More flying around
The weather wasn’t so great Friday, so I spent the entire day on the leg fairings. I got both assembled and fitted great, but didn’t do the alignment yet.
Saturday the weather was flyable, so I took the fairings back off and headed up. There was a thin scattered cloud layer at about 5000′, so I got above that and flew around. I did some more airspeed indicator tests at various speeds doing a simple back and forth with the direction of the wind. The indicator is within 3-4% of actual. Not bad. I’ll do some more accurate testing once I get a better day for it. I continued flying down around Olympia and then back.
Coolest part of the flight was the approach to Renton. A Cessna called in from the north end of the airspace (East Channel Bridge) and then I called in from the SE (Lake Youngs). Initially the controller told me to enter the downwind for 15. He then called right back and said if I keep my speed up I could have 33 with a 4 knot tailwind. Oh sure, I can keep my speed up. I’m getting more comfortable with what the plane can do, so I kept the speed around 130 knots until within 2 miles. I pulled the power back until flap speed and then dropped all the flaps. Once the plane was at 75 knots, I let it drop like a rock to the runway. Leveled off, touched down, off the runway before I ever saw the Cessna landing opposite direction straight in. Sweet.
Second flight of the day was similar where the controller gave me a straight in clearance to land right after a Cessna and taken off for a touch and go. I got to the runway and landed before the Cessna turned final. It’s a blast being able to scream past the spam cans.
In between flights I grabbed some lunch and decided to look further into the still heavy left wing. I took the wing tips off and aligned the aileron trailing edges with the tooling holes. I messed around with the ailerons for a while before I remembered that the elevator position affects the alignment as well. I then moved onto the flaps and aligned them with the ailerons. Sure enough, on the heavy side the flap was high. On the other side the flap was low. I fixed those two issues, but now the flap doesn’t line up the same on the fuselage. Strange. I’m sure the wing incidence is right, but I’ll check that as well. On the second flight, the heavy wing issue was better but still not completely fixed. I was going to do some stability tests, but I can’t completely trim the plane to fly hands off. I think I need to tighten the aileron trim springs as well. And I’ll try squeezing the aileron trailing edge on the light wing some more.
Just over 20 hours now total and everything is working great! Halfway through the test period. Now it’s time to concentrate on the wheel and leg fairings.