REFLECTOR: 1st Flight of N173DK

Wed Sep 12 10:00:59 CDT 2012

Dennis

Congrats on the first flight.   I also still use the "original" matcos on my 173FGE (725+ hrs) and hard braking will cause them to fade.   I also suspect since these are your first flights you are probably a little fast at touchdown which exaggerates the problem .     With practice you should be able to knock ten knots or more off your landing speed.   Also, with the matco's don't just hold the brakes on, but slowly pump them, this helps dissipate the heat a little and avoids hot spots.

And by all means, don't be afraid to apply power and go around.   I learned to fly my V at Moraine airpark (I69) which initially had a 3000 ft usable runway with 25 foot levees at both ends.   This made the first few hundred feet of runway useless, so I got to practice slow approaches and go-arounds quite a bit before I mastered the technique.   I ended up installing VGs and trailing edge vortex fences-this made a significant difference and now I can easily land and take off on short runways.   (see this month's picture on the Velocity calendar).

Bill Stockman
Senior Associate
Dayton Aerospace, Inc.

937.426.4300  Office
937.369.4799  Cell
bill.stockman at daytonaero.com<mailto:bill.stockman at daytonaero.com>
www.daytonaero.com

From: reflector-bounces at tvbf.org [mailto:reflector-bounces at tvbf.org] On Behalf Of Ron N VelocityXLFG
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2012 8:31 AM
To: reflector at tvbf.org
Subject: Re: REFLECTOR: 1st Flight of N173DK

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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