After one year, 99.4 hours of flying, flying to my first LOE, getting a beautiful paint job from Grady, flying all across Oklahoma, fighting thunderstorms on our first flight to Sun n Fun only to deal with a tornado tearing up my new plane, repairing the damages and getting the airplane airworthy again, I have finally made it to the first flight anniversary of N446RV.
July 20th marked one year to the date for the first flight of my 9A. I have spent the past week fighting the heat as I went through my first conditional inspection. I have found a few squawks but nothing earth shattering or scary. I found a couple of jam nuts that needed tightening. There were some prop bolts that needed re-torquing. I had to track down a minor oil leak. Overall everything is looking very good.
There was one thing I discovered that I would like to know if others had experienced. When I removed the floor panels in the cockpit I discovered that one of the screws just inboard of the pilot stick was rubbing against the tube connecting the pilot stick and the co-pilot stick. My solution was to leave that screw out of the floor panel when I put everything back together. Has anyone else run into this? If so, what solution did you come up with?
For the most part I am very pleased with the fact there were no major issues to resolve.
After all of the inspection work I went back to my documents and reviewed them. I have a W&B spreadsheet, POH and Equipment List for the airplane that I am currently verifying.
Below is the Equipment list I created detailing the additional equipment that is in the airplane. My purpose for the list was to determine as closely as I could the weight of each individual component I placed in the airplane. The numbers listed are actual measurements. During construction of the airplane I weighed each individual item on scales prior to installation. You might notice this also included the engine weight. I believe I have come as close as I can to documenting the weight of everything. I am sure there is a little wag in the total as there are bound to be some nuts, bolts, wires, etc. I have not accounted for. However, I feel confident that these numbers are very close.
I am attaching this list in hopes it may prove helpful to someone out there. I know several years ago when I was just beginning my build I was asking everyone I knew questions about comparisons of various engine installations and what each would weigh. I was trying to make decisions about what engine I should install on my project. Whenever I would ask about this engine weight or that engine weight I never could get a definitive answer. Because of that I decided to take weight measurements of my engine and all the supporting accessories in order to understand once and for all the weight of the components I was installing in my airplane. All of that information is listed below (
all weights are in pounds). I hope someone will find it helpful.
Oh by the way. You might notice I have a percentage of total empty weight number listed at the bottom of the document above (37%). My total empty weight is not listed on this document (I have it on my W&B worksheet). Just for fun I will make this an interactive post. Kudos and a beer at the next LOE on me to the first one who can tell me what the empty weight of my 9A is.
Live Long and Prosper!
Finishing up the 1st Conditional Inspection
Linear Mode
