Thanks for the kind words once again.
A couple of weeks ago I had my second real scare in the aircraft, and the largest of the two. The first was when a bit of coaming foam jammed a rudder cable for a minute, but freed itself. That was disconcerting.*
This latest was when I replaced the valve cover gaskets and the left one didn't seat properly and shifted on takeoff. Climbing out and diverting from the pattern early to let someone else take off, I did my usual scan of the aircraft to see a river of oil coating the left wing! I immediately told the traffic what was going on, did a nice little three quarter circle, and bounced her in for a very short landing for the first turn off.
She still had two quarts of oil left when I shut her down, temps were fine, as was the oil pressure. No harm done to the aircraft. I replaced the valve cover gasket, making triple sure the contact cement to hold in in place was at full tackiness before installing it on the engine.** It's amazing just how much oil goes through the valve covers.
The same day I had to do a little circle on the taxiway before the run-up area to allow a guy to land. First time I ever needed brakes, and it would have been nice to have them.
So yesterday I went up to the airport and put the brake shoes back into the housing, adjusting them to be very light, enough to slow and stop the aircraft from taxi speed in about a third the distance of rolling with the engine off (but with the engine on).They will hold the aircraft in place at and just above idle.
The oil leak was very annoying outside of the whole engine wrecking/forced landing possibilities. The Hobbs meter is showing 39.1 hours. While I actually have more flight time than than in the aircraft and have crossed the 40 hours to leave Test Phase, I decided long ago to use the Hobbs for that just to make the books look logical. I'm looking forward to putting the magic words in the logbooks and travelling to exotic places outside of the 25 nautical mile circle around the airfield such as Shelby County Airport, Fort Payne, etc.
Lots still to improve on the aircraft, though:
First, I'm going to pull the fuel level cork, dry it out completely, and put a thin film of JB Weld on it. None of the varnishes I've used on it have held up, and once again it's sodden and not floating properly. While I'm a firm believer that the only time one has too much fuel on the aircraft is when it is on fire (I generally fly with a full or near full tank), I also think it's a good idea to know how much fuel one has on board the aircraft.
Second, I'm going to have to pad the back of the seat. While she's a fun aircraft to fly, having a sheet metal back means it gets a tad uncomfortable after an hour. I have a cushion made for cars right now, but it's not cutting the mustard.
Third, those wheels need covering. While there were Nieuports flying around without them during the war, she'll look a lot better with them. I'm going to do them at the same time I epoxy the cork, as the plane will be down while the wheels dry.
Fourth, the coaming is still s--t. It's minor, but irritates me to no end that I seem to lack the skill for what should be a minor task.
Fifth, time to touch up the paint on the metal bits. I've got some Krylon flaking off here and there, owing to a poor job of priming the metal. I may resort to stripping it off, lightly etching, re-priming, and re-painting.
All told, though, I'm pretty satisfied with the aircraft. She does everything as advertised, both good and bad, and is just enough of a handful to make things interesting without being scary. Between her German accented French and my Southern drawl, we've come up with a common language to speak to each other with.***
Yes, there are some other minor things I want to tweak as well, but they're well down the list.
* Flipping the aircraft wasn't scary in the least. There wasn't any time to get scared, as it happened too fast. "Wait, what's going on here? Oh, I'm upside down. Crap."
** This is fairly standard practice in VW engines, as the cork gaskets can move away from the valve covers to allow leaks when seating them. Applying a bit of contact cement prevents that.
*** I figured out that while she's French, she must come from Alsace. She responds to German without question, as if it's her first language. And yes, I'm a nut who talks to his aircraft using bits of three languages.