Monthly Archives: September 2015

Chapter 21 – Strake Leading Edge Kit

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After getting settled back in from being at Rough River this past weekend, I set about to do a proper inventory of all the strake ribs and fuel tank baffles from the Feather Light Strake Leading Edge Kit that I bought off Nate Mullins back in late 2013 and finally just picked up.

Here’s a shot of them below back AT MY HOUSE! The pieces all have a shiny covering on them which is just an extra layer over the peel ply.  All the parts will need a final trim before final installation, but having these parts pre-glassed and pre-cut should save me days on the strake build.

Feather Light Strake Kit

I cleaned up the inside glass of the leading edge pieces, and then set up for a pic before they were  stored away once again.

Feather Light Strake Leading Edges

 

 

Rough River 2015 – My First!

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Well, after years of attempting to make it to the annual Canard Gathering at Rough River, Kentucky I was finally able to make it!  I arrived Friday early evening and met a bunch of my building buddies and hung out for a couple of hours before heading off on another hour+ track to Madisonville, KY to meet my buddy Richard who has been storing my Feather Light Strake Leading Edge Kit since late 2013.  (I’ll show pics of the kit in the next post).

Rough River 2015

Rough River 2015

After spending the night at Richard’s place, I packed up the Feather Light Strake Leading Edge Kit Saturday morning, went out to breakfast with Richard and then took off back to RR to spend the day with fellow Canardians!

Rough River 2015

I met a bunch of the Old Guard while walking around checking out the planes: Terry Schubert, Nick Ugolini, Vance Atkinson, Bill James, Jack Wilhelmson, just to name a few.  And of course Chrissi and Randi (the “Cozy Girrrls”) were there scooting around on Segues.

There was a home builder with a Turbine Legend that gave a few people some incredible rides, and he showed off his incredible airplane a bit too.  In the pic below he’s doing an amazingly fast fly-by:

High Speed Flyby RR 2015

One point of note that could not go without notice is the number of VariEzes that were at Rough River this year.  Now, since this is my first RR I obviously don’t know how many normally show up, but according to a bunch of folks there, this was apparently the most VEs that have shown up in a long, long time.  To commemorate the 8 VariEzes that were present, they had the owners line them all up to get some good pics of the lot:

VariEze's at RR 2015VariEze's at RR 2015

Finally, what would be a canard gathering be without a salute to canards by a formation of EZs:

EZ's in Formation RR 2015

I had a blast and it was both wonderful and highly motivating to see all those canards there (although apparently there was just a little over half the number of planes that normally show up).

Probably even more motivating to get me back to work was the sheer amount of driving it took to get there!  That in and of itself is reason enough for me to knock out this bird so I never have to DRIVE to Rough River again!  Cheers.