N6Q Flight test -- 10 hr status report

["Tim Crawford" <crawford@atdd.noaa.gov>]

Hi All!

I now have accumulated 10 hours on N6Q an Elite RG.  I have had no serious
problems but a few annoying little ones dealing mostly with all N6Q's
electronics.

Trim -- N6Q does not have enough down trim.  Empty, its 1360# with CG
128.4".  With the trim system set up following factory recommendations, I
need to add 50# ballast to my 180# or I run out of down trim.  Yes I can
adjust this but at the expense of up trim.  With 50# ballast, slow flight
trim speed is 60kts (IAS).  With a real person in the fornt, this is going
to be faster.
With over 2,000 hours in Long-EZ's, I find the Velocity pitch forces and
trim system very strange.

ROLL -- The good news is that N6Q flies straight!  There is a slight roll
tendency to the right.  The standard roll system can just handle it.  When
time allows, I will increase the AOT of the right wing just a tad.

COOLING -- With all the discussion/problems on cooling, I over reacted! 
My mods have made N6Q TOO cool -- and the engine is not even broke in yet.
 At Palt of 9000' & 2C OAT, and the Franklin working at 2500/19" I run 160
kts TAS.  The oil temperature was 150F (190F at the engine outlet and 150F
at the inlet).  Cyl temps range from #6-194F to #2-266F.  Cooling mods
include 10% larger single nose mounted oil cooler with improved NACA inlet
and a standard but flush with the fuselage exhaust (i.e. the exhaust duct
does not extend into the airstream -- why do builders do this???).  The
changes I made to cylinder cooling include splitting and removing the
center portion of the standard plenum (so that I can put oil in), Velocity
Views fiberglass ducts, and flash removed between cooling fins.

Speed -- So far, very disappointing But I need to do more top end test. 
Further, things are still new and the engine is not fully broke in. 
Regardless, my Long-EZ (N3R) is 10 kts faster with less fuel burn.  I
expect to be able to find 10 kts in time.  I sure would like to know what
other Franklin Velocities run flat out at 9k ft.  Also, the static err is
significant.  I found for N6Q the following
IAS-> 80   90   100   110   120   130   140
Err-> -3  -2.5  -1   -1.5  +1.5   +6    +10
This looks strange so I need to fix the static port error and redo the
calibration 

IVO prop -- Still not comfortable with it and it does have potential.  But
what a kick on takeoff!  So far it has worked super.  But, I did change
the toy bushes!

Electro Air ignition -- no problem.  Worked on first start and has not
been touched.

S-Tec auto Pilot -- Out of the box, both pitch and roll work but not well.
 As expected, it rocks the wings.  Pitch, you got to get the trim right
first.  In a few days I will start working on the servo and electronic
gain to fix the auto pilot.


------------------------------------------------
    _                        _
     \                      /
      >-}     Tim        {-<
    _/                      \_
 Long EZ N3R           Velocity N6Q