RV-9 Part I

Yesterday was a big day for me(DJ). My wing and fuselage kit for my airplane arrived!

Here is the truck it came in:


And here I am standing next to the boxes. The wing kit is the one on the left and the fuselage kit is in the two boxes on the right,


Okay, now for those who didn't know I was building an airplane, I'll explain a little, well maybe a lot. I have always liked flying with Dad and decided I wanted to build an RV-9. Now, Dad has an airplane (actually two), but I still wanted to build an airplane that was faster and more economical. So a few years ago I bought a tail kit for an RV-9, a fast two-place all aluminum low wing airplane made by Van's Aircraft. You can find more about the RV-9 here. There are four different kits, the empennage(tail), wing, fuselage, and finishing (canopy, landing gear, etc). I started working on it last winter and finished the horizontal and vertical stabilizer. I am working on the rudder now and was hoping to have it finished by now, but with the warm weather, we had to do more outside than normal. I still have to finish the elevators as well. A few months ago I ordered the wing and fuselage and they got here yesterday, as you already saw. I got the quick build kit for the wing which means the wing has been nearly finished. The fuselage is a standard build, which means when I open the box it will just be a bunch of aluminum parts with prepunched holes in them. Well I think I've described enough so on to some more pictures. If you want to find out more(like you would) you can look at the link I supplied.

Here is a picture of the horizontal stabilizer:


Here is a picture of the vertical stabilizer:


Here is a picture of what it will look like when I finish it:


I haven't opened the boxes yet, but when I do, I'll post some more pictures. Stay tuned for RV-9 Part II!

P.S. Here are a few pictures of Sam running I took the other day;



DJ

Beehive

Today we took the four-wheeler to the beehive(see post made in October). It was pretty nice out at 42, give or take a few degrees. We didn't see any bees, as you would expect in January. We found out a while ago we could climb the tree and look into the hive so I took the camera and tried to get some pictures. I had some success, but it is hard to take pictures through a small hole.

Well, here is the best picture I got. You can kind of see the combs that run across the tree.


This picture is to show why I had such a hard time taking pictures of the combs:


Here is a picture of Danny by the hole where you can look in at the combs. The tree isn't very easy to climb.


The draw where the beehive is located is rather pretty and has quite a few trees, as you can see in the following pictures. Don't be fooled into thinking there are a lot of trees in Eastern Montana though.

Danny, Sam, and DJ


DJ, Sam, and Danny


D.J.

Today the heat wave hit; 38 degrees! Seventy degrees warmer than it was Wednesday night (minus 32). It was so warm we put laundry on the line! Actually, the dryer quit last night so we put the laundry out this morning. We have a bit over one foot of snow.



The following are pictures that were taken last week when taking salt to the cows on Dry Creek.


If you enlarge the following pictures, you will see cows way up on the ridges.

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Bobbie