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Hey
Guy's;
Well today we had very high winds (30Kts) so we sat on the ground most of
the day watching my hopes of soloing before my instructor/test pilot had to
leave, float away with the wind, but early evening the winds calmed enough that
we got out for a very smooth half hour with no incidents. Everything was great
with the engine, so my buddy bailed out and left me to fly myself. So I
spent another 45 min in the circuit doing my first solo flight. whooohooo. I
suppose most pilots are happy about their first solo but to build your own
plane to do it with is very satisfying :-).
In other news, while waiting for the winds to calm today, I
installed 2 more temp sensors to measure the delta T through the coolers.
I've run out of panel space on the right side, so I used the same 2 temp gauges
that I already had, but added a microswitch beside each gauge. This allows me to
select for each temp gauge whether I want to measure before or after the
coolers.
What I found was somewhat surprising. I found that the coolant rads (2
Ford evap cores plumbed in parallel) had a delta T of 20C, while the Oil cooler
only had a delta T of 5C. At first I felt this was OK as I remembered that the
GM cores also gave 20 degrees delta T, then I as I was about to type this up I
remembered that it was 20F. So this means that I am getting a delta T of 36F.
This is extremely gratifying as I chose the Ford cores against popular wisdom
because they fit much better than the GM cores (smaller, thicker)(Rusty
- take note) and they gave a better coolant flow rate in my
tests.
The oil cooler is a little disappointing to have only a Delta T of 5C or
9F. I'd expected much higher. Ed were you planning on measuring deltaT through
the oil as well or just the coolant? I'd like to know what others are getting. I
hope to get out again tomorrow afternoon and if the weather is better with
higher ceilings, I'll do a longer climb followed by a longer run at cruise speed
to allow temps to stabilize a little better. Tonight's circuits were admittedly
not the ideal run for gathering data, but I thought some may be interested in my
results. I'll try to gather more data in the days to come.
The EWP continues to function perfectly.
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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