N14YT - Using the Plane!

Posted 7/20/2016

With the building days behind me and nothing but minor tweaks ahead, it is time to start enjoying the plane.  What better way to enjoy this cross-country machine than by venturing out from home for some short trips.

For the first time venturing out, I had a duty to do...time to get our campsites at OSH, and since that only takes a short time, I figured why not combine it with a trip for work.  The company I work for has various divisions and our Easter Wisconsin division is a 3 hour drive away, but if you're in Oshkosh it's only a 15 minute flight up to Green Bay.  So I grabbed a co-worker friend and headed for KOSH and KGRB for the day. I guess that officially makes this the first customer-built RV14 to land at KOSH!
The next day I had a little work to do as well.  Abby at Flightline Interiors makes what I consider to be the best travel cover available for RV's.  She had sent me an RV7 cover to try on the RV14 just to see how close it was, and surprisingly it wasn't that far off.  But, it wouldn't cover completely all of the windows or come down far enough on the sides, due to the much more spacious cabin on the RV14, so it needed a bit of tweaking to get it made for the RV14.  I flew down on my first IFR x/c in the RV14 to meet her at the American Champion aircraft factory, where they were nice enough to give us a little hangar space for a short time, to adjust the pattern on the cover to meet the RV14 needs.  She does a lot of work for American Champion as well as the RV community, and many more groups.  I wanted to get my RV14 cover done before Oshkosh, and we were very short of time, but yesterday I received it and tonight I can test fit it and post some pictures in a follow-up. The trip down and back had a lot of good IMC time, and was perfectly smooth.  I was sad about one thing, and that is that there was nobody there to share it with, as this was one of the most beautiful IFR flights I've ever had, with multiple layers to fly through. Note: I'm not really much into selfies, as I don't think that ugly mug is one to share much, but with the view out the back window, I think I'll be taking a few of them in the RV14.  This plane lends itself well to photos!
Back at the hangar I decided now that the wheel fairings were done, it was time to get a few pics of the 2 planes together.  I really like that I had a perfect paint match for them, as these will be spending a lot of time flying together I hope. Below I got done with a pair of padded side covers for the throttle quadrant, to hide the inner mechanism.  They are easy to cover with vinyl or leather and a bit of foam, backing board, and velcro.  I have yet to install my 2 USB charger ports in the side as well, when I get time. After that I stuck the RV14 in the old hangar to see how it fit.  It's going to be hard to figure out which hangar each plane belongs in, but it will mostly come down to which one flies the most often or which one needs any maintenance.
Then it was time for another trip back to OSH with both planes to pick up one daughter who drove the camper over for us.  It was a proud moment as a husband and father when your wife gets her first flight into KOSH, accompanied by your competent student pilot daughter, and you're not in the airplane with them.  It was a pretty busy time at OSH, so while we were able to fly the RIPON - FISK transition portion of the NOTAM in (the notam was not in effect at the time), they were unable to accommodate us doing the "Jack Roush" approach (NOTAM page 10) to runway 18L.  But we were able to land 18R via a right base entry and land on the dots.  Great to have them make the trip with me in formation. Below you can see we got some excellent aerial photos of N14YT on the trip!