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What did you do with your RV this weekend (12/11/21 - 12/12/21)?

DeltaRomeo

doug reeves: unfluencer
Staff member
Getting it started. I'm studying so no flying. Thoughts and prayers to all the folks affected by the storms and tornados in the central and eastern U.S. Saturday.

v/r,dr
 
Finally finished my condition inspection after fixing my loose gear leg and adding wood stiffeners. Wow, what a difference the stiffeners make!

My lil’ Dude helped me finish put everything back together today, we were airborne by this afternoon on our way to help someone with a complex checkout.

Also bumped into a fellow friend and Rv10 builder who just recently started flying his 10, he flew a .3 “just because.” Keep it up Paul!

We departed for home just after sunset and combined night currency with uploading current databases and practicing landings with the new stiffened gear legs. Sunsets have been amazing all week, night landings were akin to flight sim……
 

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Almost forgot, Lil’ Dude discovered Flight Sim on the airport computer during our sack/microwave lunch today. He’s never gonna be the same…..
 

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We departed for home just after sunset and combined night currency with uploading current databases and practicing landings with the new stiffened gear legs. Sunsets have been amazing all week, night landings were akin to flight sim……

Ohio has some nice sunsets but not as good as Kansas!
 
Air Tractor Factory Tour

We flew over to Olney, Texas and got a tour of the Air Tractor factory (thank you Michael from Air Tractor!). They are a fascinating type of aircraft (the horsepower and useful loads are amazing) and seeing the manufacturing process was interesting. They make Air Tractors for agriculture, fire suppression and even some militaries. Worth a visit.
 

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Not so much flying...

But I did burn a lot of avgas!

I finished up the engine last week and drove my newly assembled Whammadyne 540-X down to Ly-Con for testing Thursday - Saturday and had a blast. Here's a link to the first start.
First Fire!

I'm very happy to say it ran well and the performance was very good. We do have final performance runs on Monday, and then we'll replace the short exhaust stacks with my exhaust for more data. Having a SkyDynamics intake and ShowPlanes cowl, Chris at Vetterman had to make me a slightly different exhaust, so it will be interesting see how it compares with a few data points on the full power curve.

We started with a 2 blade "reference prop", but then put a larger 3-blade hartzell on with governor and then started tweaking with AFR and ignition timing. We finished Saturday by observing the dyno get a calibration with standards, and then we did a couple runs with great outcome.

Overall, a wonderful experience and I can't say enough about the support, knowledge and professionalism from the good folks at Ly-Con, and then also Barry and Ross at SDS and answered my calls right away for tech support. The SDS EFII system worked very well. We all stood in the control and admired the starts each time - hot, cold or whatever, it started within a couple blades (the video tells it all). It's a thing of beauty.

Lastly, we instrumented my engine well and found that my SkyDyamics intake developed, on average when compared with MAP at the throttle body to MAP at the intake ports, increasing from about 1/2" at 2200 to just a little over 1" of additional MP at 2750 rpm. If you're able to get one, I highly recommend their intake system.
 
Got some help in the "factory"

Drilled the left wing ribs to the main and rear spar and got some help. My daughter showed interest and we ended up disassembling the ribs from the spars together. "Dad clecoes are cool!"
 

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That thing that some of us do periodically...
 

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The EAA chapter here at TCS has created a fantastic Beech 18 windsock or maybe tetrahedron... not sure what to call it. Neither of those and both! ;) Regardless, it's on bearings and works fantastically well. Also VERY easy to spot from the air once your brain is conditioned to look for it. I finally got around to snapping a few photos of it this weekend.

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