From: Steve Brooks <cozy4pilot@gmail.com>
Subject: [FlyRotary] 2nd flight on the new cooling system
To: "Rotary motors in aircraft" <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>
Date: Saturday, August 9, 2008, 1:58 PM
I took the Cozy up this morning for the 2nd flight on the
new cooling
system.  The OAT was 3 or 4 degrees warmer than the first
flight, as it was
79 F when I took off.
This time, I turned the cooling fan on while I was taxiing
out to the
runway.  After the  taxi and pre-flight checks, the oil was
135 F and the
coolant was still reading pretty low.  Maybe 115 to 120 or
so.  It is a
little hard to read the analog gauge down on the low end of
the scale.

I took off and climbed up to about 1300 FT AGL, at which
time I pulled the
throttle back some and continued a cruise climb.  The
coolant was showing
about 190F, and I didn’t think to check the oil
temperature.  Oil
temperature has not been my issue.  It has always been the
coolant.  The
coolant temperature did still increase a little, even at
the reduced power,
but just up to 200 F.  I was close to a low cloud layer at
about 1800 AGL,
so I throttle back some more and dropped the nose to level
flight.  I also
turned off the cooling fan to see what the temperature
would do on it’s own.
The temperature steadily dropped to about 180 degrees
within just a few
minutes, and then stabilized there.

I cruised around for a little while, flew over my house and
circled it once,
and then headed back to the airport.  With the low cloud
layer that had
moved in, I really didn’t know if it was going to clear
out or get thicker,
so I flew the 5 minutes back to the airport, and made a
normal landing.  As
I was ready to throttle back to descend about 800 feet to
pattern altitude,
and quick check of the coolant temperature showed about 160
degrees.  Not
bad at all, although I was probably flying at about 60%
power.  Still, it
would have not been nearly that low before the new cooling
system.

Once I landed and was clearing the runway, I checked the
temperatures again,
and the coolant was less then 140 degrees after the glide
in to land.  Since
I planned to wash the plane, and sometimes it starts hard
after getting heat
soaked sitting after a run, I turned on the cooling fan
while a taxied over
to the where the wash area is.  After washing the plane, it
started up
pretty easily, so I guess that worked out also.

So far so good.  I like what I see so far on the radiator,
and the cooling
fan definitely gives me a lot more options.

Steve Brooks
Cozy N75CZ
13B turbo to read the an