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