The radio/audio equipment in N11018 works adequately, but it's a pretty clunky setup. COMs are done with an ICOM ICA22 which is an old (but dang good) handheld radio. This requires an ICOM PA82 adapter to feed/receive audio to/from my headset. Added into this lashup is an ICOM PTTSW inline pushtotal...
N11018 still suffers the side effects of oil blowby from the breather hose. It's not as bad as it used to be, but after so many flight hours there's enough sheen that dust and debris begins to stick. To clean it, I normally prop the tailwheel up about two feet, then roll underneath on a creeper to w...
The installation of an electric starter involved the removal of the airoil separator, and this has proven disastrous in terms of oil blowby. N11018 has become the Exxon Valdez of the skies. For those of you just tuning in, the airoil separator on my Continental O200 was mounted to the back of the en...
Santa Claus was good to N11018 this year and delivered a new (actually a lowtime) B&C Specialties BC3201 starter that was picked up from a fellow pilot who ran it on his RV4 for 42 hours. As all airplane maintenance/upgrade tasks go, <strong<emnothing is ever simple</em</strong and installing this s...
There's a funflying aircraft that's occasionally seen in the wild blue, and once spotted, it's immediately recognized for its missing cockpit. It's called a Breezy. The only thing that separates N11018 from "Breezy" status is the fact that it has a cockpit. Because of this, it can never be referred...
The baggage compartment shelf on N11018 was a fragile piece of 1/4" plywood at the onset of osteoperosis. Through normal flying and landings and incidental vibrations, it would often slide forward about 1/4" so the back side would no longer be sitting on the main support channel which would cause th...