March 2016

2016-03-30

New door struts

RV-10: The story of new door struts or how to prevent your airplane doors from hitting you or your passengers on the head.

The Old Struts

The old struts never worked reliably for me. Even when I bought the airplane, they would barely hold the door up and the left door strut would give in at any hint of wind. The passenger side door strut was a bit stronger but, with time, it gave in too. The end result was that both doors needed to be held up manually if you didn’t want to be hit on the head at the slightest gust of wind. That, obviously, was not a good thing so I started doing a bit of research into what is considered a reliable strut for an RV-10 door.

New struts ordered…

After doing my needful on the research, it turned out that people who buy Bansbach Lift custom struts are happy with their purchase and can recommend their purchase to others. I went in and ordered two struts and four mount points. For interested parties providing links and specifications below. I picked up the custom force of 530N (120 lbs). That allows the pilot door to be held in place in pretty much any position. The passenger door opens up the whole way with the same force strut.

The specs:

B0N0F50-100-247/XXXN Gas Spring 4″(100mm) Stroke 10″(247mm) Extended Length Customer Selected Force (530N or 120 lbs) — one for each door — link
A1 M8 Hinge Eye Endfitting — two for each door — link

Putting them on

The strut mount points seemed the standard Van’s mount points. No modifications, maybe some of less than careful paint work. You can see the paint remains on the struts as well, I am wondering if that helped the strut to wear out faster. It turned out that even at fully extended position or at fully closed position, the mount point was still loaded by a considerable force. This became apparent when I removed the nut and the outside washer and tried to pull out the bolt. That did not work, and the bolt became stuck. I finally managed to get it unstuck using a small hex key from Ikea holding the old strut on the mount point while the bolt was removed. Removing the hex key was then much easier than removing the loaded bolt.

I did not make the same mistake twice and the replacement of the strut on the second door went much quicker.

And finally…

… I can be sure that the door won’t hit me or a passenger in a gust of wind.

I was able to test it pretty much the next day. I flew down to San Luis Obispo for lunch, and the winds on the ground were 17 gusting to 22. The doors didn’t budge, the new struts held them up in the strong wind just fine. I am glad I replaced them before that trip!

2016-03-12

Stormy Weather, Beautiful Colors

miro Varia

Coming back home from work, saw the beautiful cloud colors. Photos taken from the crest of Permanente Creek Bridge.

A Pacific storm has just passed, and clouds parted for the last rays of sunset. Need more of such beautiful displays.

2016-03-08

Llama has a new home

miro Flying

After waiting for over a year, I finally got a hangar at San Jose International Airport (KSJC). Moved my airplane there on return from the Grand Canyon trip.

San Jose is much closer from my homethan San Martin (12 km vs. 60 km) so the commute time to the airplane should be much less. GA West, as it is called, is actually closer to Mountain View, than the “secure” airline terminal side (which is on the east side of the airport).

Since it is a “big” international airport, the challenge is to obtain all kinds of authorizations and badges to get in and out of the field. I have just completed a security awareness course (and test!). The airport also requires a background check. No fingerprinting, although I half expected I would need to provide all kinds of biometric data to get proper access. The test was quite ridiculous, questions asked were of “how do you recognize a terrorist?” or “what is tailgating?” nature.

I should have a badge next week. Actually looking forward to populating the hangar a bit with tools so that I could start tinkering with the plane. So many things to do, so little time.

2016-03-06

Tomato Soup with a Twist

miro Cooking

My favorite tomato soup of all time. It combines the light flavor of Polish tomato soup with American roasted chicken flavor. Simply delicious.

Ingredients

1 Costco roasted chicken
3 onions
half bag of baby carrots
2 cans of tomato paste
2 cans of cubed or crushed tomatoes
salt and pepper

Have Lunch…

Seriously. You just bought a full size Costco roasted chicken. Have at it. Preserve all the bones, just discard the rubber cord the chicken is held together with. When you are done eating meat, separate the rest of the meat from bones and store for later. This is necessary because if you boil the meat, it will become flavorless mass. It is better to separate it now and add it back later.

Prepare Ingredients

Peel and chop onions. No need to chop onions finely. Just do a coarse chop, the onion layers will separate in the water. Also, do not forget to rinse your plastic Costco box that housed the roasted chicken. There is a lot of flavor left in there, use that water as a base for the broth.

These are the only prep steps needed before boiling the broth!

Boil the Broth

Cover your ingredients with filtered water. Don’t forget to add the water you rinsed your plastic Costco chicken box with! Bring to boil and boil for about an hour or 75 minutes on a small power setting. Add pepper and salt about mid way through this time, it will help with flavor. When the broth is done, remove all bones from the pot. You need a patience for this step — there is a lot of free floating bones in the broth. Due to all the fat and meat pieces, you won’t see the bones so you need to go fishing for them.

When you are reasonably sure there are no more bones left in the broth, it is time to add tomatoes. Open the tomato paste and crushed/cubed tomatoes and just add them in, stirring. Chop the remaining meat to preferred size and add it in as well. Continue stirring until tomato paste dissolves.

Congratulations, you are done!

How To Serve?

The soup goes well with egg pasta, boiled white rice or with no carbohydrate filler. Add a splash of whipping cream to improve the color. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Enjoy!