Boy, between the adventures of your water pump
and now this, I know who to suggest to Laura Crook as a Candidate for the
next "Lighten strikes 1, 2, ... times award" {:>)
Well
since you bring it up........ I got struck again today. I bought a new pressure
switch today. Installed it and did a ground run up with no leaks. We decided to
take it for a run to 8000'. Another RV-6 followed us up to take some pics. We
were level at 7500' with everything mostly normal - oil temps were a little
higher than comfortable from the climb but were slowly dropping down. EWP was
still working great. The other RV finally got up to us and slid along side to
begin filming video. About 5 minutes later, (after oil temps had returned to
normal) they told us we suddenly began trailing smoke. (they later told us that
it looked exactly like a smoke injector from the exhaust). We began an immediate
descent and called for urgent landing clearance. All engine temps and pressures
still looked good and if we hadn't been told we'd have seen no indication at
this point, but then suddenly we had a little smoke in the cockpit. At this
point we decided to kill engine power to eliminate any fuel supply to any
possible fires. As we were directly above the field we were confident that we
could easily dead stick it in. I figured if we shut down we could always start
it again if necessary on final, but if we ran it out of oil we might not have it
available to us when we wanted it. The RV-9 has a fantastic glide rate and the
most problem we had was bleeding off the altitude. We floated to a gentle
landing, where we were met by 2 firetrucks with sirens wailing. After
determining that no fires were present they escorted us back to the hangar
(under tow). We quickly determined that it was again the pressure switch that
failed and like you, I decided that I didn't need it again. Ever! So we removed
it, put a plug in it, filled the oil and went flying again for an hour of
circuits which while bumpy (partly due to turbulence, mostly due to my landing
technique :-), were uneventful. The tower guys must have been shaking their
heads when we headed out again so quickly after an emergency
landing?
On another subject, I'm beginning to see higher oil temps
on climbout than previously. Ed's cooling calculator with my numbers plugged in
shows exactly what I appear to be seeing (thanks Ed), with the oil cooler not
quite able to handle the climb power. I understand that the program doesn't
account for the higher cooling load from the turbo, and I'm also using Ford evap
cores, but it's still interesting to see it so close to my actual results.
Well
I've gotta get to bed as I plan to do this again all day
tomorrow.
S. Todd Bartrim
Turbo 13B RV-9Endurance
C-FSTB
http://www3.telus.net/haywire/RV-9/C-FSTB.htm
"Whatever you vividly imagine, Ardently desire, Sincerely believe in,
Enthusiastically act upon, Must inevitably come to pass".
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