Was finally getting around to doing hot weather cooling and altitude performance 
testing in the RV-8 yesterday.   Cooling was good during a high power climb to 
14500 ft where I leveled out ( I had forgotten to put the Ox bottle in the 
plane).   Throttled up to WOT to see where the speed topped out at but.   After 
less than a minute I felt some engine roughness and noticed rotor 3 EGT went 
above alarm threshold so I throttled back to low power.   #3 EGT then went low 
off scale and I could tell that the engine was only running on 2 rotors.   I 
then smelled a faint electrical burning smell that lasted about 2 minutes.   
Engine was surprisingly smooth for having a dead rotor and still had more than 
enough power for cruise flight but obviously it was time to get back on the 
ground and find out what went wrong.   did all the usual diagnostics on the long 
glide down with no joy.

Made normal landing, poped off the cowl and coil diagnostics test revealed that 
both coils on rotor 3 were dead.   I had done the coil disable tests prior to 
takeoff so I know they were both good then.  I'm using RX-8 coils and there have 
been too many failures for me to feel good about them any longer.   I ordered a 
set of LS-1s to replace them.

Tracy
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