Joe,
Congrats....on having the world's most expensive leaf blower!
Seriously, know you must be proud.
Wish you continued success.
Bryan

-----Original Message-----
From: Rotary motors in aircraft [mailto:flyrotary@lancaironline.net] On
Behalf Of jewen@comporium.net
Sent: Friday, July 03, 2009 11:00 PM
To: Rotary motors in aircraft
Subject: [FlyRotary] First Start

Today I reached a mile stone on my Velocity / 20B project.  The many hours
of research, planning, building, etc paid off today as the 20B came to life
this afternoon.

About 9:30 this morning, Ed Anderson came by and looked over my
installation.  After finding no major deal breakers we prepared to start up
the 20B for the first time.  At first there was no life.  Started the
routine troubleshooting - simulate injectors - OK, simulate spark - OK.
Well what about the CAS.  Traced the wires and found a error in the CAS
wiring.  A soldering iron had the problem fixed in about 30 minutes.  Now we
were starting to get some puffs of smoke that were actual combustion by
products, but could not quite get it to run.  Twice it caught but would not
sustain running.  After numerous discussions of lean, rich, try this, try
that, recharge the battery - we hit on a combination that would sustain
running.  Ran for about 90 seconds at 1500 to 2000 RPM and shut it down.
Looked over the engine and found everything to still be intact, no major
leaks, or anything melted.

Time to take a break, finished off the third pitcher of lemon aid, sat down
and recapped the days events with Ed, while thanking him for all his help,
both today and for all the wisdom I have gain from him through this list.
Ed wished me continued success as he departed for home.

Took a break for dinner, realizing it was the first meal of the day.  Then I
could not resist running it a bit more (7 more times actually.)  Showed the
wife that it would actually run (she missed the fist start by about 10
minutes.)  Worked on validating temp and pressure measurements as well as
tuning on the low speed end.  By the end of the night I have a repeatable
starting pattern and have pretty smooth running down to about 1000 RPM.
Most of the leaves on the south east corner of my property are gone, the 20B
makes a super leaf blower.

In the end starting a rotary for the first time can be summed  up with one
word ... Cool.

Thanks again for your help Ed and to all on this list that have given wisdom
and knowledge and made this day possible.

Joe - VELO 173 RG / 20B

--
Homepage:  http://www.flyrotary.com/
Archive and UnSub:
http://mail.lancaironline.net:81/lists/flyrotary/List.html