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Oshkosh 2019

Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2019 10:48 pm
by phil_thomas
Any Express owners heading up to Oshkosh this year? I'd like to meet you if so.

Thanks,
Phil

Re: Oshkosh 2019

Posted: Wed Aug 07, 2019 6:40 pm
by jchisolm
Did any express show up at the show?

Re: Oshkosh 2019

Posted: Wed Aug 07, 2019 7:38 pm
by phil_thomas
We didn't get to go up until Saturday and since that was the end of the show most of the homebuilts had already left. Much of the homebuilt parking was empty. There may very well have been some Express aircraft there, but I didn't see any. We wound up driving ourselves as the plane just came out of inspection so I hadn't had much time to fly prior and we also didn't have the time off work to allow for any delays for weather.

How's your plane coming along?

Re: Oshkosh 2019

Posted: Sat Aug 10, 2019 12:54 am
by jchisolm
Plane is going very slow right now. That pesky work thing having to pay the bills keeps getting in the way. Plus been to hot to work out in the shop. It's insulated but still sits in the mid 90s on a hot day. 2 or 3 more weeks and it will start cooling off at night and I can get back out there.

I've been looking at the main gear attach procedures. One thing I noticed with the old wheeler gear mount, there was a "picture frame" that you bolted to the outboard side of Rib R. With the new gear you have the 2 attach points. I remember Larry Olsen telling me I needed to cut off the "ears" from the wheeler gear and use that on the back side of Rib R. The 2000 gear has the inboard window backing plate. Without the plate the 2 attach point are independent. But with the frame it ties everything together and (to me) the stress gets distributed across all 5 bolts. Without it I think you can have asymmetric loading that could cause some of the cracking issues.

I'd have to find the documents Larry sent me but I know over the phone he said I needed to use the old wheeler gear part as a backing plate. I think that got lost at some point and installs happened with just the 2 separate attach points and the small aluminum backing plates. Also, as far as I can find, the ply counts on Rib R and J were never increased even though the max weight was upped from 2500 to 3200.

Re: Oshkosh 2019

Posted: Wed Aug 14, 2019 10:05 pm
by phil_thomas
Yeah, it's been hot in Nashville, too, but probably not as hot as Texas. We had an oil leak pop up and spent time out on the ramp tracking that down as we're still on the waiting list for a hangar. After wiping down the engine and another test run, we discovered leaks on the valve covers so got those old cork gaskets replaced. Kinda laughed that we needed to put on sunscreen to work on the plane.

Not being able to completely visualize what you're talking about on the landing gear brackets is one of the frustrating parts of not having built the plane myself. I've seen the parts you mention in some of the build docs here on the site, but with the revisions of the plane over the years, it's hard to know what the latest and most up to date procedure is.

Hope it cools down soon for you to be able to get back to working on the plane! I'm hoping for that for me, too! We have to replace the ELT in ours (old Ameri-King failed it's test) and the new 406MHz one came in today. I need to create another forum post here to see what others have done to create the required ground plane for the antenna in our planes since the new ELTs have to be use with an approved antenna, even on experimentals.

Re: Oshkosh 2019

Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2019 11:20 am
by jchisolm
http://www.ackavionics.com/wp-content/u ... E_PAGE.pdf

Has some info on making a ground plane. I did a similar setup and put the elt just aft of aft cabin bulkhead (sta 162 I think it is).

Cold front today - only 97F. It's Texas mid August - gets this hot every year. I dont know why people get all surprised at 100+ F days.
Texas born Texas bred

Re: Oshkosh 2019

Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2019 12:26 pm
by jchisolm
Here is a post on the old forum with some pictures about the original main gear vs the new style main gear

http://www.express-builder.com/old/foru ... 1120162727

Re: Oshkosh 2019

Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2019 8:03 pm
by bmckinney
I had several posts in that old forum regarding Rib R and the strengthening. Back then, Larry had suggested to do this (steel "window" plate around opening).


Back on the Oshkosh 2019 topic,we spotted Kevin Frank's Express (N411KF) a few rows over from us in the N40. Also saw N713GM and N92734.

Here's an picture from the old forum from 2002 that I took. There was a full row of Express's.

express.jpg
express.jpg (88.77 KiB) Viewed 36940 times

Re: Oshkosh 2019

Posted: Tue Aug 20, 2019 5:20 pm
by jchisolm
Nice collection of pictures. Thanks

Re: Oshkosh 2019

Posted: Wed Aug 21, 2019 7:31 am
by WINSGER
the rides looks amazing and in fantastic condition.