September 21, 2020
Kit Inventorying Day 1
Lots of unwrapping, counting, and marking off parts to begin the “official” build.
Author Archives : Chris French
September 21, 2020
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August 19, 2020
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…
August 8, 2020
Panel Fabrication and wiring – the beginning…
I did not blog daily while working on the panel fabrication and wiring. This post is a photo summary of the time working from May 7, 2020 to August 8, 2020.
August 1, 2020
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…
July 24, 2020
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…
June 4, 2020
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…
April 29, 2020
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…
April 20, 2020
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…
April 9, 2020
Van’s RV-10 Avionics, Instruments, and CAN Bus map
Much time spent researching mounting locations and equipment resulted in the following location map for N241VP Downloadable PDF
April 3, 2020
What’s next? Hmfp, I don’t know, build an airplane?
I am someone who always needs to have a project in my life. With my time with SV Strikhedonia coming to an end, ideas had been bouncing around in my head. For years the idea of building an airplane popped up but the commitment and idea of pounding tens of thousands of rivets after drilling, deburring, and dimpling seemed daunting.…
March 22, 2020
The end of the line
The night that Anna and Jessica left PV I talked to my wife. She was greatly concerned as the shelves were bare at the grocery stores in Minnesota. So the next day I headed to Walmart where I stocked up on all the dry good staples, just in case I was stuck for months in Mexico. My plan was to…
March 19, 2020
Just before the shit hits the fan
My daughter Anna and her friend Jessica flew in to PV and what a packed week we had. Once they were settled in and had a good night’s sleep we headed over to Yelapa where we hiked both waterfalls and enjoyed this beautiful spot. But on the way, a stop for snorkel and kayaking at Los Archos was in order.…