10-30-04  1.0 hours  /  38.1 total

Just went out joyriding, when I should have been testing climb and glide rates.  I’ll do that tomorrow.  I had quite an audience, so I had to show off the climb rate a bit.  This is the first time I’ve done a “best climb rate” attempt for any significant time since I’ve had the C drive, and new intake inlet.  I took off and climbed at 90 mph for the first 1500 feet or so, then leveled, looked for traffic, turned on course from the airport, and started climbing again.  At that point, I was keeping the speed between 90 and 100 mph.  When I looked down at the VSI, it said 3000 fpm!  About 1500 feet later, it still said 3000 fpm.  This was with full tanks, and still a reasonably warm day (80 degrees).  I now have absolutely no doubt that I can “officially” record 3000+ fpm when I do the measured climbs.  I’ve still got a lot of tweaking to do with the plane, and some real improvement will certainly come from that, but I’m already satisfied with the performance I’m seeing.   Still running great too.