On Saturday we made the first "successful" test flight of the rotary engine installation. Previous flights had too high water temps and/or too high oil temps and a low coolant pressure that sent us earthward early. The OAT was 10F on this test flight; oil got a maximum of 190F and water never exceeded 170F. The coolant system was pre-pressurized to 16 LBs and pretty much stayed there. We circled the field on the upwind side for about 20 minutes doing figure-8s. The oil was cycling between 180F and 190F; the water was pegged at 160F. We decided to temperature-cycle the engine a few times to see what happened, so we did 2 touch and goes. Everything was good … water would cool to about 130F and oil to about 160F on approach, as we climbed out the temperatures returned to W:160F and O:190F … I will make a few more refinements to the oil cooler inlet diffusers as 190F is still a bit high.

 

On another note I got in the left set finally for some taxi training … not too good … my big feet and the configuration of rudders/toe-brakes made it almost impossible to stay off the brakes when applying rudder … I'm going to weld a tube at the rudder/brake lower pivot-point to ensure that first contact is with rudder and some effort will be required to activate the brakes.

Jeff

(happy, happy)