Love to hear this kind of stuff Mike, thanks for the update. David R. Cook RV6A.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Wills" <rv-4mike@cox.net>
To: "Rotary motors in aircraft" <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>
Sent: Sunday, August 23, 2009 10:58:52 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: [FlyRotary] today's test flight
Mostly went pretty well. OAT at the airport was 24C (76F so pretty nice). Max coolant temp seen was 185F, max oil temp was 190F, seen during the climb to 5000'. Level at 5000 and flew for an hour with coolant at 180 and oil at 185. Max RPM at full throttle was 5750 and max IAS was 180MPH. Little disappointed in the speed but the ASI hasnt been calibrated and I didnt have the GPS so dont know what the ground speed was.
The flight was to check out three problems I found during the last flight:
1) Rudder trim still not right. I finally got it this time.
2) Radio volume too weak to hear the tower at cruise power. Bypassed the intercom which was attenuating the volume somewhat. And borrowed my buddy's Lightspeed Zulu headset. This flight cost me $850 - I gotta have a Zulu. Tower was loud and clear.
3) Gear shimmy on landing rollout. A common problem with RVs (my -6A also did it). I added gear leg stiffeners. Only one landing today, but first with no shimmy. And my best landing so far.
All in all a good flight until I switched tanks - and the engine quit. Back to the right tank and it immediately restarted. One more time with same result. Thats enough of that, lets troubleshoot that on the ground. Of course on the ground it worked just fine like it always has. I think I have a plan to fix it - will see how it goes.
Mike Wills
RV-4 N144MW