5.3 hours of test flying
Where to begin.... yea... I'm flying an airplane! It really sunk in this weekend that this thing really exists, I really did it and it really flies. I'm still getting used to this idea. :-)
Our friend and flight instructor Joe flew in from Tuscon on Friday to help me fly off hours and do some flight testing over the weekend. (He did first flight on Ray's RV-9A) Saturday morning dawned partly cloudy and BITTER COLD! It was 6 degrees at 8am with a wind chill of -27F! I called Allen at BPE and asked if that was too cold to fly with the engine. He said yes.. but if you could get the oil temp up to at least 160 it would probably be OK. So I blocked off about 90% of the oil cooler.
Since Joe was in town to fly, I let him have it first. We went over all the instruments and controls, he did a pre-flight walk around. I sat in the plane with him and went over the engine monitor and how it works. We went through the start up checklist and played with the monitor while the engine warmed up. It took probably 20 mins for the oil to get warm enough to take off. Sandi and I watched him depart.
Joe!
Joe flew for just under 2 hours staying close in to the airport. He radio'd in some numbers at various times. It looks like the tape I put on the front of the #1 cylinder solved the cold cylinder problem. My #3 EGT is running about 200 degree's higher than the rest. With the extreme cold, the front two cylinders were running quite a bit cooler than the back two.
After he landed, he ran out to grab some lunch and I pulled the cowl off to do an inspection. Everything looked good. I had a small amount of oil on top of the cable bracket that looks like it is coming from the oil screen fitting. Other than that, all looked well. When I tried to drain fuel from the gasolator, I could only get some drips. That made me nervous, so I pulled off the bowl and cleaned it out. There was a small amount of little crud in the bottom and what looked like a small spider egg sack on the screen. I reassembled and all was well.
With the cowl back on, I sent Joe back on his way. He flew another hour and a half and then I jumped in and flew it awhile. I felt comfortable venturing out from the airport a bit now and headed south to another small airport and back. Did some turns both shallow and steep. Just generally puttered around getting the engine broke in.
Joe's brothe Jeff flew in with their Skyfly (experimental, retract, tailwheel) and called up to see if I wanted to do some air-to-air photo's. I was up for that but I wanted to get some fuel first. I landed and filled her back up and found out the Jeff didn't really have enough time to do any real flying, so I sent Joe back up with the plane and he flew with his brother in formation on the way back to their home base. The did one low pass down the runway which was very cool. (I have video). He said they also did some tight formation stuff. Joe got pictures of his Skyfly but not sure if Jeff go any photo's on my plane or not.
Joe finished the day doing some great big lazy-8's in the sunset... it was gorgeous.
We started the day with 2.3 on the hobbs and ended with 7.6.
Our friend and flight instructor Joe flew in from Tuscon on Friday to help me fly off hours and do some flight testing over the weekend. (He did first flight on Ray's RV-9A) Saturday morning dawned partly cloudy and BITTER COLD! It was 6 degrees at 8am with a wind chill of -27F! I called Allen at BPE and asked if that was too cold to fly with the engine. He said yes.. but if you could get the oil temp up to at least 160 it would probably be OK. So I blocked off about 90% of the oil cooler.
Since Joe was in town to fly, I let him have it first. We went over all the instruments and controls, he did a pre-flight walk around. I sat in the plane with him and went over the engine monitor and how it works. We went through the start up checklist and played with the monitor while the engine warmed up. It took probably 20 mins for the oil to get warm enough to take off. Sandi and I watched him depart.
Joe!Joe flew for just under 2 hours staying close in to the airport. He radio'd in some numbers at various times. It looks like the tape I put on the front of the #1 cylinder solved the cold cylinder problem. My #3 EGT is running about 200 degree's higher than the rest. With the extreme cold, the front two cylinders were running quite a bit cooler than the back two.
After he landed, he ran out to grab some lunch and I pulled the cowl off to do an inspection. Everything looked good. I had a small amount of oil on top of the cable bracket that looks like it is coming from the oil screen fitting. Other than that, all looked well. When I tried to drain fuel from the gasolator, I could only get some drips. That made me nervous, so I pulled off the bowl and cleaned it out. There was a small amount of little crud in the bottom and what looked like a small spider egg sack on the screen. I reassembled and all was well.
With the cowl back on, I sent Joe back on his way. He flew another hour and a half and then I jumped in and flew it awhile. I felt comfortable venturing out from the airport a bit now and headed south to another small airport and back. Did some turns both shallow and steep. Just generally puttered around getting the engine broke in.
Joe's brothe Jeff flew in with their Skyfly (experimental, retract, tailwheel) and called up to see if I wanted to do some air-to-air photo's. I was up for that but I wanted to get some fuel first. I landed and filled her back up and found out the Jeff didn't really have enough time to do any real flying, so I sent Joe back up with the plane and he flew with his brother in formation on the way back to their home base. The did one low pass down the runway which was very cool. (I have video). He said they also did some tight formation stuff. Joe got pictures of his Skyfly but not sure if Jeff go any photo's on my plane or not.
Joe finished the day doing some great big lazy-8's in the sunset... it was gorgeous.
We started the day with 2.3 on the hobbs and ended with 7.6.
posted by Matthew at 9:22 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home