REFLECTOR: Test flying update

[Geoff Gerhardt]

I haven't posted for awhile, so I thought it'd be good to give you guys an
update on my test flying.  Great weekend here in New England and I was able
to get out for ~4.5hrs between yesterday and today.  I suppose I could have
done more, but it is getting awfully boring flying around my little box.
 But, here's where I'm at.  I've got 31.5hrs in so far, so not far to go.
 I've had a few issues, but nothing too major.

Cooling issues early, but a combination of plenum changes and cleaning
injectors brought temps in line.  Now, in cruise my CHT's are within 4F of
each other.

I had a few oil leaks, but I found that these were being generated by poor
oil venting.  I had been fooling around with oil separators and ended up
putting too much restriction on the oil vent which caused a few leaks to
pop up.  I was able to get the leaks taken care of and now I vent my oil
line into the exhaust.  Its not really a permanent setup, but it works ok.

The prop I ordered from Catto was a 66x74 (recommended from him for a
SE-RG).  I found the take off roll a bit long and had been thinking about
sending it back for re-pitching, but didn't want to be down for a month.  A
canard owner on the west coast had an older Catto prop that would fit my
left-turning engine, so after a rather long process we were able to
identify it as a 64x76 and I had him ship it out to me.  I just started
using this prop and it is working well.  Its shortened my takeoff roll and
I still have about the same top end.  At 10,000', running 50F LOP, I get
150kTAS using 7.5gal/hr fuel.  That's about what I was getting with the
other prop, as well.  The 64x76 prop is an older Catto design, so I think
I'll get my original, newer Catto prop re-pitched to something similar to
this as I think his new design is more efficient and may get improved
performance.

The original Matco brakes gave out pretty quickly.  Not exactly sure why,
but the pads ate up the disks in no time.  After only ~15hrs on the plane,
the pads were done and the rotors were deeply grooved.  For ~$350, I
ordered the parts to beef up the Matco 600XT's I had to the 600XTE which
are really just a thicker disk and slightly different pads.  So far, these
have worked well and the pads and disks are wearing normally.

I've had a bit of a nose wheel shimmy when I brake hard, so I'll probably
give the nose wheel pivot nut a bit more torque to see if that helps.

Even with the original prop, I've been able to get out of 3000' runways
with plenty of room (good conditions, just me and full fuel, tho).

The first landing I did with the plane on the first flight was the best.
 I've gotten in the habit of really cutting the corner from downwind to
final.  Just after the numbers I start to turn in and drop altitude as fast
as possible.  This can lead to faster speeds on final if I get sloppy.  On
tight fields, I do a longer final to make sure I can get good speed control.

My alternator (PlanePower) failed last weekend.  It was a bummer, too, as
I'd been traveling for a couple weeks, the weather was perfect and I was
hoping to bank some hours.  10min after take off, the alternator light
started to flicker, then went on solid so my weekend was ruined.  Don't
really know why it failed (stator was fried) - its a 60A one that should
have more than enough power to handle the loads I have.  They shipped me
out a new one in time to fly this weekend, tho.

Its been nice, now that I don't have any real issues that I can just show
up at the airport, preflight then fly.

That's about it, everything's going well and I hope to be flying outside of
my box in a couple weeks.

Geoff
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