Sunday morning at 5:30am I was the only one at the pumps.
100LL is spendy, I'd better get used to it as it's only going to get worse.
Installed the springs for the aileron trim. Kind of a pain in the ass.
Tightened all the fuel fittings. (The fittings under the selector valve have the orange torque seal marks on the other side.)
Rolled it outside and put in 5 gallons per side. No leaks so far! Thank God, I've been sweating it. Prop is off so I could install the front crank plug.
Heard this twin Beech in the pattern so I walked out and took a couple pics.
Then Robert and Nick showed up in the 8A. Very cool!!
They hung out awhile and then I walked out to see them off.
Finally a nice day so I left work lunchtime and headed to the airport for the big first engine start.
Nick brought his truck and a rope.
First Engine Start!!!!
No music version.
On Wednesday and Thursday of this week I was set up to do my transition training with Brian Moentenich in Troutdale Oregon. Since the weather is supposed to get worse, I called him and asked if we could do it today, Tuesday, and Wednesday instead. He said sure but he wouldn't be able to do it until 3pm. Perfect! I took the whole day off anyway and went up to the hangar until about 11:30A. I decided to fire up the bomber and break in the brakes. Everything went great and I taxied all the way to the runup area for runway 34. Then I did a runup and mag check. It wasn't flying, but it sure felt good just to drive the plane for the first time.
Later I drove to Oregon to meet Brian and his fixed pitch RV-6A. After a good pre-flight discussion, we took off and did quite a bit of air work. Power on stalls, power off stalls, steep turns, etc. Then we headed over to Scappoose and stayed in the pattern for 8 touch and goes. Normal landings, slips, and even a no flap landing. Our total flight ended up being 1.8 hours.
I stayed in a hotel right across the street from the airport. Pizza and 1 large beer for dinner and time to let it all soak in.
Wedneday morning the weather had pretty much turned to shit. Ceilings were right about 1500AGL so we stayed in the pattern for a bit and then went to Grove Airport (1W1)for one landing. 5 landings today in .9 hours. Brian said I'm ready so that's it!
In summary the RV is a fantastic airplane. Other than "taking the stick" for awhile in friends planes, this was the first time I'd ever taken off, stalled, or landed one. Now I know what everyone is smiling about!
Something else that comes highly recommended is to run the plane full throttle for 1 minute with a nose high attitude. (Simulating takeoff) This verifies adequate fuel pickup and fuel flow. Saturday morning Robert flew over and helped me do it. It went great! I'll I can say is there is a big difference between a 1800RPM runup and full throttle! Dang this engine has some power! At full throttle the static RPM ended up at about 2150 RPM. When the plane is actually going forward, that number should be closer to 2450 or so.
After we did the runup Robert asked if I wanted to fly to Bremerton for breakfast in the 8A? Heck ya! Took us just 15 minutes to buzz over there at just under 200MPH. Sweet!
Nice day for drag racing on the old runway.
After breakfast I wanted to try to extract today's run up data from the Engine Monitor.
Here's what it shows while uploading.
Here is what I got. Everything looks pretty good but I did notice a couple things. I need to see what the fuel pressure is supposed to be as it seems a little low. It may very well be what it should but I want to double check. The other thing I noticed is that CHT on cylinder #2 seems to climb a little slow. The sensor might be a little slow, or there is a chance that that cylinder just warms slower due to the baffling. Anyway I'll keep an eye on that.
My exaust finally got hot enough to start discoloring.
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