Well the day finally came! Gary Towner the DAR came out and spent about 4 hours going over the plane and paperwork with me. My Bearhawk passed with flying colors and I received my Airworthiness Certificate.
Later that afternoon (between monsoon storms) I took it up for it’s first flight.
I finished checking the torques on all the bolts and installed the rest of the cotter keys. It is completely finished!!
I called my DAR and scheduled the certification visit for July 10th. So I patiently wait!
I liked how some others put a little halon fire extinguisher here, so I did the same.
I painted the wing root fairings and installed them.
My brother Timmy came out again to help mask for the stripes.
I hate painting on a vertical surface so I was super careful and did a lot of very thin coats.
We had a few little masking issues but we were able to correct them all. Stand back at least 6 feet and you can’t see any problems at all! 🙂 So it’s a solid 6 foot paint job!
Now the big test to see how light it is! I borrowed some scales from my brother in law at ATP. Thanks Tim!
Cati helped me position the scales and lift the tail to make sure it was perfectly level for the weighing.
It came in at 1489 lbs with a very forward CG! I’m very pleased!
The Vetterman Exhaust required these supports. Again I thought this would be a quick job, but when it’s 115 outside I don’t work quite as quickly as I would like. Each support has a flexible hose in the middle to allow movement since it’s clamped to the engine mount.
The inertial reels that most people use for the Bearhawk aren’t available anymore. So I ordered these from Hooker Harness. They don’t quite fit on the original attachments points so I had to create a little extension.
So after we thought we got the right mag timed and working, it started having all sorts of trouble. So I decided to bench it and go for an electronic ignition. After a bit of research I settled on simplicity of operation and installation along with availability. That led me to Surefly. I gave them a call and they were very eager to understand my needs and send me a unit right away.
After a quick installation, I timed the Surefly (which took about 5 minutes), and started it up. It started and ran perfectly! I’m looking forward to the increased efficiency.
Again I got task saturated and only got one picture! Anyway, after setting the correct tension on each flight control I use the double wrap spiral method to safety wire each turn buckle.
Timmy drove over to help again. Wow these landing gear fairings used all of our arts and crafts skills!! Made us feel kinda stupid. It was very hard to get that leading edge to wrap at just the right angle.
