Back in the saddle
Went down to the hangar to work on the plane a bit, but ended up going up for 1.0 on the Hobbs. I first re-installed the EFIS. I sent it back while I was in Hawaii. The AHARS needed a firmware upgrade. It’s easy to update the EFIS firmware with the flash card slot, but the AHARS requires special equipment.
I also finally put the covers over the center floor area and fuel pump. And put the Classic Aero carpet in place. It looks really sharp.
Final task was to check out the fuel pressure transducer. There’s some troubleshooting steps I followed that involved measuring the resistance at the sensor when applying different air pressures to it. That all checked out fine. I put it back together hoping it would just work, but the pressure is still reading high. Next I’ll try reading the fuel pressure while applying air pressure to the sensor.
With all of that done, I figured I deserved a little stick time. I put the cowl back on and pulled the plane out of the hangar. The weather was supposed to be cruddy today, but it ended up being fairly good. I had to dodge rain storms a little, but the flying was good.
I’m still breaking in the engine, so I went up to 4000′ and buzzed around at 24″/2400 RPM. While I was going up and down the Snoqualmie River Valley, I checked the ground speed on the GPS. Comparing that to the true airspeed (TAS) on the EFIS, it was reading about 10 knots high on the way up and a little less than 10 low on the way back. Looks like the airspeed is reading correct +/- 5 knots. I’ll check it out more precisely soon. I’m hoping the wheel pants and leg fairings add some serious speed. Right now cruising at 24/2400, I’m getting about 140 knots TAS. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but I’m hoping this puppy cruises around 170 knots at that power setting.
After that flight I had about 5.5 on the Hobbs and 3 on the tach. Not sure if the first oil change is supposed to be 5 Hobbs or tach, but I think I’ll just go ahead and do the oil change. Better safe than sorry.
Speaking of oil, I’m really not burning much oil. It went from 8 down to 7.5 in the first flight, burned 1/4 quart the next flight, and almost nothing since then. Can the engine really be breaking in that fast?? Let’s hope so. I’d like to get on with some of the more interesting flight testing.
One final note, I ordered a Halo headset from Quiet Technologies. Everyone on the RV forums raves about them, so I figured I’d give it a 30 day trial. So far I’m impressed. It’s much more comfortable than a headset and actually sounds better to me.