Dad’s first flight in the plane
My dad was in town, so of course I had to take him for a flight. We went up to Friday Harbor for a quick dinner. Before we took off, I decided to remove the nosewheel fairing. I thought it was causing the plane to yaw (it wasn’t–more on that later) and I wasn’t happy with how I had installed it. I didn’t bend the brackets to match the inside of the fairing, so it was puckering at the rivets. I figured they’d pull through in a short amount of time.
Here’s me doing the pre-flight. (Most of these pictures are taken by my dad.)
And here we are before take-off and in flight.
A picture of the San Juans in all their glory.
The plane at FHR and the Friday Harbor waterfront.
And finally Lake Washington and Mount Rainier on the return.
Awesome after work flight. Dad seemed to thoroughly enjoy it.
So the fairing saga continues. I haven’t finished the intersection fairings yet. The leg fairings are held in place by a single hose clamp at the top that grabs a couple of tabs on the fairing. Well, those tabs broke off. The fairing was free to rotate and I figure that’s what caused the yaw condition. The top of the fairings are right in the prop blast, so it figures they broke off pretty quickly. They’re really meant to be protected by the intersection fairings.
It didn’t go down to the hangar at all over the weekend. I was too tired and/or the weather was lousy.
I went down tonight, removed the leg fairings and went for a short flight around the patch for fun. I’m definitely making negative headway on the fairings. I just need to buckle down and get them all finished instead of messing around here and there with them.