Today’s project was church, flying and construction of my WVO heater.   

It is getting cold in Charleston, and the WVO does not filter when the temperature gets below 80 f or so.  The fats in the oil coat the inside of the filter bag and flow drops to almost nothing.

Since we do not have 220v electricity in the storage shed, I decided to go with a propane heat.  Most of this project is made out of junk I had around the house.  The old crab cooker was sitting unused in the shed, the handles are made out of an old bed frame, bolt were from my drawer, the cover from some extra flashing.   

 The only thing of value was the soft 3/8″  copper tubing I had to buy for the heater coil.

This is it.  I’ll take it over to Gerhart’s tomorrow and try it out.

The yard is started to open up.  I have been spending lots of time on the dozer.  I’ll tell you one thing, it is not as easy as it looks to operate one.  That beast beats me to death sometime and it is very hard to get everything level.   Doug is going to bring me a couple of big truckloads of soil so I can continue building up this area of my yard.

The garbage man had fun with the pile of brush I cleared out of the yard.  My pile filled an entire trailer.   Tomorrow, I’ll start again clearing out more shrubs.

I wanted to show you the before/after.  I decided to go with flush mount LED instead of having them sticking out of the dash.   

The clear lens hold the LED’s behind the dash.

I also decided I didn’t like the way the lettering was on the panel for the lighting control.  It has been redesigned for a different look and I am going to embed LED’s to indicate which lighting circuit is active.    The panel will be disassembled and sent back to Aerotronics for re-lableing.    It should take about 2 weeks or so to get it back.

Today was a VERY busy and interesting day for me.    After prep’ing the plane in the morning, I stopped by Jack Wilhelmson’s house at 1 pm.  Scott (his son) was married to woman he met on the internet a year or so ago (she was lived in St Louis).  Afer the decision was made, she moved to Charleston, immediately found a job and it is just amazing how well they get along.  Another internet success story. 

Scott was married in Jack’s back yard with just a few friends and family in attendance.

The happy bride and groom!

After the wedding, I stopped by Mariner’s Cove for their annual oyster roast/party  (2:30 pm).  I wanted to see Mike (my buddy) as he was organizing the event.  He is a great cook and I love stopping by his house when I am so lucky to be invited.    I had to leave before it really got busy.

At 3:30 pm, I took off for Myrtle beach for the annual reunion of Navy Cargo Handling Battalion 4 (dinner at 5 pm).    Flying is sooooo much faster than driving.  It only took 35 minutes of relaxing flight time to get there instead of 2 hrs of boring driving. 

NCHB-4 is the military unit I deployed with during Desert Storm/Desert Shield over 20 years ago.  We were overseas for 8 months. 

I can’t imagine it has been that long ago, boy how time flies.    Needless to say, it took a bit of time to start putting name/faces together.  What amazed me is at first I didnt recognize many of my shipmates, but as the night progress memories of them started re-emerging.    I really enjoyed the comradely and will certainly go again next year.

I stayed at the the Palace Resort right on the beach…..

This is Tom Bruder.  He sold me Sherman (my WVO car).    While talking to him I found out he has been following the blog to keep track of his old car.

A brisk walk on the beach Sunday morning

and it is off to the airport for a quick flight home…

It is Friday, and I finished the oil valve system for Geheart’s WVO system.  It looks and works MUCH better.  Took 1.5 days of work to complete, and the only part yet to make is an oil heater to raise the temp of the oil prior to filtering.  It is getting cold in Charleston (65-70F) and the oil is too thick to be properly filtered.

This looks MUCH better than what he was using!

My buddy Doug brought over a new toy for me to play with in the yard.  A bulldozer.  What fun!    Everyone should have one around.

I think it is about a 1/2 size model.

Doug had brought over some fill soil years ago and I never spread it out.  I decided it was time to open my yard back up and build a shed for my car and trailer.  The big piles of dirt had some large trees growing.  Man what a bunch of work I have ahead of me!

After playing with my new toy a bit, it was off to the aero club for the monthly EAA meeting.

Today was a great day.  I drove up to Summerville this morning to look at a 1995 Mercedes diesel.  It turned out to be a bust…  I then flew over to Mt Pleasant to meet up with Mike to fly together.  

He has a beautify acrobatic plane a IO-360 (180 hp) christian eagle.   Mike is taking his wife up for her fist flight. 

I bet she was happy when he did a quick barrow roll!

This is a great shot over Charleston with the new bridge in the background.  The crazy thing he kept asking me to slow down.    Mike had his plane firewalled at 130 kts, so we slowed down to 125 kts (2700 rpm) and  I was only turning 1900 rpm.    When I left him, I firewalled my plane and quickly pulled away from him.  I never felt so fast!

While I was landing, I noticed the lock gear down light was not lite and I could not cycle the gear down properly (about 1/8 turn from full down).   This seemed strange to me and  I felt the over-center device hadn’t engaged so I called the tower to let them know I had a gear warning light.   Sure enough when I touched down, the nose started to collapse.   Sort of progressively dropping instead of a quick drop, BANG.    I was almost stopped with I hit the ground.   The plane was moved off the runway, I lowered the gear (this time it locked) and taxied back to the hangar.

Minutes later the towered called me.  Within 30 minutes the S.C Flight Standards Office called for an update.  If only the rest of the federal government worked as well as the FAA.  

I told the FAA there was no problems, the plane wasn’t damaged, (it wasn’t) and everything was ok (it was) then immediately started tearing into the nose to find what what going on.  I was lucky this time, I only ground about 1/4″ off the nose bumper!

I removed the nose gear assembly and found the gear had stripped.  It was tuned 180 degrees (just flipped over) and it was as good as new.  Reassembled the plane, test all and decided it was an anomaly and watch for any warning signs in the future.    Another new experience to learn from.

One good thing about this event is that I now think I can install a electric nose lift in the plane.    I always thought there was not enough clearence in this area, but after disassembling everything, I now believe it can be done.

After fixing the plane, I stopped by to see a bunch of my retired navy officer friends at the yearly RINK roast at the Elks Club.  It was great seeing some of my old buddy’s.

Overall, quite a busy and exciting day!

Today was interesting.   At lunch I attended the official dedication of the soon to be built national wind generator gear testing facility which will be run by Clemson University.   Development of the facility is being funded through a $45 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy and an additional $53 million in private donations. Within days of announcing plans for a testing facility last November, IMO Group, a German company that makes wind turbine parts, announced it was opening a plant in North Charleston that would create 190 jobs.

It is  predicted thousands more jobs may be just around the corner as the Institutes 100-plus acre campus on the site of the former Charleston Navy Base grows.  When completed the site will be able to test the largest of  gear trains for off shore wind generators to failure.    One speaker said this is one of the most important sites for wind energy research and development in the country.  Plenty of pomp and circumstance for the crowd, but where is the food???

We were addressed by our senators, congress men and the city mayor.     The speeches were short and to the point.  Just how I like them.   Hum… food? It is lunch time.

This picture turned out interesting.  The piles of orange dyed sand (Clemson colors) seemed to glow like pots of gold.  Since the building is already built, officials will dig into the sand piles with shovels for the smiling money shot….

A local high school or possibly elementary school (maybe kindergarten?) band provided the dedication music…. all I can say is they tried hard.    Where is the feaking food???  I’m hungry.

The headrest area is done.  I now have the EIS, aft battery, fuel level indicators, power distribution (aft), electronic ignition’s and starting system finished.   This is how it looks before the beauty panel.

This is with the cover panel in place.  You  will never have to get to the electronics behind the panel unless a part fails.  I’ll letter the panel with the obligatory warnings, fuse sizes, etc to dress it up a bit.

The coils for the Lightspeed ignition are done.

BTW:  There WAS NO FOOD at the$98 million dollar dedication.  Cheap bastards……

Guess I’ll have to buy my own lunch.

Drove up to Summerville to get some waste oil for my car and Gerhart and I and a bunch of problems with the filter system

We had one bag rupture in the filter housing.  I guess it just got too plugged up and the pressure got to it.  After we finally got it out (in the blue tub), we installed a fresh filter and it came unhooked and plugged the system up.  Lessons learned…. put a pressure gauge on the discharge of the pump (to monitor the health of the bag) and install the new bags differently than what I did this time.

In both cases, it is easily fixed.

I FINALLY talked Gerhart into letting me install a proper piping system similar to the one I have in my shop for his tanks and filter.  It drives me crazy to have such a mess of hoses and loose pumps that trying to make things work when it can be properly engineered so easily.  On Saturday, I’ll make up the manifolds and install everything next week.  

I also flew from Charleston to Mt Pleasant to visit Jack Wilhelmson to help him install my fuel probes in the new cozy 4 he is building.    Although it is only about 40 min by car, I can fly there in 7 minutes from the hangar (plus 10 minutes to the house).    17 minue trip time is great plus I got to fly today!

The fuel  probes went in very easily with no problems.  It only took about 10 minutes /probe.  It is SOOOooo much easier to install them on a new build than on an existing plane which (which is fairly easy to do anyway).

No work done on my plane today….  bummer.  Tomorrow I’ll really hit it again on the wiring.

UHOOOOO…  Quick update

UPS delivered the instrument panel tonight.

After months of false starts and many tries I am positive this panel has turned out to be the labor intensive and totally frustrating EZ instrument panels ever made.   I must have spent at least 40 hr just lettering it, after which it was sent to CA for clear coating.  Everything was sanded off.    It was then sent to a avionics shop in Chino, Ca for printing.  They had it for months and it ended being sent back to me completely untouched.  

I then spent numerous hours custom fitting (back setting) the radios for a differnt type of look and fitting it to the plane (to make dam sure it would fit as expected this time) before being sent to Aerotronics in Billings MT for lettering.  

Aerotronics did a great job and it looks FANTASTIC!!  I cant wait to see it populated with instruments in the plane.

Extra side panels in case I need them.

Sherman’s fuel gage has started to give me problems.  It worked fairly well when I had a full tank of fuel, but now that I am getting low (I haven’t gone to a gas station since June 15th… 4 1/2 months) it is acting a bit flaky.  I did a bit of research and think it might be a bit dirty.  Gotta love the Internet and an old car which is very easy to fix. 

I found out the fuel sender is actually accessed from the back seat.  Take out the back rest and there it is hidden under a cover.  That’s probably why I never noticed it.

After dis assembly, I found the problem….  Crap.  Lots of crap which restricted the probes movement on the low end of the scale.  The gage readings now make sense considering the movement of the float was restricted on the low end.

I think it is a build up of algae (which grows in diesel fuel) and maybe some old bio-diesel and cooking oil.  Who knows.  The probe was carefully cleaned, reinstalled and everything is working great now.

Gotta love old technology.  Simple, it works (most of the time) and is repairable.

Today was spent giving new life to my grease car fueling station.   I just didnt have room in my shop anymore and I wanted to move it to the remote storage building which required disassembling everything and rebuilding it.  Just like I did with an erector set as a kid…  Every boy should have one.    Transformers, video games… who needs them.  It’s much better to build a log cabin out of Lincoln Logs or something out of Lego’s.  

I recycled most of the fitting and parts so the it was a very cost effective project.  This a is a picture of the manifold/pump station. 

I can now pump oil between my two storage tanks and from my transport tank.  Since I picked up most of the stuff for free I am very happy with the results.

The final resting home for the cart.  It wasn’t a total waste of time building it, but a learning experience….

The last and final step will be installing a pipeline from the shed to my driveway so I can just flip a switch and fill Sherman with lots of artery choking recycled grease.

After waiting for months looking and checking out phones, I finally decided upgrade to a data phone.  Yes, I am going over to the dark side of unlimited data, texting (whats that), talk, everything. 

I remember my first cell phone and how reluctant I was to get one.  I didnt want to be “tethered” to everyone via a wireless connection.  Just thenk about it, I’ll be a the beck and call of everyone and expected to be there all the time.   Years later here I am, enjoying the on line community and rapid pace of instant contact. 

I decided on the Sprint EVO.  It is at this point the most advanced and highly rated phones on any market (including the iPhone).

This phone has it all from HDMI out (which I can hook up and stream movies directly to a HD TV) to recording HD movies, video conferencing, 8 megapixel camera, creating a wifi hot spots for up to 8 computer, sending movies, pictures, EVERYTHING you can possibly do on a phone/computer.   It is also a 4G phone which means it’s data through put is as fast as a cable modem (if you are in a 4G market which will take about 2 years to get here in Charleston).   They are VERY hard to get right now as they are extremely popular and out of stock just about everywhere.

After changing my data plan from $59 to $79/month which takes affect on my next billing cycle (26 Sep) I was contacted by Sprint Customer support on my experince with the representative.  Here is my response:

— On Thu, 9/9/10, CustomerSatisfactionTeam@sprint.com wrote:

Thank you for contacting Sprint today and for giving me an opportunity to resolve your issue. I have made a personal commitment to provide my customers world class service. My goal is to make certain you can say YES when asked if your issue was addressed and resolved. Improving our customers’ experience and resolving issues on the first call are our top priorities.

If you require additional assistance, or, you believe your issue was not resolved, please reply to this e-mail. Your response will route directly to my manager……..

—-My response on 9/11/10

To answer your automate survey question, YES and NO.

YES your customer service rep did an outstanding job of changing my plan while retaining my bonus minutes which made me very happy.

NO  Sprint has some screwed up business policies which does its’ best to make me wonder if I am making the right choice by continuing my association with Sprint.

After making my decision to upgrade my plane I quickly went to the local Sprint store to buy my EVO.  They had one in stock now!  I was told if I purchased immediately it I would have to pay a $40 pro-rated amount to switch plans (to execute my more expensive data plan) immediately instead of 2 weeks from now on the Sept 26.  

 I also so found I could NOT purchase the phone now for future (since it is in stock) with out the plan.  If I waited 2 weeks, it might NOT be in stock and would have a plan without a phone.

 This is very upsetting to me as a customer, and a senseless business practice.  I decided to wait two weeks.  So here is the bottom line.

1.  Sprint policies once again upset me off as a customer.
2.  The EVO phone may not be in stock when my plan changes.
3.  I will keep my old plan (saves me $40), so Sprint does not lock me in under a new contract for 2 more weeks (I will be looking for something else in the mean time).
4.  Sprint does not get the benefit of me paying for a higher $20 data two weeks soon than scheduled which means Sprint loses $20 in profit.
5.  Allowing me to change plans immediately does not cost Sprint anything.
6 . Sprint once has proven why Consumer Reports ranks Sprint at or near the bottom in customer satisfaction and why Sprint has had a mass exodus of customer to competing services.

Now all said,  I am happy with the cell phone service I have had with Sprint for the past 10+ years.  It is little things like this stupid policy where I, as a customer, WANTS to upgrade to a more expensive plan, NOW, and being told I have to pay more to do so which makes my dealing with Sprint customer service painful and to be avoided…. 

In my opinion Sprint has one thing going for it…..price.    Sprint’s customer polices haven’t changed over the years which is sad after seeing how hard Sprint is fighting to retain a solid customer base.

It will be interesting to see if I hear anything back from Sprint.   Either way, the last EVO at the Sprint store has been sold.  Hopefully they will be more stock in the next few weeks.