Made a trip to Grady’s GloCustom paint shop to check on progress of good friend and fellow builder Bill C's plane. Grady does excellent work and is well experienced with the various Van’s models. Also made a trip over to the Van Cave and visited with Doug Reeves for a bit—really nice guy—without his efforts in creating the Van’s Airforce web sight, I (like many others) would really be struggling with building. Also, saw Danny King and his “Beautiful Doll”—gorgeous RV-8. We had a good visit about—wait for it---RV-8’s!!! Heck of nice guy and a real craftsman as evidenced by his plane. So, with renewed inspiration, I got back to shop and began a list of items to finish up before moving to the airport. I didn’t like the ELT antenna whip mounting, so I re-did that. The nylon tubing between the clamp and the bulkhead tended to crush, so I fabbed a couple of spacers from some excess tubing (think it was from the brakes). I used a small nylon washer between the spacer and the bulkhead so there could not be any grounding of the antenna. Next, I installed the batteries in the remote cockpit indicator and the buzzer of the ELT. These will both have to be changed out in 10 years—maybe sooner if the ELT is activated for an extended period of time. Next up is to finish pitot and AOA lines under left floor board so that the floors can be permanently installed.
