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For those of you with trouble sleeping, here's today's flight log. Gotta get serious about building intake #3.

Rusty (I hear the grill calling...)

Flew with Tracy’s old prop for the first time. This was also the first flight for the wheel pants and gear leg fairings. The results were about as expected, which is to say not as good as I had hoped. The good news is that there are still no issues with anything leaking, breaking, falling off, or being cooked by the heat. This is a pleasant change from Rev-1. I didn’t notice any shimmying from the gear legs today either, despite my best attempts to cause it.

Temps are too low, even on an 85 degree day so I’ll be closing up the cowl cheeks to see if that brings it in line. The max I saw in climb was 180 for oil, and 165 for water. In steady cruise, at full throttle, oil was 168, and water was 134.

There was a vibration on climbout, which I later found to be caused by loading the airframe some. I’m sure something is touching the cowl, and transferring vibration to the airframe, because I can make is start and stop by pulling a slightly positive G’s. It’s not the prop, since it’s smooth as glass when unloaded to 0 G’s. I can’t understand why this is so noticeable now, since I haven’t changed anything under the cowl. The only explanation I can come up with is that the wood prop is smoother than my old Warp, and I just didn’t notice the vibration over the prop vibration.

Climb remains a disappointment. 100 mph gave 4700 rpm, and 1000 fpm. 120 mph gave 4900 rpm, and 1300 fpm. This will improve if I can figure out why I’m not making the power that I should be (intake sucks). At least the best climb rate speed is back up where it should be for an RV. The wheel pants must have done this.

Speaking of wheel pants, there’s no doubt that they work. I also suspect the prop is producing more thrust at idle. I’m used to making all my landings without flaps, since the plane used to drop like a rock when you pulled the power. Well, not any more. I “practiced” a go around when I was still about 50 ft high, half way down the runway, and at about 100 mph. The second approach wasn’t much better, and I had to use full flaps, as well as a slip to get down. On rollout, I had to look down at the rpm to make sure I wasn’t still at half throttle. This is really like the RV-8 used to be, so I’ll get used to it quickly.

My speed run was at 4000 ft, due to a layer of clouds above, and my dismal climb rate. Full throttle gave 5500 rpm, 26.5 MAP, and 180 mph TAS. Scottie, I need more power!!!

Finally, I made a note to check the ball in cruise flight to see where it was. AT 5000 rpm, and 170 mph, it’s at 5 degrees on my inclinometer, which measures 3.8” to the left of center. It take a LOT of left rudder to center this. This may very well be good news for the C drive. The tail of the plane was build by the original builder, and I’m starting to think there’s some offset built into the vertical stab. Just looking at it, I can’t tell, but I was very surprised to need that much rudder in cruise, when I already have a left offset in the mount. The only reference I have is my old RV-8, which had a right offset in the mount, and required no rudder in cruise (no vert stab offset either).