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Prop Safety Wired.

2.5 hours.

This is pretty much what I did last weekend.  I was only able to get up to the airport for a couple of hours, and in that time, I had to figure out how to safety-wire the prop.   This is a necessary step.  The propeller needs to stay on, and it needs to stay on for the entire duration of the flight.  The way this is accomplished is with the ubiquitous safety wire.   The Hartzell manual calls for .032 safety wire on these six bolts and fortunately I’ve got half a spool of it still in my kit.

I lost count of the number of runs I took at this, but finally I got it right.   There are a couple of interesting parts to this.  First thing is to get the prop torqued to 65 ft/lbs.   Then you have to back the nuts off enough to get the safety wire through the spring pin.  Then you have to guess the length of wire you need after all the twisting happens.   They’re supposed to be wired in pairs, with the wiring preventing the nuts from backing out and causing really bad things to happen, like the prop departing the airplane and leaving you with a not-so-gliding glider.

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As you can see from this next shot, I had a few attempts.   Apologies for the bad photos; as soon as you jam the iPhone up close to something in low light, its autofocus loses its mind.

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Productive couple of days.

19 hours.

Yeah, that’s Thursday, yesterday, and today.

The pieces are going on the plane now.   I installed both wingtips and did the accompanying wiring.   Of course, like a moron, I severed the GPS antenna wire while I was crimping a connector for the wingtip VOR antenna, but Jim had an extra one and I was able to repair the GPS cable and install the VOR antenna cable

 

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I also installed the strobes and new strobe pack.   The bright white flash is the strobe actually working in the left wingtip.

 

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One of the neat things about Oxnard airport (and presumably Camarillo) is that you often get treated to flybys of things like this restored B-25.  Weird stuff passes by outside my hangar just about every day, and I love it.

20130629-172558.jpgThis is the wingtip, showing the landing light and nav light working.

20130629-172608.jpgBoth wingtips on here.  I spent a little time peeling the remaining blue stuff off the tail, and I just need to get it off the bottom wing skins and the plane will be blue-stuff-free.
20130629-172632.jpgHoisting the prop out of the shipping crate, hopefully for the last time.

 

20130629-172659.jpgProp is on!
20130629-172722.jpgToday was about the prop.    I tried to get it done yesterday, but there was a flight, a barbecue, and the need to get home for evening plans, so I wound up doing it today.   Today was not all that wonderful.  There was an accident at the airport and I don’t have any details, and won’t publish them here until more is known, but it appears that we’ve lost a really good guy and a wealth of knowledge of experimental aviation and RV’s in particular.   Yesterday he lent me a torque wrench so I could torque the prop bolts, which I did today, along with the spinnner.