Oil change..

With 15 hours on the engine, I needed to change the oil. I drained it right after my last flight, so now I just needed to change the filer. I couldn't get the filter off using the nut on the back of the filter, so I ran to the auto parts store and bought a oil filter wrench and that didn't work too well since it wouldn't grab the filter will enough. After struggling for about 30 minutes I finally got the filter off. New filter on, added new oil, tightened the oil dipstick tube since it was leaking a bit. I put the cowl back one and went flying for an hour to make sure all was well. I landed once after a couple of circuits around the pattern to make sure I had no leaks or anything.

Hobbs: 16.4 hours

7.7 more hours of flying

With Joe's big thumbs up for a great flying, my confidence level was high. Joe wouldn't be able to get out to the airport until 12:30, so my plan was to fly all morning. The plane had fuel in it from the night before, so it was ready to go first thing.

The weather wasn't much better than yesterday. Ceilings were aout 6,000ft and the temp was about 14. I decided to strech her legs just a bit more today. I told Sandi I would fly around the pattern a couple times to make sure everything was still good and then headed to Emporia (KEMP) 45 miles away. At 160mph, it sure didn't take long! :-) I bombed around the area for about an hour and a half and decided to land, pee, and refuel.

Now I'm really feeling good, so I decided to fly the other direction in my flight test area, over to Butler (BUM) and once there, I headed south to Ft. Scott (FSK) and then over to Chanute (CNU) and then Coffey County (UKL) and then back to Ottawa (OWI). WOW!!! That didn't take long! I have a pretty big test area but maybe it isn't big enough! I bombed around a little more, buzzed our neighbors house and flew until I had to pee again. :-) I was also getting hungry. I landed about 12:30ish and Sandi ran to town to get some food.

On my way to Emporia

On my way to Emporia

10 minutes later Joe showed up. I told him it was flying great and to have at it. I told him to feel free to go where he wanted (within the test area of course ;-)) To give him some actual flight testing to do, I had him do some speed runs/test. He came back 2 hours later.

Results of flight test.

Note: With the extreme cold, we limited slow flight to the pattern only when landing, so we didn't get any stall or slow flight testing done.

I fueled her back up and Joe went back out for another hour. Sandi had been at home for awhile and her 'feelings' brought her back out to the airport. She asked if I had heard from Joe (since I was obviously not up flying). I said I hadn't so I hopped on the Unicom and called him. He quickly replied saying he was out by Emporia. Things were OK but he was getting some moisture on the windscreen. A few minutes later he called back in as he was getting some more moisture and he thought it might be oil, so he was heading back. 5 minutes later he called and said we could calm down, it was just ice and it melted went away after he got away from Emporia. WHEW!

After he landed we got to talking and it sounds like he picked up enough ice on the windscreen to obscure his vision somewhat. What he thought might be oil, was really just the moisture freezing. He found I-35 and decided to follow it in case things go really bad but it shortly dissipated and all was well. WHEW!

He had to head out for dinner with the inlaws, so I went back up for .7 hours staying close to the airport in case I started getting any moisture. (I didn't all weekend.)

I tucked the plane away with 15.3 hours on the hobbs. Allen at BPE wants the oil changed at 10 hours and then every 25, so I pulled the cowl off and drained the oil and headed home.

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.

Flights #2 and #3

The weather is being uncooperative for flying. It snowed all day Saturday, so no chance of flying.



This morning dawned very cold (20's) but not a drop of wind to start out. Sandi and I were headed to the airport about 7:30am. With the temperature being cold, Allen at BPE suggested I block off some of the oil cooler, which I did.

Flight #2:
I got everything in order and pulled the plane out about 8:30 and warmed her up. Checklist complete and engine warmed up, I departed. She accelerated quickly and was off the ground in no time. I started circling the field at 3,000ft. After doing a dozen circuits around the field I landed to check things out under the hood. The #1 cylinder was giving me some low readings.

I pulled all of the plugs out and cleaned them up and swapped the plugs on #1/#3 to make sure I didn't have a bad plug. I also discovered on the first flight of the morning that my EGT probes for #1/#3 were switched, so I fixed that and then buttoned everything back up.

Flight #3 lasted for about 40 minutes. The winds had picked up and it was pretty rough out. The #1 cylinder was running about 250F while the other three were all running 380-390. The EGT was 1100 on #1 and the rest were 1250-1400. I knew it wasn't a plug issue now and after talking with Allen, it looks like #1 is just getting too much airflow. I also noticed my oil temp was about 150F, probably cooler than it should be.

I've put some aluminum tape along the front side of #1 cylinder to see if I can get it running warmer. I'll block off a little more of the oil cooler to see if I can get the oil temp up.

Hobbs now reads 2.1 and the GPS flight time is reading .7hrs

First Flight!

It's Wednesday, February 1st.. and I've spent the last two days getting the airplane put back together after the inspection and correcting all of the issues found during inspection. We had just recently returned from a 4 day trip to San Diego and were heading back out of town on Friday to visit Sandi's family in Illinois. I wasn't rushing myself to fly but I wanted to get the first flight out of the way.

The weather was perfect, the plane was ready. Sandi and I were able to get out of work about 3:00 and head for the airport. Arriving around 4, I pulled the plane out and warmed up the engine awhile on the tarmac and did a little taxing around. I shut down the engine, checked for leaks and put the cowl on. Time to go fly.

Sandi and Tony (airport manager) walked out to the runway while I started up the plane and started to taxi. As soon as turned on my audio panel, I had a stuck mic indication. It had to be the passenger PTT because that was the only thing I had touched recently. I shut down and removed the PTT button and then taxied back out.

Visibility is fantastic with the tip-up canopy... the weather was absolutley great! There was barely a hint of wind and the skies were blue. The sun was still in the sky but setting slowly. I did my runup and went through my checklist. I taxied into position and took stock one more time... full throttlel and away we go!

I got the wheels off the ground and nothing bad was happening so that was a good sign. As I was climbing out a small flock of birds passed in front of me and the thought "O great.. first flight and I'm going to smack a bird." Fortunately they quickly moved out of the way. The airplane was handling nicely but didn't seem to be climbing very well. I glanced at the RPM and saw 2150 or so. Seemed a little lower than it should be. After climbing to 2,000 ft (1,000 AGL), I turned crosswind and made the call that I was going to land. The low RPM was making me a bit nervous. I flew the downwind, bas and final. It was REALLY hard to get the plane to slow down, coupled with the fact that I was leaving a little RPM in. My final was fast but I had a lot of runway to work with so I just held it off and let the airspeed bleed off and squeeked the landing!

Taxi'd back and shut down. Sandi was a bit of a wreck since I didn't follow the 'plan' and landed without telling her what was wrong. I sat in the plane a few minutes and absorbed the first flight. I was happy but the quick flight wasn't what I was planning for. :-)

So.. I can officially say that I built and FLEW my own airplane! Looking forward to spending a lot more time in the plane.



Image animation of first flight.



Total Flight Time: .1 hours