Greetings,

While you were all debating coolant pressure (mine's always zero), I went flying this afternoon with my buddy Bob.  He's got a nice RV-8, with about 190 HP, and a constant speed prop.  We used to fly formation a decent amount back when I had my RV-8, and I always took off in the lead, since he could always catch up with his constant speed prop.  The results are good news, bad news, but mostly, I just need to clean up some drag issues I think.  Here's the log, enjoy.

Cheers,

Rusty (getting picked on a lot recently)

6-26-05  .5 hours  /  50.4  total

Went up and did some formation with Bob today.  We took off with me in the lead, and by  the time I made it to a downwind leg, he was about 500 feet below me :-)    Once level at 3000 ft, we compared ASI readings, and they were pretty close at 130 kts.  I was at about 6200 rpm.  We both went WOT, and I pulled away initially, but by the time he got to about 150 kts, he started to gain.  He finally pulled ahead at about 165 kts indicated.  At that time, I was only indicating about 145 kts.  My ASI seems to have more error the faster we go.  Funny thing is, Bob said his is usually LOWER than everyone else’s.  Man, I’ve got to get to the bottom of this airspeed accuracy. 

My max rpm was 7100, and that was all I could get in the few minutes we ran.  I need to check the timing in flight, as well as maximize the mixture, but the main problem is drag.  I'm still missing some fairings, and haven't finalized the cowl yet which is why I can’t pull more rpm, and why Bob was able to catch up only at the higher airspeeds.  The sad fact is that my old RV-8 used to outrun Bob in top speed by a couple kts, but it sure couldn't outclimb his C/S prop :-) 

It was also by far the most exciting flying I’ve done in the plane, as we made a pretty spectacular high speed formation pass on a local private strip.  Made a nice break at home too.  I love formation flying :-)

I put 15.5 gallons in the plane, for 1.5 hours of flight time.  None of that was leaned at all, and much of it was full throttle, and 7000 rpm.  That comes to 10.3 gph, which isn’t bad considering.  The fuel transfer worked fine too.