Mailing List flyrotary@lancaironline.net Message #38429
From: Mark Steitle <msteitle@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [FlyRotary] Re: EC2 changes
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 19:58:11 -0500
To: Rotary motors in aircraft <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>
Al,
I can get it into track mode by following the procedure, but once in track mode, selecting mode 9 does nothing that I can detect.  Nothing changes.  Something to discuss with Tracy if/when he gets back from CO.
 
Right now I'm reinstalling the inspection panels, and all the other stuff I had to remove for the DAR.  Also, I changed the oil & filter, and read up on the EM-2 procedure for zeroing the oil timer, etc.  I went through the process in the book, but the oil timer didn't change until I powered it down and when I powered it up, the timer read zero.  Nothing in the documentation about having to power it down before the reset will take.  (Note to self: reminder to discuss this procedure with Tracy). 
 
I hope to fly in a week or two after I get some recurrency training.  Trust me, my rotary buds will be the first to know when it happens.  
 
 
Mark St.  

 
On 7/14/07, Al Gietzen <ALVentures@cox.net> wrote:

Mark wrote: 

Best I recall, my coil disable switches work as they should, i.e. engine slows when shutting down either.  But is slows more when I disable the leading coils than when disabling the trailing coils.  I haven't tried it at high rpm though.

Mine behaves as expected at lower power, but at high power (I guess about 4800 rpm) I get a slight decrease in rpm turning of leading (~100 rpm) and a larger decrease shutting off trailing (~300-400 rpm).

Whenever you have the opportunity to check at higher rpm, I'd be interested in hearing the result.

 

I do suspect that my auto-tune feature isn't working (could be operator error).  It was supposed to have had the auto-tune upgrade done a year or so back.  But I go through all the steps described in the manual but the mixture doesn't seem to change.

 

Be sure it is getting into track mode, and then set mode 9.  The table value is displayed (I think upper right on the display) and you can see it changing.

 

What's your current status? Getting close to first flight??

 

Al  

 

On 7/11/07, Al Gietzen < ALVentures@cox.net> wrote:

Further to my last posting on the subject; we did the following changes to my 20B EC2

 

1.     reduced values of the added caps for noise filtering on the ignitions circuits by a factor of ten.

2.     replaced the MAP pressure sensor on Controller "A"

3.     added what is being referred to as the 'clamping diodes' or 'snubbers' on the injector circuits.

 

Changing the capacitors had no noticeable effect on what I believed was a timing issue.  I still find that at low power disabling leading coils has definitely more effect than disabling trailing; whereas at high power, say about 19" MAP and above, disabling the leading has small effect and disabling trialing has larger effect.  I have concluded that the timing is not late with both on; since I found that now retarding the timing a 2-3 steps (4-5 degrees) at power increased the rpm a bit. I think the larger caps did result in a small retarding of the spark.

 

Does anyone else with a 3-rotor, and using the LS1 coils, note the same behavior when disabling leading/trailing ignition?   Tracy mentioned that on his 20B using the renesis coils, disabling either set results in the engine stopping, so there may be something amiss in the circuitry.

 

I thought that the strange leaning of mixture with altitude when running on controller A was solved by replacing the pressure sensor – until I got over 5000'.  Then over the next 200 ft increase the mixture monitor bar on the EM2 went slowly off the bottom of the scale, and it took turning the mixture knob to about 3:00 position to return it to a mid-scale reading.  Switching to controller B gave me a momentary scare – the engine quit, well completely lost power for the fraction of a second that it took to switch back to A. More on this below.

 

Adding the snubbers on the injector circuits resulted in quite a different profile on the mixture table settings.  It also resulted in smoother running at low rpm, and seemingly easier tuning to get smooth transition from 'low' to 'high' table, and across the stage point (or maybe I'm just getting better re-tuning). 

 

One thing I had discovered when re-tuning was that, apparently due to powering up the unit on the bench to check the MAP sensor, resulted in the injector pulse setting (mode 3) to get set to a much lower value, and the stage point to someplace out of range.  The engine would only run with the cold start switch on.  Once I got those things straightened out, things proceeded smoothly.  When I had all well on controller A, I did the copy A to B. Prior to flying, I had not checked running on B. (OK, it's on my check list, I just bypassed it.) After the episode in the air I figured out that B was acting like A did before the retuning. I tried multiple times again to copy A to B; but it did not take.  I had to manually retune B to get things running right.  Don't know what, but the copy A to B is not working.

 

Didn't mean to run on here – am I boring anyone yet J?

 

Expect to fly tomorrow for some air pressure measurements on the oil cooler.

 

Al

 

 

 


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