After that flight, I pulled the magneto and had it overhauled by Select Aircraft Services in Lancaster. One thing I learnt at the time is that Slick keeps spare parts prices for their magnetos artificially high to discourage field overhauls. They want you to buy an exchange magneto instead. There may be a sound reason for this...remember we are dealing with a supplier whose magneto range once included magnetos designed to only last 500 hours (literally no overhaul; just throw the part in the scrap bin and buy another). As a result of Slick's parts pricing and distribution policies, Select were only able to reset internal components and replace a couple of minor parts at a cost of $175.
When I re-fitted the magneto to the plane, there was a noticeable improvement in engine smoothness. I was able to run back up to top rpm without feeling that I would need to visit the dentist to have fillings replaced. However, starting this Spring, I again noticed worsening top-end vibration. I also began to notice a periodic "miss" from the engine after I had been in the air more than 2 hours. This seemed like an issue which emerged once engine ancillaries became heat-soaked. When I flew to Rough River, the vibration, while not as bad as the 2005 vibration, was becoming more noticeable, and the canard tips were vibrating slightly at around 2450 rpm. While there is a natural vibration resonance at around this rpm in Lycoming 4-cylinder engines, this was the first time that I had seen vibration of this type from the canard in normal operations.
I also was noticing a drop of 100-120 rpm when testing magneto-only operation in run-ups. And not only but also...on the takeoff roll I would hear irregular "popping" sounds in my headset at full throttle.
Action was required.
I consulted Jesse and James Redmon. Jesse pointed out that the magneto had been supplied as part of the original engine package in 1993, with no paperwork to show how old it was, whether it had been rebuilt in compliance with FAA-PMA requirements etc. James expressed his opinion that, with 520 Hobbs hours on the plane, it was time either for a new magneto or an upgrade to electronic ignition.
While I do want to eventually upgrade to electronic ignition, this was not the time to do it either from a budgetary or time perspective, since I would also need to install a second backup battery and associated electrical wiring to support emergency operation of the ignition system on a backup battery if the primary battery and charging systems failed.
I decided to replace the magneto, and ordered a replacement Slick 4370 from Spruce on overnight delivery.
The magneto arrived in a nice fresh factory box with a date of 10/16/2006 on the side; at least some evidence that it was freshly built or rebuilt. They also threw in 2 Autolite aviation sparkplugs (although the cynic in me said that, with the cost of these types of ancillaries for aircraft, that was the least they could do...).
I pulled the top plugs, aligned the engine to top dead center and then tested the points open position with a timing light, to ensure that the engine was in the correct position before removing the old magneto. That way, there would be no chance of me aligning the engine with #1 cylinder on the exhaust cycle instead of the firing cycle. I also marked the position of the wiring harness when fitted to the magneto with white tape strips, to eliminate any possibility of reversing the harness position when mated with the new magneto.
I removed the old magneto from the engine, and then ran into the first problem. The timing gear is not included with a rebuilt magneto, presumably because different engine makes/models have different gear assemblies to mate with the drive shaft in the accessory case. You therefore are expected to swap the gear from the old to the new magneto shafts. In my case, I could not pull the gear off the magneto shaft after removing the cotter pin and securing nut. The gear shaft mates to the magneto shaft using a taper with a mating slot. Presumably years of operation had baked the join to interference fit standards.
A trip to O'Reilly's Auto Parts, $28 and one quarter turn of a socket wrench later, a "pop" accompanied the removal of the gear and gear shaft from the old magneto, courtesy of a newly-purchased gear puller. It's amazing how easy most maintenance jobs are if you have the correct tools...
After fitting the gear to the new magneto, I went through the process of pinning the magneto with the supplied timing pin (we'll return to that later...), installed the magneto and the harness to the engine and timed the magneto with the timing light. After replacing the bottom plugs and cleaning the top plugs, I tried to start the engine on the magneto.
Zip. Squat. Nada.
Hmm. Time for a think and a re-read of available literature.
Then I read a little sticker from the magneto box really carefully...the sticker states that the magneto must be locked with a timing pin before being installed. The position of the timing pin is L or R. I interpreted this to mean the position of the magneto on the engine, so I locked the magneto to R before install.
Wrong.
The sticker small print says to lock the magneto depending on the direction of rotation on the data plate on the magneto. In this case, the magneto is a Left rotation magneto. So I should have locked it using the L hole for the timing pin.
So...I went through the install process again. The good news is that the second time around it takes a lot less time.
After completing the installation and timing of the magneto, I tried to start the engine again.
This time, it fired first time.
Because it was almost dark, I scrapped plans for a full flight test. Instead I performed a run-up test followed by a fast taxi down the runway.
On the run-up, I noticed a drop of only 60-80 rpm with the magneto only in operation. On the fast taxi, the engine felt smoother, and I could not hear any "popping" sounds in the headphones.
I shut the plane down and changed the oil and oil filter. A long flight will be required to determine if the magneto replacement has cured the intermittent "miss" or the high-rpm vibration. I have a flight planned to New Mexico and Utah this weekend, so that will provide the flight test data.

I travelled to the Rough River fly-in as usual on Friday. A more detailed trip report and photos will appear here soon. However, the "rushes" are already up at the web site, and Bill Allen and I appear in them.
I flew on to Winston-Salem on Saturday to visit friends, and I will also write a trip report about that leg of the weekend.
As a result of this trip and the previous weekend's trip to New Mexico, I put an entire oil change duty cycle on the engine in 2 weekends, which is a record for the plane. Now it's time to fix some squawks and make some improvements (like new upholstery and baggage pods).