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RV-6 N198G Jordan and Holly Grant

JordanGrant

Well Known Member


Finally got some pictures with the wheelpants/fairings painted, so I have one that's worthy of the Virtual Hangar.
 
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Data Dump

RV-6, Standard Kit
Started: Sep 1998
Finished: Jan 2006
Build Time: 7+ years, about 2500 hours
Superior XP-360, built by Aerosport Power
Lightspeed Plasma II+
Airflow Performance FI
B&C SD-8 (no vacuum pump!)
Vetterman Crossover Exhaust
Hartzell Blended Airfoil Constant Speed Prop
Dynon D10A (upgraded from original D10), with remote compass and OAT
ACS2003 Engine Monitor (I think modern version is called AFS2500)
Apollo/Garmin GX-60 GPS/COMM
Narco Txponder
AnywhereMap w/XM weather on a Dell PDA
Sony CD-Player
Classic Aero Leather Seats
Lightspeed 20XL Headsets
Painters: Holly and Jordan Grant, in our backyard shop
Paint: Sherwin Williams JetGlo Snow White and Flight Red. Black Acryglo trim.
3 coats of color + 3 coats of clear all over.
Paint scheme was shamelessly copied from Brent Onstott's beautiful RV-6.
 
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Favorite Picture, Leadville, CO

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My wife and my Grandma

These are pictures of my wife (Holly) taking my 83-year-old grandmother (Barbara) for a ride. Gramma soloed a Piper Cub in the early 40's and served in a Flight Service Station during WWII. She has one "save" on her record for helping a B-17 crew that was lost one night in southern Idaho. She's a magnificent lady and she had a ball flying around with my wife (also a magnificent lady).

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Stunning

Congratulations Jordan,
The best of both worlds.......an RV 6 and a pilot/friend/lover wife!!

Kind regards,
Pierre
 
Hello

Hello Jordan and Holly,

You certainly have a beautiful RV-6! I had the pleasure to meet Holly about 6 months (?) ago at a small airport near Columbus where she was giving a ride to a local enthusiast. Holly will remember me as flying a scroungy looking white/yellow RV-6. (I bought it that way, and it is a work in progress)
If you guys ever bring your RV to the west coast, my wife and I would be happy host to a guided tour of Northern CA.
PS. I fly for World Airways and have spent alot of time at Osan. Nothing like the fragrance of kimchi on a summer afternoon!
 
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New Home for N198G (and its owners)

The Grants' Virtual Hangar has not been very active in a while. My wife has been flying some, but I've been in Guam for the past 3 months or so. That, of course, was about 2 months after returning from Korea, and moving to Idaho, etc. Not a lot of opportunity for flying. In the meantime, though, my wife and I are building The House in Idaho. We bought some property on an airpark and we're building our house with a hangar built-in for our RV-6. I'm sure there are a few others out there that are thinking about living on an airpark, so I thought I'd post a link to our construction pictures. Maybe some of our stuff will help give you ideas for your own house.


 
The Grants' Virtual Hangar has not been very active in a while. My wife has been flying some, but I've been in Guam for the past 3 months or so. That, of course, was about 2 months after returning from Korea, and moving to Idaho, etc. Not a lot of opportunity for flying. In the meantime, though, my wife and I are building The House in Idaho. We bought some property on an airpark and we're building our house with a hangar built-in for our RV-6. I'm sure there are a few others out there that are thinking about living on an airpark, so I thought I'd post a link to our construction pictures. Maybe some of our stuff will help give you ideas for your own house.


Congrats, Jordan. Where at in Idaho? Looks like it must be Southern Idaho somewhere, but I'm always curious where the good airparks are for retirement someday!
 
Idaho Airpark Info

I had a couple of questions about our airpark, so here is some additional info. We bought a lot on Red Baron Estates airpark, which is located about 20 miles east of Boise. It's about a 20 minute drive down I-84 to get downtown - very easy. If you look at the Google map on the Picasa pictures (i.e. click on the picture of our house), there is an icon showing exactly where the airpark is.

Red Baron is a very new development. We have a nice asphalt-paved runway and there are about 30 lots on the field. All the lots are at least 1.5 acres, with a few that are 4+ acres. Right now, there are only 5 houses (including mine) that are completed on the development. Two of them are unoccupied spec houses that were built about a year and a half ago. Most of the rest of the lots are for still for sale - expect to pay about $100K for one. There is only 1 airplane actually flying off the runway right now, and he uses a hangar that was on the field before it was converted to an airpark. The other homes do not have hangars, yet - ours will be the first one that is full-up. For anyone that is interested, you can call the developer, Ken Casper, at 208-794-7077 for details. He plans to have a website up sometime in the near future, but I don't think its up yet.

There are only 2 other airparks in the vicinity of Boise. "Sunrise" has been around for decades, is pretty small, and has long since been fully developed. The other one is located another 15 minutes or so farther from Boise. They have 10 acre lots and is more appropriate if you want to have more room for horses or similar things.

Cost of building here in Idaho (as anywhere) can vary a lot with what you're trying to do. Our home is going to be about 3000 sq ft of living space, plus about 3000 sq ft of garage and hangar. We expect to spend about 350K on building costs - so that comes out to somewhere around $120/sq ft. But don't forget, that includes an enormous amount of unfinished space, as well.

If you would like to know anything else about Red Baron or building here, I'm happy to share. When our house is done, we will be adding it to the RV Hotel listing and we'd be happy to have anyone over - especially if you're interested in building at Red Baron. I think we'll probably have room for another 2-seat RV in our hangar, as well, if you visit.

Cheers,
 
Baby Seat Mod

After my daughter was born, I did a little baby-seat mod so we could fly around with the little one. Basically, I added 2 beefy angles to the rear spar carry-through, then bolted anchor points (courtesy of the Home Depot aircraft supply aisle) to the angles. After that, I added some steel anchors to the existing seatbelt anchors that would allow a tie-down strap to slip through. (pictures at the link below make that easier to understand). The end result was the ability to very securely tie down a baby-seat base (2-piece type) in the baggage compartment. Probably over-built, in fact, since it secures way better than it does in my car.

Since I wanted it to be rear-facing (like in a car), that left little head or leg room for the kiddo. While she was very little (less than 6 months), she fit just fine, though. Now she's 7 months and has outgrown it in this configuration. We're about to upgrade her baby seat to a forward-facing type, so I'm going to see how well that fits when we get it.

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Happy Baby Flying

Pics of Alexia's aviation experience below. She has about 25 or 30 hours now. (keep meaning to start a logbook for her and haven't done it yet...)

Test fitting - she's very excited to go flying. Note the head cushion so she doesn't bump her noggin.
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We put "mickey mouse ears" on to help with noise, set up the blanket to keep out the bright sunlight, and made sure to have a "binky" she could suck on for descents (to preclude sinus pressure). She usually falls asleep at about 6000' and stays asleep for pretty much the whole flight. I think the vibrations of the plane just lull her to sleep. We've only had 1 "meltdown" in flight, and that was due to a diaper blowout. (Where's that one in the emergency checklist?) Once discovered, we made an immediate landing, cleaned up the problem, and pressed on.
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Getting ready to put her into the plane. Thank heavens for the tip-up slider mod! This is at Smiley Creek, ID - one of our favorite destinations. Think of it as landing on a very large, manicured fairway - the best grass strip I've ever seen.
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Pics of Alexia's aviation experience below. She has about 25 or 30 hours now. (keep meaning to start a logbook for her and haven't done it yet...)

Test fitting - she's very excited to go flying. Note the head cushion so she doesn't bump her noggin.
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Brings back memories of my son in our first 6A. Biggest problem was after he got old enough to manipulate things he didn't want to wear hearing protection. I even had a third set of intercom jacks wired in the back...He wanted nothing to do with a head set on his head. We had to resort to making custom sized earplugs and fitting him with a tight fitting and tightly tied hooded sweatshirt to keep him from digging them out of his ears.

I am happy to say that at 15 years old he is now happy to wear a head set and he can fly an RV quite well also.
 
ACK E-04 Upgrade Lessons Learned

Finally finished my ACK E-04 ELT (406 MHz) upgrade. Here are the lessons learned for future upgraders:

Previous Installation
-I was upgrading from a standard AmeriKing 121.5 ELT that was installed in the right wingtip. The AmeriKing remote control panel indicator was installed in the instrument panel.

New Installation
-ACK E-04 replaced the old ELT in the right wingtip. I thought a lot about the easiest/best installation for the new ELT, and settled on the wingtip again. Here were the considerations, both pro and con, for that location:
1. It was easiest to install it there because the remote-control wiring was already run, the antenna mount was already drilled, and a conduit is installed for running the GPS signal cable. Much better than crawling around inside the fuselage.
2. The antenna is also located inside the wingtip, mounted horizontally on the last rib. This location is NOT compliant with the directions to install close to vertical, which is a con. This probably decreases the efficiency of the broadcast to the satellite receiver.
3. I still like the antenna in the wingtip as the best compromise in location. RVs often end up upside down after emergency landings in rough terrain. If I put the antenna on the top of the fuselage, it could end up buried underneath the aircraft and block the signal to the satellites.
4. In the wingtip, the antenna can see the sky rightside-up or upside-down. It was easy to keep the antenna cable run very short there as well, hopefully maximizing the chances that they stay connected in crash-landing scenario.
5. Its a nice bonus that the antenna is hidden inside the wingtip, making for a low-drag and clean installation.

Lessons Learned:
1. ACK originally advertised that the new E-04 would work with existing AmeriKing Remote Control Indicator Panels. Turns out that they often do NOT work and ACK is no longer recommending it. Mine did not work, and ACK graciously sent me a new remote control head free of charge.
2. My GPS signal is from an Apollo GX65 GPS/COMM. I got a successful test signal after some consternation. You have to go into "setup" mode on the GX65 and select MovingMap mode for your serial output, make sure you have good a GPS fix, and then you should get a good test response. If you have a solid light in your test fixture, you are hooking up the LED backwards!
3. The connector and cables for the RCPI are the same style (RJ11) as my old AmeriKing, but the ACK uses a male connector out of the ELT where the AmeriKing used a female connector. That necessitated a female-to-female telephone adapter (RJ11) from Home Depot to connect the cable to the ELT - except the wiring in a standard telephone adapter is backwards. You can reverse the connectors on your cable if you have the right tools, or you can take apart the female-to-female connector and reverse the wires inside that fairly easily.
4. Also, the mounting holes in the AmeriKing RCPI were about 1/8" farther apart than the ACK - so I had to elongate the mounting holes in the panel to make the mount screws fit. The primary square hole worked fine, though.
5. The battery in the ACK RCPI is different than the old AmeriKing, too - so you can't reuse it.

Other Notes:
I strongly considered buying a small puck GPS from Byonics and installing it in the wingtip as a dedicated GPS source for the ELT, and as a bonus I could use it for APRS tracking if/when I get to that. Might be something to consider if routing a GPS signal is problematic for your installation, for whatever reason.

Hope it helps someone,
 
Headset Hanger

Wow, really haven't updated the Virtual Hangar thread in 7 years, huh. Maybe time to share something.
Here's my latest upgrade - 3D-printed hanger for my brand-new Lightspeed Zulu headset. I wanted to keep it off the floor and out of the way when getting in/out of the RV. Pictures below.

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