Over the 10 hour mark
Weather cooperated, so I went up for two flights this afternoon, 1.0 and 1.5. The total is now just over 10 hours.
My goal on the first flight was to get up to higher altitude–convenient since the lower altitudes were bumpy. A bunch of little cumulous clouds were forming at 5,500′. Unfortunately, I had to go quite a ways to get out from underneath the Sea-Tac class B airspace. Once I did, I went up to 8000′ pressure altitude. Much smoother. I did some straight and level runs with the throttle wide open, but I don’t think I was getting the peak performance. The manifold pressure was 22″ or so. Max true airspeed (I haven’t verified the airspeeds in flight yet) was about 145 knots. Air temps at that altitude were below freezing. Luckily, the heater works really well as I had shorts and sandles on. Hey, it’s 65 in Seattle. That’s shorts weather. Maybe not so good for flying, though.
After an hour, I had to come back in for fuel as I didn’t take off with full tanks. After stopping at the fuel pump, I had a little trouble starting up again. I think it was some fuel vapor problems. Back at the hangar, I took the cowl off. No oil leak still. Yeah! I did find the prop cable is now rubbing on one of the oil cooler hoses. I had to re-orient the fitting in the oil cooler to keep it from hitting the engine mount. Now it rubs. I’ll have to put some spiral wrap around it or something.
For the second flight, I cherry-picked some tests to do from the first 4 test flight cards. It was mostly slow flight with turns with and without flaps. At first I had trouble maintaining speed and altitude, but eventually got better at it. The plane really handles great. I was getting close to stall speed once and felt the buffet. It’s a really obvious indicator of an impending stall.
I flew up to Arlington in the process of doing the tests. On the way back, I turned on the iPod and autopilot, kicked back, and just enjoyed the view. And what a view it was. A little hazy, but the mountains were spectacular from 6,000′.
I messed around with leaning the engine as well. The EGT peak detection function on the AFS is really quite nice. As you pull the mixture back, it finds the peak temp. Then as you make further adjustments, it tells you if you’re rich or lean of that peak. Quite cool.
I’ve got next week off between jobs, so I’m hoping I can burn off some more of the remaining 29.8 hours. My CHTs are still a bit high, but never go above 420°F. Still, I’d like to figure it out. I think air is leaking around the baffle seals.