The plane seems to
get off the ground noticeably quicker than before, even though I was feeding
in the throttle slowly. The best
news is that it doesn’t seem to have the overwhelming tendency to depart the
left side of the runway like it used to.
I’ll have to do some more takeoffs to see whether I was just being too
easy on it, or if the rude behavior is really gone now that the left offset is
removed. Very hopeful that
it’s really gone.
The engine ran
well, though I had to richen the mixture a bit on climb to stop the EM-2 from
complaining about the high EGT temps.
The only real issue is the idle mixture.
I could only climb
to 1400 ft, and that happened pretty quickly. The plan was to orbit the field a few
times at my 1400 ft ceiling, and bring it back down for a cowl off check to
make sure all was well. I did
noted that the climb rpm at 100 mph was 6180. The oil was about 150 when I took off,
and 157 when I was level at 4800 rpm and 138 mph TAS. Didn’t notice it during
climb, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t anywhere close to 200. Coolant temp was 193 in climb, and
steady in the 170’s in slow cruise.
Post flight
revealed no real problems, aside from the fact that my alt was bumping the
inside of the top cowl. I picked
up a slightly shorter belt on the way home to fix that. I re-tightened the intake and exhaust
bolts, and am ready to put the cowl back on when I install the new alt belt
tomorrow.