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We departed on a
pretty decent day and headed West to Rapid City. I'm
not sure if I'd do that again, just because the airport is
in the flat lands, where the winds pick up...you'll see
more about that below. But, if you're prepared, it
should be a good destination. As we approached, you
can see a storm cell right near/at our destination.
That storm cell sat there for HOURS, barely moving.
We watched it all the while and as we arrived it was just
outside of the airport area enough that we were able to
get in. The only storm cell in the area, and it was
right there.
On the ground, we quickly got our rental car and headed to
Keystone, a city in the mountains that's very close to Mt.
Rushmore. We had an awesome pizza on the balcony
while we took in the atmosphere of the town, and soon were
on our way to find camp for the night.
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Due to our later arrival, we decided to stay in a
campground that night. There are many to choose from but
we stayed in one just West of Mt. Rushmore...the first one
we came to. It was a beautiful location. In
the a.m. we woke up and took a swim to feel clean, and
headed to town to eat at Peggy's Place. Good food!
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Later that morning we loaded up our backpacks and headed
into the hills. One of our favorite places to see on
our last trip was the Needles Highway, and Sylvan
Lake. If you ever get a chance go see them
both! Our goal was to find a trail to hike in on
that we could camp overnight. Although this is
pretty easy to do, it all depends on which trail you
choose. If you're in the Custer National Park, you may not
be able to camp off trail, but there are many other places
you can. We decided to just do a hike first. We
ended up with a pretty good ascent up a long trail to the
top of one of the mountains. The weather was hot,
and our generally out of shape conditions combined with
the heat, made for a good hike. At the top of the
mountain, suddenly the breeze picked up and I thought "how
beautiful! Now it's comfortable!". Well, that didn't
last long. About 10 minutes later the FBO called me
and told me that a gust of wind just picked up, and my
gust lock had failed...and my rudder was banging around on
the plane with some damage. Now I wasn't so
happy. My gust lock has lasted through many big
storms, but today it failed me. Later, I was to find
out why....the handle was just wedged below the stick,
along the floor. If you get just the right push on
the rudder, the pedal tries to move backwards and if the
handle can slide sideways, it just flips out of place, and
then it's all over. I was able to permanently
fix this flaw after I got home, by removing the center
screw by the floor, putting a piece of PVC cap about 1"
dia, in that spot with the same screw, and now I have a
socket for the handle to fit in. This should prevent
any sort of recurrence.
More on the rudder below.
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Later in the afternoon, it was getting pretty hot, and we
loaded up the backpacks and found a trail we could hike in
on, near that same campground from the night before.
We ended up hiking in about a mile, and going uphill to
the top of a big hill where we had smooth soft ground, and
set our tents. We had a good dinner and then went
looking for an old mine on the map. We found signs
of it, but didn't find the actual mine. It was a
great couple of nights though, with hardly any ground
lights to make it hard to see the stars. The sky was
black and everything was very clear.
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Well, after the rudder incident, we decided not to stay
another night, as they hangared my plane for me, and we
wanted to inspect it and see if we needed repairs before
flying. I found it to be damaged in a few
places. A little bend in the trailing edge that I
was able to remove, a hole in each side of the rudder
skin, easily patched with tape and no worries about
further spreading, and then some skin damage where the
hinge brackets cut into the rudder skin. The problem
with the plans is that the rudder stop is held on with
rivets, and the rivets are too soft. As soon as the
rudder bangs hard, it shears the rivets right off.
Once the stop is removed, the rudder can be damaged. My
stops were completely gone (but we had the parts).
Builders including Van's, often now put screws in these
locations, as they are much harder to shear. So we
replaced our rivets with screws, and I had to add doublers
to those areas of the rudder. Still, with the skin
punctures and all the other stuff, I decided that a winter
project will be to rebuild a brand new rudder, so that
everything is match-painted and new again. I had
added rudder trim after flying, and so even there the
paint wasn't 100% perfect around the rivet heads. I
also couldn't get the wire run right up the rudder.
This will give me the opportunity to clean that all up,
and next year I'll install the new rudder. Until
then, it will fly as is with the minor repairs.
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