Ah-h-h; at last the smell of
fuel and exhaust instead of epoxy. One milestone in an airplane building
project like this is running the engine on the plane for the first time.
I was able to do that today. It was successful; and quite
short.
The reason for its brevity was
the loss of use of the EM-2 engine monitor. This happened before the run
– the display was dead the second time I turned it on for reasons yet to be
determined. After some checks, and a couple calls to Tracy, we
agreed there were no further checks I could effectively do, so it and the
connecting cable is removed and packed for shipment to RWS.
I chose to proceed with a brief
run anyway just to see that everything needed for engine operation was
functional. The engine fired off promptly and ran just above idle just
long enough for oil and coolant to flow and get detectably warm. After
checking everything out, there were no leaks, and I knew oil was flowing by
the slight warmth of the filters and cooler. I fired it up again,
adjusted mixture a bit, ran for a bit, added a bit of throttle a couple of
times, and shutdown. This time I could also verify warm coolant flow
throughout the system, and all air bled out of both radiators. Very
nice.
Disappointed there will be no
more runs until I have a functional engine monitoring system – delighted that
everything else was just fine!
How does I sound?
POWERFULL!
Al