NetHeads, I guess I'm about to answer my own question. I'm sure there are lots of alternatives as to the best hinge pin lubricant, but I suspect that good old fashioned carnauba paste wax is hard to beat. My aft deck has been so difficult to install that up until today, I needed somebody to push on one side to relieve the pressure to get the pins in. It's been that way ever since the deck sat flat for a year or two waiting for the rest of the plane to get finished. When I took the deck off last Saturday, the pin was rusted, and it was all I could do to yank them out with vice grips and everything I could put into it.
Today I Scotchbrited the pins, and then wiped a quick coat of carnauba wax on them. It took all of one minute per pin. After that, both pins slipped effortlessly, with only finger pressure! Night and day difference...and I highly recommend it! I didn't want to use any oily kind of junk because of the mess. This stuff is clean. Try it...you'll like it! I got the plane back together just in time to fly it for an hour before dark. Five landings, and only one of them was something to be ashamed of. One of the things I did was move the static ports up to within a foot of the firewall, and that seems to have fixed the altimeter perfectly. Airspeed is better too, but still reads high at the low end. I attribute that to propwash, but further investigation is required. I did a stall to make sure I still knew where it would fall out of the sky. Most of my landings were in the high 60's over the fence, according to the GPS in calm conditions. I did my first "time to climb" using a stop watch today, and it took five minutes to climb 6000 feet off the runway. That was me and full fuel, and climbing at 120 mph. It should do much better at 90 or so, but that'll have to wait for another day. Gap seals should make a big difference too. I think my VSI is out in la-la land though, I'll take it out and test it in the next few weeks. Nothing I can do will make that thing work right, so I think it's just toast, just like my altimeter was. Also, I finally fixed the EIS tachometer function. I was having lunch with a table full of electrical engineers Friday and one them asked if the tach signal wire was shielded. Duhhhhh....nope. I replaced it with a shielded wire and now it's rock steady and accurate. No more 5000 rpm readings at cruise for me! My third Tiny Tach croaked last month with a grand total of 45 hours on it, so I won't be pouring any more money down that hole. It looks great on paper, but doesn't work for me. Any recommendations on a small digital tach? I added the EIS fuel totalizer while it was down, so maybe I'll have some real fuel consumption numbers soon. I also installed the backup battery in the tail....another UPS battery. Jim Hill finished swapping out some bad alternator parts on his plane, and we hope to deliver it to Little Rock sometime next week, with me flying him back. It's only 200 miles, so it'll be a 1.5 hour trip. Tomorrow I'm flying to south Alabama to visit my folks, landing on my father's grass strip. He told me to watch out for cows though! The weather's been fantastic, and is forecast to be that way all next week. Life is good... Mark Langford, Huntsville, Alabama see homebuilt airplane at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford email to N56ML "at" hiwaay.net
