Over the last two weeks I came closer to quitting the whole project than I ever have before. If you’re the one person (either my wife or my mother, I can’t tell from the IP address) who still visits this website, you’ve noticed that I had some issues over the summer deconflicting job stress from everything going on at home. Well, I guess that wasn’t the end of my problems, because I found myself back in the same “hurry up and do something” mode when riveting this aileron together. Long story short, I screwed up a couple of things. My TC didn’t think they were a big deal, but I wasn’t happy.

So…I put the left aileron aside for a few days and had some serious discussions with Ellen. She set me straight, as she usually does, and I decided not to quit. But I did decide to build a new left aileron. I didn’t want to be reminded of of my screwups.

One thing that helped my motivation level was a flight with my friend Jim in his new RV-7. I had a work trip to Seattle and lured Jim into giving me a ride with the promise of free food and beer. So…I arrived in Seattle and headed straight for Jim’s hangar at the Auburn airport. Jim had only recently finished his 40 hour flyoff and his airplane was sans pants. Didn’t matter to me, I was psyched.

Jim’s airplane has one of the nicest interiors you’ll see in an RV. The Classic Aero Design seats were wicked comfortable!

We took a quick hop to Chehalis, WA for gas, then bopped back up to Auburn. Jim tried out my new Lightspeed Zulu headset, he seems to like them.

The sun was setting rapidy, but I managed to snap a halfway decent shot of Mt Rainier before we encountered some severe helical turbulence..that was a lot of fun!

Aside from being just plain fun, this flight was my first opportunity to get some stick time in an RV-7. It was stable, yet responsive and the visibility was absolutely awesome…it validated my decision to build a tip-up. And most importantly, it gave me the shot of motivation I needed to reengage on my own airplane. That’s just what I needed…thanks Jim!