From: "Ron and Marlene Brice" <rbrice@inter-linc.net>

March 3rd marks the date (finally) that N27RM took to the air for the first
time. Peter Stiles flew N27RM for the first time, and the neat matching
helmet in the first flight picture is his.

Enclosed are a few pictures, sorry about the loading time, you asked for
them (GRIN).

I have been in Redmond for the last two weeks, and noticed when I returned
that there were a few posts about ram air in Legacys with IO-550-N's
installed.

I have the first (to my knowledge) installation, and have no performance
data, since my time in the Legacy prior to last week was only in 199L, but
here is the first solid observation on the new ram air scoop.

As you can see from the picture (sorry I don't have an overhead shot, I
didn't even think to take one of the installation before it was installed.
You will see in picture #13 the ram side of the scoop, and just above the
generator in picture #14, the filter for filtered air input.

Lancair (Mark Mahnke) told me I could expect to get in the area of an
additional inch of MAP at cruise.  I left my notebook in Portland, so will
try my best to get the numbers correct.  11,500', OAT -5C, 2400 RPM, full
throttle (as I remember it, full throttle was 20.2" MAP) yielded 260 KNOTS
TAS.  That number I won't forget!  I was impressed.  The only speed mods to
N27RM are fillets on the horizontal stabilizer to fair it into the fuselage
a little, and our new wingtips (see picture).  I checked the ground speed,
since I didn't as yet have a feel for the accuracy of my airspeed indicator,
and with 4 runs checking with GPS from  Madras to Bend (two each way) the
TAS checked out as accurate as I could compute it, considering that my big
grin was using up all my face skin!  So, I'm very happy with the scoop and
filter.
 
I will post another article on the wing tips, these are prototypes, and are
kind of ugly since we used too thin of a material for the see through
portion and need to have some thicker ones pulled from the mold so we can
countersink the screws instead of these ugly ones.but..they are definitely
an improvement over the original tips.

 Ron Brice

[ ok, ok, I put all your images in http://www.lancaironline.net/pix/brice  
I get about .8 lbs boost with http://rob.com/lancair/2002.09/6top.jpg
 -Rob]