Editor's Page

Hitting the ground walking

(May 19, 2007) -- I took last summer off from my job. I cashed in 8 weeks of vacation and never looked back. The first few weeks were a little awkward for me. I'd wake up early and catch myself thinking, "I've got to do this or that at work today." A few moments later, I'd realize that I didn't have to be anywhere. That was a good feeling. You probably have one like it when you wake up on Saturday morning thinking it's another day to go to work, and then you realize it's the weekend, and there's an airplane project to have fun with the in the garage or basement or hangar. Next to some obvious alternatives, that's a darned fine way to wake up.

I'm having a few flashbacks of last summer this week, although with the Minnesota Legislature doing its typical last-week-of-session-let's-go-all-night nonsense, it's not quite the same thing.

I'm writing this on Monday night. When I was putting out the Hotline, Monday was a benchmark day. By then, I always liked to have an idea what the story at the top of the page is. My routine was to watch "24" (When Jack calls CTU, why does he always say who he is? "Bill, it's Jack." Crazy stuff.) ' while surfing the net looking for a nugget.

So tonight, I resorted to my routine, and realized I was in one. I've been sending some links and nuggets to Rob Riggen, your editor, over the last day or so. He's probably sick of getting them, and I've got time on my hands. How we use our time takes some getting used to because we don't realize how much our lives revolve around routine until it's disrupted.

They (the RV pioneers) say "treat building an RV as a series of tasks." They're right, of course. And so, that's the way I look at it. Get out there, find a task, do it. You know.... eventually.

When I woke up on Saturday, after thinking at first I had to work, I realized I didn't have to worry about getting the Hotline out, the bills were paid, the carpet vacuumed, the laundry put in the wash, and my wife had a meeting in St. Cloud. Yahtzee! I had building time!

Sam Buchanan, the architect of the legacy Web site for RV building, wrote an article that made a great impression on me. Working Smart documents the process for productive building time. And he must know; it looks like he built his plane in 925 hours. I'm on hour 1,500.

Sam advocates, basically, a "hit the ground running" approach to each work session. Know what you're going to do ahead of time so you're not screwing around in the garage when it's time to work.

My problem? I like screwing around in the garage. I have a general idea what I want to do when I head for RVland, but I like cleaning off the workbench a little bit and more often than not, I like to lean on the side of the plane, look inside and see everything I've done so far, see things I have to do, and then dream a little bit. If I hear a plane going overhead, I stop what I'm doing and head outside to see. With 3 small airports within 8 miles, that's a lot of looking, especially on a nice Saturday.

So there I was -- looking, dreaming, leaning and generally hitting the ground walking. I had intended to work on the canopy frame -- getting the side rails set up etc. That was my plan. When I got to the garage, I realized I'd need to put the roll bar in place, which meant putting the canopy base angles on, which meant finally getting around to Alumiprepping, Alodining, priming, and painting those angles that hold the roll bar in place, which meant finally getting around to putting those two AN426-4-10 rivets in each of those longeron-to-705-bulkhead plates that I've been putting off for a long time.

And why was I putting it off? Because Van's doesn't send you any AN426-4-10 rivets. Not in the finishing kit, not in the fuselage kit, not in the wing kit, and not in the empennage kit. They want you to use 4-11s and cut them down to size.

Easily doable except that I never bought a rivet cutter. At $41, it didn't seem like a reasonable investment, especially since I've gotten this far and haven't needed one yet. Heck, that's $10 a rivet. My buddy, Doug Reeves, today gave me a great idea. Cut a block of wood to the length of the desired rivet, put the "11" in and then use the belt sander to grind it down to size. Except that then I'd have to buy a belt sander. At $119, I didn't like the math on that one either ($30 a rivet). The only reasonable thing I could think of was ordering some 426-10 rivets. At $17.50 a pound, I figured 1/10th of a pound ($1.75) should get me through the process without too much giggling from the packing room at Aircraft Spruce. Add in the $1.11 postage (bless Aircraft Spruce for telling you how much the shipping is going to cost) for a grand total of $2.86 - or 71 cents a rivet.

And that's what I ended up doing, but, of course, those rivets certainly weren't going to show up then (I should've taken a trip down to Wipaire now that I think of it). And so, I stood, and looked, and dreamed and after a plane went overhead, I moved on. I'd not yet riveted the F-709 (or maybe it's the 710) bulkhead to the turtle deck. Did that. And, hey, look! I can put in the adel clamps on the rudder cable. So I did that. Little stuff. Dinky stuff. Small tasks that, getting them done, made me feel good, but let's just say it wasn't a giant step forward.

Total time spent on the plane on Saturday? Four hours. Result? One turtle deck bulkhead and two adel clamps installed.

At this rate, they'll drum me out of Van's Air Force.

MAILBAG

As I said last week, I really would like to relay some mail I get during the week, so send some along and share your experiences with us.

Last week I mentioned all the fine mail I received after announcing that I wouldn't be doing the Hotline anymore. It was nice. Really nice. But as I read it, I kept thinking, "where's the discouraging word?" In just about anything, there's always someone who has something bad to say. But through several hundred messages, nothing. Until a couple of days ago when a reader (and I'm not really sure why he subscribed to the Hotline, he's building a Zodiac) reacted to the announcement:

Glad to hear it. You are a dick head anyway and all of the stuff you posted was copied from other websites. Have a nice life,

Name withheld
Omaha, Nebraska

Having, actually, a good head on my shoulders, and the name's Bob, kid, I knew right away who this was. Maybe you did too. There's not much point in trying to bang common sense into someone who doesn't understand what aggregation means (explained in the About the Hotline page where it says, " It's here to select the most interesting parts of other Web sites and newsletters and present them to you."), and thinks a ride down a residential street in an airplane is a good idea. What can you do other than pray he doesn't share airspace with you?

But it's a good reminder to us all, I think, in this time of user fees and 30 accidents in 30 days, and airport closings that the "enemy" is quite often among us. Sure, it feels good -- and it's at least a little bit accurate -- to blame bureaucrats and politicians. But these are times that require us to put our best foot forward, to fly professionally, make sound decisions, and evaluate the appearance we set forth as pilots, especially to non-pilots..

Want to know why some communities have tried to ban homebuilding of airplanes? Every once in awhile, we give them a reason.

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