-------------- Original message from "Mike Wills" <rv-4mike@cox.net>: --------------

All weekend winds were 45 - 90 crosswinds @ 10 - 15 so no chance to fly. Was working on my glider in the hangar and happened to notice at 3:00 that the wind had calmed. Drag the airplane out, quick preflight, quick brief of my crew and the tower folks and away we go.

 

Verified at 40 knots that the ASI was working this time and proceeded with the takeoff. Pitch trim good, healthy dose of left rudder and we're off.

 

Once off the ground everything is good. Just joined the pattern and continued to climb directly over the airport. My home airport is surrounded, Mexico border 2 miles south, Class B 2 miles north, ocean to the west, and a 3500 peak to the east so up is the only way to go.

 

Climbed to 5,000 and level off. Coolant temps are good (my mechanical coolant temp gauge isnt working at all but the engine monitor says 185). Oil temp by the monitor on the output of the cooler is 190, mechanical gauge with sensor in the oil pan indicates 210 so I back off the power and it comes down to about 190. OAT was in the mid - 70s (sorry to rub it in for the guys that are freezing elsewhere in the country).

 

Orbitted the airport for about 20 minutes. Still dont trust the ASI. There's a 20 KT discrepancy between it and the GPS in all directions. Pulled speed back to just nibble at the stall and the ASI is reading 30 KTS.

 

Holding lots of left rudder in straight and level also - I see a trim tab in my future. No surprise since I didnt put any offset in the engine mount. Should make it easy to upgrade to a 2.85 ratio later.

 

Funny how you get so used to setting power by sound. I dont know where to set power. Especially for the descent and landing which is exacerbated by lack of a trustworthy ASI. So while loitering above the airport I set 4500 RPM and see about 135 KTS on the GPS for ground speed. Seems lower than I thought it would be but I need to do LOTS more flying before making any judgements.

 

Controls seem lighter than my old RV-6A. It's very nimble. For some reason the rudder seems more powerful than the 6A even though they are exactly the same. Pulled off a decent landing. Little bit of a skip but I'll blame the rough runway surface. Wandered a bit left of the centerline due to the left rudder I was carrying.

 

Thought I had the EC2 pretty well programmed but found once in flight that it needs more tweaking - no surprise. Found a few throttle settings that were running a little lean/rich and had to tweak the mixture some. On short final pulled the throttle back almost to the stop and got the surging that I thought I'd finally cured on the ground - bump the mixture a little and its gone. On roll out with the throttle at idle the engine starts to run rough - richen it up a little and its good. At this point for the next few flights I'll just leave the programming and focus on flying. The programming is close enough for now.

 

Lots of things I should have noted but didnt. Sensory overload. I have a little list of things to fix before I go again. My ground crew reported that the airplane appeared to climb well ( I was focused on speed/attitude and didnt think to look at the VSI - which probably didnt work anyway). They also noted that they lost sight of the all metal airplane, but never failed to find it by the sound. :-)  On a positive note, once away from the ground, the cockpit got much quieter. And they pointed out that it was also considerably less noisy than the former George Graham E-Racer that used to be based here.

 

More than enough for now. Sorry for the length - figure I'll be on a high for a few days.

 

Mike Wills

RV-4 N144MW