Flying with Dan Checkoway

My dad goes out to California on business from time to time (he works for Northrop Grumman), and this time he was fortunate enough to be able to meet Dan Checkoway, who wasn't too far out of the way. Dan was nice enough to take him up in the RV - here are lots of pictures of this adventure (most of which don't really need captions). The interesting part (for me, since I didn't get to go for a ride) is the technical stuff that Dan told Dad about. It's here, too, at the bottom of the page, and of course there are gratuitous pictures to illustrate.

Dan also has a page up recounting this adventure, too.

Dan with N714D	Climbing out of the Chino Airport
Flooding in Chino Hills.	More flooding.
Flooding at the Corona Aiport. Lots of planes stranded here, you can see them all (sort of) lined up on the east end of the runway (left side of the picture).	This is Dan, as you've probably extrapolated.
And then, by process of elimination, this is my dad.	I'm not really sure what all of this is, really. Stuff near Chino, I guess.
Undoubtedly, the captions on Dan's site are more relevant since he knows what this is a picture of.
	Nice sunset!
Redlands Airport - home of MAF, a mission organization that I did an internship with a few summers back. They're not going to be in Redlands much longer, though, they're moving to Idaho.	Plane all tucked in for the night!
These GPS tracks are here for the "ain't it cool" factor. These are GPS tracks of there they went and a graph of the alititude, too. The drive to the Chino airport is included in this track, so don't come away with the impression that Dan was flying so low to scare the local population. These lose lots of detail when they're scaled down, so they're not.
Flight map	Altitude Profile
Okay, on to tech tips from Dan!
Panel layout on N714D. I like the way this looks, but according to Dan, the location of the compass (far to the left) is not ideal, as it's right next to his left hand throttle quadrant. Probably this compass location would be good if you put the quadrant in the center of the panel, though.	Detail on the flap pushrod hole. We were thinking about trying to cut this now, but apparently it's best to wait until the wings are mounted. It's sort of an incremental process getting it large enough and in the right place.
Platenut templates. Platenuts (or nutplates, I'm still not sure which) are a pain in the butt, and apparently getting these along with some flush rivets that have slightly undersized heads can make working with lots of nutplates lots easier. We'll try it and see.	Although Van's denies it, apparently, it's necessary to move the seats on a -7 tipper inboard just a bit so they clear the canopy rollbar. This is an unclear picture showing how the right seat clears the side of the plane.
Two interesting things here: (a) a place to put the headsets, and (b) some holes drilled in the rollbar for Dan's video camera mount. Dan suggests drilling holes like this before finishing out the plane - you'll probably want them for something or another once the plane's flying.	Access panel in the baggage compartment. Dan has this here because there was some difficulty getting everything through the standard place to run wires, etc. Not sure if we'll need this.
Interesting place for an ELT. Dan didn't want to take up panel space with this, but he says it's depends on the DAR if they let you get away with this. Seems okay to me.	Place for the iPod. I'm speculating about trying to put the plug for an iPod inside the map box . . . we'll see if that works. Dan's planning on changing this, actually - in this location it's pretty easy to bump if you're in the right seat.

Back to the Miscellaneous page.