Over the weekend, I logged about 4.5 hrs flight time--as Dynon calculates it. Mostly it was more engine break-in time...70-75% power, 2550 RPM kind of stuff. So far, no indication we are broke-in...as you might expect, this is beginning to concern me. But I keep saying, what can I do? The die is cast at this point, If I somehow glazed the cylinders, its done at this point. I'll just keep running 'er hard and hope for the best.
As I work through my open squawks (see last post), I made some progress on a couple items. First, I wanted to dig into my airspeed indicator accuracy a little more. On my to-do list was power off stalls. The first one was with half (20 degs) flaps just to get a feel for it...see if anything squirly was going to happen. Nada...zip...zilch, broke straight ahead, no wing drop, nothing to be concerned with.
Although, I'll warn you if you haven't stalled an RV before, its doesn't give much airframe buffet before it goes. It comes on quickly, but shows no nastiness once it does. Ease off the stick and she's flying once more. I then added full flaps, slowed her down, and stalled it twice more. My IAS was showing about 45kts when it broke. Definitely not correct...Van's states 49 kts for this flight configuration, and mine, because of its weight, might be more like 50+kts. Unless I'm missing something, my guess is my airspeed indicator (ASI) is about 5 kts slow. A pitot leak perhaps? But it was tested for leaks by the professionals...and supposedly had none. More digging to come as I troubleshoot this...
I then decided to play around with my autopilot. On the ground, like I mentioned in a previous post, it was wigging out. Doing some reading of the manual, my guess is it was confused by the zero airspeed condition...by default it has a minimum airspeed configuration. I figured...why not try it in flight? I knew the disconnect button worked on the panel and on the EFIS from ground testing...and I also knew I could override it manually if I had to. I tentatively turned it on...to see what she would do? On it came...and worked perfectly. Over the course of my weekend flying I played around with virtually all of the basic functions. This is essentially the first time I have flown an A/P...it was pretty cool.
With the A/P now working. I decided to do some GPS speed runs to test the accuracy of my KTAS readings. I used the A/P to keep me level and on course. Essentially, what you do for this test is pick a heading...record your heading, true airspeed and GPS groundspeed. Turn 90 degs, record data again, then turn 90 degs once more and record a last time. Plug those into your spreadsheet of choice or this online TAS tool. This will tell you what your true airspeed should be.
Cross check that with what your EFIS was telling you. Mine came out to 167.92 kts, which correlated almost perfectly with my EFIS readings. Overall, it still seems slow to me for high performance cruise flight, but I'll deal with that conundrum later. So, keeping score...KTAS has been verified and looks good...IAS, however, does not.
My test area in the Northeastern corner of Colorado is, as I've alluded to, barren and flat. Not much to see. There are, however, two small "towers" that are about the only interesting geography I could find. (Edit: I was just informed these are the Pawnee Buttes.) Of course, now that I have found them I buzzed them on both weekend flights...just for fun. Here is a screenshot what it looked like...low level at about 195 mph. Also, if you look on the horizon you will see white columns...this a rather large windmill farm that's also cool to see from the air...but isn't everything?
This video link shows a one minute snippet as I pass by the towers. The music was coming through my iPad mini via Bluetooth into the PAR100EX and my headset. You can see in the video, there was some light turbulence bouncing me around. I did a little 500 ft zoom climb at the end, if you look close you can see the VSI and altimeter winding up pretty good as I did this. This puppy is fun to fly and I haven't really done much with her yet...I'm doing my best to take it slow. Some simple aileron rolls are on deck however.
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