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.