REFLECTOR: 1st Flight of N173DK

[Ron N VelocityXLFG]

Con grates

I upgrades my brakes to larger pucks  same disk though much better 
stopping but I may have a fade issue
looming but I never hammer the brakes to make the turn off. I roll out 
the landing why ware out the brakes
i figure.  Flow with a few guys that never use there brakes other than 
turning.Saves a bunch on wear and tear.

Enjoy the fling you have earned it.

Ron


On 9/11/2012 4:00 PM, Dennis King wrote:
>
>
> I made the 1st flight of my 173RG Elite (IO360 C1E6/MT hydraulic cs 
> prop) this morning, 16 years after receiving the kit (stuff happens).  
> The flight went very well, and I even made a pretty good landing 
> (thanks to John Abraham's exellent training and patience in Florida a 
> couple of weeks ago...sorry for putting you through so many bad 
> landings John).  I made the flight at my home field in Columbus 
> Indiana (KBAK). During my intial climb-out, I thought I had a very 
> heavy right wing, but then I realized for some reason I was holding a 
> lot of pressure on the right rudder pedal.  When I released pressure 
> on the rudder pedal, I found out the Roll trim was perfect!  I think I 
> was holding right rudder out of habit because my old Kitfox IV needed 
> that during climb-out.  When I got up to smooth air and leveled out, 
> the plane flew hands-off with the ball in the center.  I was in the 
> air a little over a half-hour and stayed within gliding distance of 
> the airport, but the engine ran well.  I kept the gear down on this 
> 1st flight and never went much faster than 100 knots IAS.  I had 
> previously verified that my IAS is very close to the GPS speed during 
> a 60 mph fast taxi down the runway on a calm day.  I made the flight 
> without the main gear doors in case I accidentally went too fast (at 
> John's suggestion).  The only issues were a fairly high oil 
> temperature and brake fade after landing.  As expected I didn't do a 
> very good job looking at temperatures during flight, but luckily I can 
> look at peak values after landing with my engine monitor system.  The 
> CHT's weren't too bad, but the oil temp hit a peak value of 230 degF 
> at some point during the flight.  I'm not comfortable with that 
> because the ambient air temp was only about 70 deg at the time of my 
> flight, and I only have 20 more degrees to the 250 deg limit.  I just 
> have the one oil cooler in the nose.  Based on what I've read here, I 
> may have to look at adding a second cooler.  My engine is zero time 
> after rebuild, and I've read here that that can make CHT's high for 
> awhile, and I assume this applies to oil temperature as well.
>
> I have the old MATCO brakes and I've seen a lot of dialogue about them 
> here also.  When I landed I may have gotten on the brakes a little 
> harder than I thought to make the mid-field turnoff from the runway (I 
> was using the shorter 5000 feet runway at KBAK).  While taxiing back 
> to the hangar, I barely had enough brakes for steering.  On the way 
> out to the runway before takeoff, they worked a lot better.  After 
> shutdown I got out and touched the disks and they were pretty hot, but 
> at least there was no smoke or smell.  I've previously made sure the 
> pedals aren't hitting the canard bulkhead and are not being limited by 
> rudder travel.  I guess I'll be looking at upgrading the brakes and/or 
> learning to not work them so hard after landing.  I didn't think I 
> braked that hard, but when I think about it the midfield turn off 
> is about 2500 feet from the threshold, and I touched down some 
> distance past the numbers, so it was a pretty short rollout.  But I 
> had about a 9 knot headwind, so it didn't feel like I was braking hard.
>
> Overall it was a very nice 1st flight and after landing I had that 
> "high" that I remember from my 1st Kitfox flight several years ago 
> that is better than any drug could ever provide.  I strongly recommend 
> the factory training to anybody about to make their 1st flight, 
> especially if you are a low time pilot like me.  A friend shot some 
> video, but he wasn't used to my camera so some of it is pretty shaky.  
> I will cut and paste the best parts to make a watchable video and post 
> it to YouTube later.
>
> Dennis King
>
>
>
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