Dave’s RV-7A Building Log

Adele had no school on Friday and our arrangements for her day fell through, so I took the day off. Weather was perfect, so might as well go flying. She had been asking to go down to Mount Saint Helens for a while, so that’s where we went. This is the mountain that blew it’s top back in 1980. From the air it’s still easy to see all the timber that was blown down. It all points away from the mountain. This is Spirit Lake that was partially filled in by the mud slide.

Here’s a bunch of pictures that Adele took as we flew around the mountain. You can see the dome in the middle of crater was steaming and/or smoking.

Mount Rainier and Adams were visible in the distance. You can also see Mount Hood in the background of some of the pics above. Really super clear day, obviously.

On the way back, we stopped in at Chehalis KCLS. I thought there was supposed to be a restaurant on the airport, but couldn’t find one. While filling up at the pump ($.30 cheaper than at Renton), one of the locals pointed us toward the golf course across the street from the airport. Turns out the guy makes the engine mounts, gear mounts, and nosewheel forks for Vans. Super nice guy, but I forgot his name.

Adele took a few pictures of me taxing over to the tie downs.

We walked over to the golf course and were pleasantly surprised by a nice little restaurant, burgers, fish and chips, salads, etc.

Adele flew most of the way home from there. I had her fly various altitudes and headings. I also slowed the plane down to let her feel how the controls get less sensitive at lower speeds. She’s a great little pilot.

Saturday I did some more tinkering on the plane. While leaning at high altitudes, I noticed I couldn’t lean as far as at lower altitudes without the engine running rough. Turns out when I sent the P-mags back, they reset all my settings. I had the advance set to 0 degrees, and they set it back to 4.something degrees. While doing that, I noticed the left mag was just slightly off in its timing–only 2 degrees, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to fix it. I used the blow-in-the-tube method to set it right. I also set the advance on both P-mags to 2.4 degrees.

With that done, I taxied out to the run-up area for a flight around the patch. During the run-up, the engine was really running rough, missing and sputtering, while on the left P-mag. I decided to go back to the hangar and double check my changes. Everything looked fine, and I tried the run-up again. Still too rough. By then I had other obligations, so I just hangared the plane and left frustrated.

Next day (Sunday), I went back down to the hangar. I decided to set everything back to where I knew it should work. I cleared the timing I put on the left mag, double-checked that the right timing was cleared and correct, and set both advance angles to zero. While I was at it, I decided to change to new plugs. I’m not sure what the recommended interval is for the plugs, but I’ve been running the same ones since day 1. Since they’re only $20 for a set of 8, I figured it was a good idea to swap them out.

Out to the run-up area again, and success. The engine ran silky smooth on either mag. She took off like a champ. I climbed up to 7,000′ to see if I could lean out the engine, but that was still unsuccessful. At 23″ and 2400 RPM, I couldn’t lean more than about 20 degrees lean of peak before the engine starting running really rough. Strange. Time to write to Emagair.

I still had a great flight. I practiced some zero G maneuvers in anticipation of finally calibrating the AOA. It’s pretty darn fun pushing over to zero G and then pulling back to 2 G. It’s a super fun roller coaster in the air.

That’s all for now.

It’s been a while since I updated this log, but then it’s been a while since I’ve been flying. 3 weeks ago I removed the P-mags from the engine and shipped them back to Texas for the latest firmware update. The version I had was supposedly rock solid, but I guess new problems surfaced when the self-powered feature of the P-mags are routinely tested during run-up. Since I like to test them before I take off, I decided it was a good idea to get them upgraded. The weather for the following 2 weeks was supposed to be lousy anyway, but I was hoping for a quick turn-around. Well, last weekend the weather was unusually perfect and it seems E-mag took 1.5 weeks to do the update.

As an added precaution when I re-installed the P-mags, I used the tried-and-true factory setting timing method rather than the blow-in-the-tube timing method. It seems that all of the problems with these units have been with the timing reverting to the factory setting. Might as well just use the factory setting in the first place. It’s not that much harder.

While I had the cowl off, I chased down another small oil leak to the oil temperature sensor. I tried tightening it at one point, but it was still leaking. This time I removed it, used some sealant between the probe and the adapter and used a new crush washer when I installed it.

Of course when I had the plane all back together, I needed to leave to catch my daughter’s soccer game. It was well worth it, as she scored the game-winning goal and another one to boot!!

Went back down to the airport Sunday, pulled the plane out without the cowl, and did a test run. It took a couple tries, but she eventually fired up as strong as ever. I was going to slap the cowl on and go flying, but it started raining. I still don’t trust the plane not to leak in some critical area in the rain.

I pushed the plane back into the hangar and worked on another project while I had the cowl off. Ever since my initial flights, I’ve had some aluminum duct-repair tape on the front of the front two cylinders to keep them from getting too much cooler than the back 2 cylinders. The tape has worked great, but it was time to replace them with the proper material. Interestingly, the tape didn’t even leave any residue on the cylinder. Great stuff. Much better than fabric duct ( a.k.a. Duck) tape.

I cut out two chunks of aluminum the same size as the tape, deburred, bent, drilled out some rivets, drilled the new parts, and installed rivets. It was actually pretty fun to work with aluminum again. The hassle was I had to remove the induction snorkel in order to get at the rivets on the left side. Looks much better now.

I put the cowl back on and the weather looked like it was going to hold. A few drops here and there, but the sky was fairly clear. Run-up was good. Take off was awesome. It was great to be in the air again. Of course the rain picked up as soon as I got away from the airport. I tried to avoid it, but it was raining pretty good. I cut the flight short. Greaser landing. Haven’t lost the touch. After shut down I looked behind the panel. No water, so that’s good. I think I’ll still try to avoid the rain.