Just to let you know that flight
testing is continuing, and we’ve just passed 15 hours of flight time.
Overall, the plane and engine are doing fine. Things are trimmed out now
for straight and true handling. The remaining issue is too much
canard lift, even
after reducing incidence by a bit over 1 degree. It limits high speed end (run out of elevator to keep it
from climbing), and requires pretty hot landing (over the fence at 90
KIAS). The consensus of the experts is to shorten the canard (cut about 4”
sections out of both sides). Ouch!!
I am very pleased with the
operation of the 3–rotor rotary engine – in spite of few glitches still with
the ECU, apparently some sort of electrical
noise issue. It starts easily hot or cold, runs smooth,
plenty of power, and easy one-lever operation. Haven’t established top end
yet, but did get up to about 205 KTAS (175 KIAS at DA of close to 10,000
ft), and there was still some to
go. After gear up on takeoff the VSI strip pegs out at
1000 fpm with close to 2100 # total weight. If you want fast descent; gear
down, power off (no worries about shock cooling), and push both rudders out.
Nice high controlled sink rate.
No good data yet
on fuel burn. I think it was calibrated fairly close, and read about 13
gph at about 160 indicated, but then the EM2 suddenly started reading about
half that number, and I haven’t figured that out yet.
Lots of work and testing left to
do.
Al