Trip to John Spurling's

to have John check over and Tweak our ship

Our Trip to Oklahoma

Mission plan was to have John go over the ship to be sure it was all setup ok, install the Pro-Drive Electric Clutch and track and balance the blades for hovering.  No big deal huh but like everything else in life it wasn't to be as easy as we thought it would be.  And as Paul Harvey says, here's the rest of the story, lol.
        Leaving Donna (DaMama) at home to handle the shop, Brandy (our 14-year-old daughter at the time) and I departed Knoxville on Monday at 5am in the morning EST.  We pulled our new trailer with our 94 Suburban K1500 (not 2500 lol), and like the little engine that could it huffed and puffed all the way but it got us there and back much to my surprise.

  Chevy builds one hell of a truck lol.

  Just as we were almost there on the east side of Tulsa we almost had an accident when a car tried to go around us on the left lane which disappeared before he could do it.  When we all stopped there was about an inch between our trailer and the car and an inch between the car and the concrete wall, it was a brief but exciting moment.

      Fuel stops coming and going totaled $393.50, somewhere around 6 mpg.  We saved a bunch of money on food by a diet of Hostess HoHo's and a few burgers all week lol.  Good thing the Mama wasn't along huh lol.

     We arrived at John Spurling's hanger in Westport, Oklahoma, at 10pm Eastern Time 9pm Central Time. John was waiting at the hanger for us when we arrived even though we arrived a day early and we unhitched the trailer and then went to a local hotel called the Victorian Inn just outside Cleveland, OK. It was a nice little hotel and the folks there were very nice.

Tuesday 

       Departed the hotel at 7:30am central time arrived at John's hanger at 8am and unloaded the heli and began working on it.  First thing we did was to remove all cowlings except the rear tub.  John found several critical components loose such as cyclic control cables and in more than one place too, that part was really embarrassing to say the least and bias in the control cables weren't set to anywhere near enough. The tail rotor control cable was off in the foot pedal end, the pedals weren't setup quite right.  John shortened the control cable end somewhere around ¾ of an inch to allow the pedals to be setup where they should be to allow the proper travel.  John then had me change out several bolts that weren't long enough and on a couple and I just removed a washer to allow two threads to come out of the nut. Next we removed the passenger's side fuel tank, upper and lower heat shields, and the coolant reservoir.  Next we checked the tension of the cog belt and the alignment of the secondary clutch.

Chris, John and Clell

The belt was set a little on the tight side and the shaft alignment was out for sure.  I had made a wedge shaped 30 thousands shim to avoid filing the bearing housing more and once it was removed and a flat 30 thousands shim installed, it aligned perfectly.  Next was removing the upper engine mount and removing the upper engine mounting cup to install a different kind of rubber on it, as it is prone to wear if we left the one RotorWay provided in the kit.  This proved to be a bit of a problem since I had forgotten to bring a piece of it with me from Knoxville and thanks to Chris who, lucky for us, is currently building a RotorWay in Tulsa had the part we needed.  We knocked off on the ship for the night at that point and followed Chris into town at nothing less then warp 10-speed lol.  We got the new piece of rubber, fitted and installed it onto the cup so the blade glue could setup that night making it ready for installation the next day.   

The new piece of rubber is the same stuff used for the muffler straps, much stronger and longer lasting.  We got back to the hotel room about 11pm central time that night after hitting McDonald's for dinner at 10:30pm or so in Tulsa, Yum :o).

Wednesday
7:30 am we departed our hotel room and headed to John's hanger.  First thing on the agenda today was to install the Pro Drive Electric Clutch and just as John said it was a piece of cake to install it and everything went by the book just as John said it would.  The hardest thing about installing the clutch is R&Ring the left fuel tank and that wasn't really all that big of a deal, everything else is super simple even the wiring for the switch and light we installed in the overhead switch panel.  The way John's setup works is great and it looks and works just as advertised.  John also had me fix a couple things like the suction hose on the passenger's side because it was bent too sharp restricting the flow of coolant and he had me drill out the mounting brackets for the coolant tank and install rubber grommets in the frame mounts because there have been a few ships that have had the ears break off the tank from the frame flexing so be sure to do this or it may happen to your ship next.  The blades were setup fairly well with the exception there wasn't enough negative setting in the full down collective.  Lead lag was ok but John tweaked it anyway while he was checking everything over this night.

Thursday
D Day This day was an experience for sure :

Today the plan is to setup the main blade and tail rotor tracking and balance for hovering and do the in flight balance at a later date and time.  John caught me in another mistake which was having lock washers on the exhaust manifold bolts, a major no because when they got hot (2000 degrees) they would break off allowing the gasket to blow out.  He had me remove them pronto before we ran the engine at full RPM.  The way you handle these is each time you pick the ship up and hover for a bit it brings the engine to its highest temperatures, then when you set back down and shut down you tighten up one manifold while they're red hot, (I would have never known this if John hadn't told me.) Not doing this may be why some owners have the gaskets blow out resulting and possibly causing fires. While we were tracking the blades every time John ran the ship up to full power and then shut down I'd tighten one and the next time another and so on until we did this twice on each one. All 4 tightened up a lot and I'd have had all my gaskets blow out for sure with out a doubt about it without following this untold unwritten procedure.  We started tracking the blades and it didn't take John hardly any time at all to get them tracking perfectly and then it was on to balancing them which only took about 30 minutes to accomplish with the aid of John's electronic balancing unit.  All we had to add was 3 small screws, about 1-½ grams in all if I remember correctly to the slave blade.  The Tail Rotor didn't need any work done at all as it was right on the money in both tracking and balance. John was pretty amazed about that as was I since we balanced it when we built it and then sent it out to have it painted, just lucky I guess. We also raised one panel on each blade, panel 7 or 15, I cant remember, about 3 thousands and that put the blades trailing edges right on the money.

Me, Clell, doing the stick thing for the first time, saying I was a little bit nervous about doing this would be an understatement to say the least lol.  Seeing the ship run with the main blades installed for the first time was a WOW!!  to say the least and seeing it lift off the ground for the first time was a Kodak moment for sure, Oh What a feeling!!  :o)

 
3:30 pm Eastern time 
N162FA's First Hover

 


4:30 pm Eastern time
N162FA lifted off for its first Flight!!

John Spurling at the stick, he makes it all look so easy.

To sum it all up to everyone it was a great week for Donna, Brandy and I to say the least.  One thing I learned from this is be sure you have your ship checked out by someone like John Spurling or Homer Bell that is experienced with these ships.  Donna and I worked on our ship very meticulously and thought we didn't miss a trick in the construction and in a very short time John pointed out not just a few but Several things we had missed, things that to tell the truth about it I was embarrassed by to say the least.  There isn't any doubt in my mind if we took the ship from the step it was at ourselves we would have no doubt crashed and burned in a very short time if in fact we even managed to make it off the ground at all.  Special thanks to John and his family for giving up they're time and labors for us for 3 days from sun up to way past sundown.  You know it isn't really until you reach this phase that you can see what a really neat little ship this is.  I've had a few doubts about a few things but now all and all Donna and I are more than happy about spending our money and time constructing this ship with no regrets.  We have added a few mods to the ship such as the Pro Drive Cog Belt System and the Pro Drive Electric Clutch, and last but not hardly least the bearing temp gauge which we don't see as options but necessities, they add longevity and more importantly safety to this ship and were very confident with the rest of the ship.  The only thing that could make this ship any better we can see so far is adding John's new tail rotor setup and last but not least curing the shaft issue which RotorWay may have done by putting out the 35mm bearing setup, we'll all just have to wait and see how it goes.

The Trip Home

Wow what a week!     We couldn't have had a better week for our task.  The first 2 days were nasty, cold and at times wet and spent working in the hanger.  The 3rd day was great weather for tracking the blades and flying.  There was a severe storm coming for Friday for this area and then it would travel east across Arkansas and then Tennessee so we had to make sure we got outta dodge in the am Friday to keep ahead of it.  The weather channel was using the word Tornadic so imagining pulling that trailer with my underpowered Suburban through heavy winds got the better of me Thursday night so at about 1am in the morning central time we left the comforts of the Inn and headed toward Knoxville.  I had been up since 7:30am that morning and my mind just kept going over the day's events and to put it lightly I was pumped to the max so falling asleep wasn't going to be a problem lol.  Sometime around 7am Friday morning somewhere in Arkansas we pulled into a truck stop and tried to grab a catnap but Donna awoke us at 8am to check on our progress (since we forgot to call and tell her we stopped and she was worried we'd fall asleep driving) so we fueled up while we were there and hit the road again.  Pulling a trailer this size with such an underpowered truck was a chore to say the least. When semi's passed they would suck you into them if you weren't very careful and for some unknown reason the flatbed trucks really tear you up and buses are the 2nd worst thing to have pass you by. So far that's the only downside we've found to having an enclosed trailer.  We did however pass 3 motor homes and a Suzuki sidekick on the trip, not bad for 1,800 miles huh? Well off to the next phase of the RotorWay venture, certification of our ship, well let ya'll know how it comes out.

Clicking our heels all the way back saying theres no place like home, there's no place like home....lol.

   Clell, Donna, Brandy, and Karo
  Knoxville Tennessee

  N162FA@aol.com

After we got home Friday we went motor home shopping Saturday morning and bought us one. Then we began running the gauntlet on setting it all up.  We had to install Power levelers, backup cameras and a new setup called a Tuff-Tow for handling the tongue weight of the trailer so we will be able to tow it with an extended motor home without tearing it in two.  It was a month or so before we got it all going on so we could make it to Sun 'N Fun's Chopper Town.

Clell and Donna        CDJ DLH