I was in TX this weekend and so I stopped by Taylor TX to see the "Green Machine." Mark had a lapse in good judgement and he let me fly it!!!!
The Thrust line is 1.5" lower than the Lycoming and I had wondered how it would look. Rest easy, the airplane looks GREAT! The cowling has a curve in it's back that hints of a King Air nacelle. The airplane has a turbine like look to it.
There were no gear leg fairings or wheel pants so speed runs don't mean alot, but it seems about as fast or faster than my airplane even without those. I am pretty sure it will be faster than the Lycoming airplane.
For those who havent seen the picts, the cooling air exits thru big cowl flaps on the side of the cowling instead of the bottom. The exhaust exits out the righthand side like an AT-6. It leaves the beautiful exhaust streak on the side like a Mustang, but if there are any leaks, it would also leave oil on the side like a T-6.
I hopped in and fired it up and the overwing exhaust sounds really tough with canopy open. I warmed it up and got familiar with the D120. It is pretty slick, I had not flown with one and it works well.
Once the canopy is closed the noise level seemed no different than '84.
The take-off is well, Rocket like, it has noticably more torque and acceleration than '84. It was a rough day with lots of clouds. I was able to get up to 5K and the airfilter sits on the front of the fuel servo inside the top cowl and there is no ram rise that I could see, at 5K @ 175 kias pushing the throttle to the stop yielded 25 inches max. That is a good number, but not as good as the pitot intake on the lycoming cowling.
The airplane is a dream to fly, like all Rockets. My gut told me that it will be faster in both cruise and climb rate than '84, but without the wheel pants and fairings any comparison would be meaningless.
The lean feature on the Dynon is simple and as expected pulling the mixture back the cylinders all peak very close together and the airplane was very happy lean of peak, but i wasnt cruising, I was having fun, so i pushed it up again, and was tearing up the sky.
What was amazing was that the airplane only has about 10 hours on it and it was really well sorted out. Everything worked as expected and I had burned enough of Marks gas so i went back to his home strip and landed.
Mark says the CG is slightly farther forward as expected. The Cont 550 is the smoothest piston aircraft engine there is, and with the vibration dampening of the composite MT prop, it is turbine smooth! Further it will maintain more power higher and it is designed to run LOP and it does that so smoothly. The result of that is higher fuel economy. This is a slick set up!
It was a Blast!!! When he gets the fairings on it, we can fly together and then we will have some really good numbers, for now all i can say is it flies nice, climbs fast, and runs smooth.. That's a pretty good start.
Tailwinds,
Doug Rozendaal
