Author Archives : Chris French

QB Fuselage/Wing consolidation and counting


Whew, so many bags of nuts, bolts, pieces, and parts. A disappointing part of the process is there are many bags with the same parts. So much of today was consolidating the same parts. Quick build fuselage and wings are 100% counted and thankfully no new missing parts.

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Empennage start, err back to inventorying


So today I planned to start the empennage but on the first page I found a missing part. In one of the bags there was supposed to be the three different VS brackets. Unfortunately I had two VS-1010-P parts. Ugh. A call to Van’s put me on the list for the replacement part, which should have already been delivered to…

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Kit Inventorying Day 2


Only one missing bag of parts and five back-ordered items. Unfortunately one of the back-orders is the nose gear, which on other models in the past has been a 4 month back-order. Ugh.

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AeroSplat EZ Cool Cowl Flap Custom Parts


In reviewing Ed’s Good Plane Living installation post of the AeroSplat cowl flaps I wanted to go a step further with a design that had fewer pieces and easier assembly. I came up with three custom parts (Van’s P/N F-10108C will be used and F-10108A will be modified to add angle brackets but that won’t require custom parts). Here are…

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Sailor on sabbatical…


F**k me. It is so hard. So very hard to let go of SV Strikhedonia. She has been a huge part of my life during the past six years. Taken me on adventures I could never have imagined, kept me up late at night on anchor watch, and grown in me a deep appreciation for Mexico and her people. Along…

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Strikhedonia is sold :(


Best to back up a bit first… With Strikhedonia in Puerto Vallarta and a delivery captain hired it was a waiting game for good weather and delivery crew availability. A month rolls by, no set date. A second month rolls by, still no set date and talk of other deliveries being ahead of Strikhedonia. Huh?!?! So I began the search…

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Premium Mogas in an RV-10? Looks promising


I have begun researching the possibility of running 93 octane, non-ethanol mogas in my RV-10. Reading posts and forums it seems like it should be no problem. 1. My intentions is to run one tank 100LL and the other tank 93 mogas, like others are doing. I’d use the 100LL for take off and landing and the mogas for cruising…

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Aerosport Aluminum Insert Panels – for Garmin G3X on an RV-10


Another big project, putting together CAD files for the aluminum interior panels with all of the avionics and lighting components. Prior to this project I had not worked with CAD software in a very long time and had to learn LibreCAD. No doubt the dimensioning is very amateur but the placement and component dimensions were checked and double checked. I…

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Garmin G3X Avionics Schematic Drawing


Wowza, putting together these documents was a heavy lift. Rough guess is 150 hours of research, drawing, and validation. Initially my plan had been to hire Stein Air to draw my schematics but Covid-19 gave me the time to do the research and work myself, and in the process save $1,000. You need to be very technically proficient to take…

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