9-1-03 / .6 hours / .7
total
Second, and I guess third flights
today. Still no fatalities, but I verified that
the landing gear is pretty strong. Gotta stop flaring
this thing 5 ft off the ground.
Flight notes. This is with the prop set to 15 degrees of pitch, which
gave 5400 rpm at 3 psi of boost static. It’s also
with a stock 180 degree thermostat.
First takeoff and climb was
done at 0-1 psi, and 90 mph. This felt about like
the other day, but I couldn’t coax my anywhere map into giving me a decent
VSI reading . It appeared to be about
1000 fpm. By most standards, this isn’t bad, but it’s
not what I’m hoping for. I was also paying too much
attention to the temps to notice the rpm during climb to 2000 ft. The water started out at 180 degrees, and never moved. The oil started out at about 150 degrees, and reached
about 220 by the time I got to 2000 ft. I continued
flying in circles at 5000 rpm and 120 mph, and the oil maxed out at 240
degrees. This is certainly on the edge of being too
high, but since I’m reading the oil pan, not the return oil from the cooler,
it’s not as bad as it sounds. More power, but higher
airspeed might be a wash. I need to try to rig an
inline oil temp probe for the return oil. The aileron
trim was fine today, but that’s because the fuel was balanced, the actual
trim still does nothing. Measured the springs for
replacement with stronger ones. During descent, and
landing, the oil came back down to 180 or so. There’s
also not enough up trim for landing, even with no flaps, and this thing
drops like a rock with low power.
Once on the ground, I decided
to do another run around the pattern, to see what the oil temps would do
with a full throttle takeoff. Departed at 3psi of
boost, and there was quite a difference in the feel of power. Climb was still only 1500 fpm, but the real surprise
was when I looked (finally) at the tach. During climb,
at 90 mph, and 3 psi of boost, I was only turning 4700 rpm. Starting to make sense now. I
guess the prop was stalled during the static runs, so my 5400 rpm (3psi)
was artificially high. I bet I was only turning 4400
or less during the 0 psi climbs. No wonder it seemed
like a dog. Water of course stayed rock solid at 180
degrees, but oil climbed rapidly to about 220 degrees by 1500 ft. It’s likely that 90 mph isn’t the best climb rate for
the plane, so I’ll try a little higher airspeed next time.
That will also help with the cooling.
After the flights, I found
a couple drops of oil, from those stupid POS Earl’s swivel fittings. They’re leaking from the swivel. I’ll
NEVER buy these again. I didn’t find anything else
wrong, but I’m not sure what I’ll do about the temps, so I’ll leave the
cowl off for now. I reset the prop pitch to 12 degrees,
which wasn’t exactly what I meant to do. I thought
I was on 14, so I went down 2 degrees. I was actually on 15, and am now down 3 degrees. Should be just fine, since I’ve got lots of headroom
on the engine rpm range to work with.