Little Jobs, Big Adventures, but No AirVenture

May 2020 - In his comments in the May issue of EAA Sport Aviation, our leader Jack J. Pelton said, "I expect the joy of AirVenture this year to be sweeter than most." Sadly, it's not going to happen. The reshaping of the world as we know it will continue. Air shows like ours, the world's biggest, would be just too unmanageable under any form of restriction.

So what to do now that we have the summer off? My own plan is to invest some of this spare time in self-improvement. I'm not an IFR pilot, but I'm aware that even if I didn't get rated, I would be a safer pilot if I at least learned to shoot approaches and fly in the clouds. What are you going to do? Why not write and tell us?

We always have a list of little jobs for our aircraft. One of mine, recently completed, was the installation of the tailBeaconX EXP (for "experimental" or home-built aircraft) for the Canadian market. I've covered this in a separate article. Another little job was replacing the carpet in my RV-9A. I'd used carpet tape to hold it down, so a piece of advice: DON'T USE CARPET TAPE. With the aircraft standing out on the ramp in the sun, the adhesive had liquefied, making a black, sticky mess that lost all its ability to hold the carpet in place. After consulting Van's Aircraft for advice, I've used a fairly robust version of Velcro along the full length of the four strips of new carpet. It still has a sticky back so I'm not totally convinced that I've solved this forever, but the last solution got me through 10 years. Maybe this will last a bit longer.

If you've been missing flying over the past few months, here is an adventure for you. Click on this link to Ken and Colette Pierce's incredible visit to 18 airports in the Okanagan in six and a bit hours. Because of time constraints to accomplish this, they did mostly touch-and-goes with one fuel stop. Ken and Colette Pierce are very active fliers out of Manitoba with their own farm strip near Beulah. They are friends of our Regina EAA Chapter 154 and usually attend our annual fly-in at Disley. One of our members who is originally from Manitoba gets updates on their adventure. Ken and Colette are very active with the Flying Farmers and were featured in a video about the Flying Farmers called SkyGrazers.

If you typically wait for the paper copy of EAA Sport Aviation to arrive, why not check out the digital version? It arrives sooner, and one of the features you might really like is the link to extra digital video content. The May issue, for example, contains a very informative review of the history and uses of the VW flat-four engine and its use in aircraft around the world. As presenter Tim Hoversten points out, the engine is a direct drive, air-cooled flat four, so it looks like it was made for aircraft applications.

A special thanks to new contributor Marcus Pfeiffer this month for his excellent article on Chapter 65. We hope to feature an article each month on one of your Canadian chapters. Marcus did a great job of getting the ball rolling. Thanks also to our other contributors for their excellent articles. If you, dear reader, have anything you'd like to submit, why not use this lockdown time to get creative? It might be a better idea than binge-watching something you'll forget about completely tomorrow.