From: "Russell Duffy" <13brv3@bellsouth.net>
Date: 2005/06/05 Sun PM 07:39:55 EDT
To: "Rotary motors in aircraft" <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>
Subject: [FlyRotary] fuel transfer update

Greetings,
 
Well, another uneventful flight today.  Temps are still a bit too good, and
I need to do my 0-10000 ft climb test to see how much more power I can add.
What?  You didn't think I was just going to reduce the cooling did you :-)
There were no leaks of anything, (despite a little negative G's in a botched
roll).  I saw no less than 2000 fpm climb at any altitude up to the max of
6500 ft today.  Level at 6500 WOT gave 213 mph on the EM-2, and 200 even on
the GPS.  This doesn't mean much, but it sounds good.   I have a little more understanding perhaps on my fuel transfer issues, and
there's a possibility that it's really not so bad.  With all the changing of
thrust angles on the engine, I've had my trim tab screwed up as well, and
it's been on my non-critical list of things to get around to fixing.   Today, I took off with less fuel in the feed tank than what I had in the
non-feed, just so I could play with the transfer some more.  Initially, it
seemed like nothing was happening, and I only showed about 5 gallons in the
feed tank, so I made a turn to head back home.  As I did that, I noticed
that the levels were all over the place momentarily (it was about a 3 g turn
<g>).  Once I was straight and level heading toward home, I noticed that the
ball was quite a bit to the right, so I added some right rudder, and the
fuel level jumped from about 5 to 11 gallons.  I spend the next few minutes
yawing the airplane slightly one way, then the other, and found that both
fuel levels change pretty drastically with just a bit of yaw.  Makes sense
of course.  I kept the ball centered for the next few minutes, and noticed a
fairly steady rise in fuel level in the right (feed) tank, and drop in the
left.  Knowing I had fuel to play with, I went and "played", and actually
quit worrying about ending up in a field for a while.   I'll tape a trim tab back on the plane before I go out again, but I'll make
sure the ball is centered when checking the fuel level from now on.   Cheers,
Rusty