(mostly a repost from my build log)
Tanya and I finished up the '09 condition inspection. It looks like it takes us about 40 hours to properly complete a full condition inspection on this plane. We are almost exactly equal parts labor at this point. No major issues were found. Brakes and new Dresser retread tires are wearing great. They were installed in October '08 and now have over 200 hours. The brakes look almost new. The first rotation of the tires have at least another 300 hours available on the first side. I finally found the source of a little pesky oil leak. It is at the forward right side of the oil sump at the assembly flange. It looks like I'll be pulling the sump and putting a new gasket etc. on sometime when it is cooler out.
With everything buttoned up and proper log book entries made, today we went up and did a test flight. I treat this kind of flight like a loaded gun that could kill us at any time. Just like Phase I. I made it clear to the tower that this was an experimental test flight and that we would be climbing in the pattern to orbit the field at 6500'. They asked if I wanted radar service up there with Austin. I didn't, because I had plans to do a bunch of systems and electrical testing involving shutting everything down in flight at altitude over the field. They agreed that I would just stay with the tower frequency (way) above. Up we went, keeping it nice and tight over the field. We were long since above the class D airspace by downwind. We did a pretty continuous sequence of functional tests for almost 45 minutes. Part of this included incrementally shutting down all parts of the electrical system to refresh our expectations of how things behave. We have a lot of "whiz-bang" toys in this airplane, but I think it is important to actually demonstrate that the whole thing doesn't just fall out of the sky running on only one mag and the instrument panel all off. That is what we did. Demonstrated flight with all electrical off, efis reboot in flight, electronic ignition off... Things get very simple real quick. While we were at it, this was a good time to introduce Tanya to flying with the engine completely shut down (mixture pulled off). We were just a big RV glider for a couple of minutes. Tanya set it up and pulled the mixture and just flew the airplane. "It flies just fine" she commented. You can hardly tell it isn't running except for the decent rate to maintain airspeed and the lack of idle popping in the exhaust pipes. The mixture is put back in and we have power again. Note that we set this up in perfect position to spiral directly down onto the numbers of the active runway if for some reason the power didn't return. These are good exercises for us that I think work well with the conclusion of our annual condition inspection. Smooth skies they weren't in the 102 degree heat.
Tanya and I finished up the '09 condition inspection. It looks like it takes us about 40 hours to properly complete a full condition inspection on this plane. We are almost exactly equal parts labor at this point. No major issues were found. Brakes and new Dresser retread tires are wearing great. They were installed in October '08 and now have over 200 hours. The brakes look almost new. The first rotation of the tires have at least another 300 hours available on the first side. I finally found the source of a little pesky oil leak. It is at the forward right side of the oil sump at the assembly flange. It looks like I'll be pulling the sump and putting a new gasket etc. on sometime when it is cooler out.
With everything buttoned up and proper log book entries made, today we went up and did a test flight. I treat this kind of flight like a loaded gun that could kill us at any time. Just like Phase I. I made it clear to the tower that this was an experimental test flight and that we would be climbing in the pattern to orbit the field at 6500'. They asked if I wanted radar service up there with Austin. I didn't, because I had plans to do a bunch of systems and electrical testing involving shutting everything down in flight at altitude over the field. They agreed that I would just stay with the tower frequency (way) above. Up we went, keeping it nice and tight over the field. We were long since above the class D airspace by downwind. We did a pretty continuous sequence of functional tests for almost 45 minutes. Part of this included incrementally shutting down all parts of the electrical system to refresh our expectations of how things behave. We have a lot of "whiz-bang" toys in this airplane, but I think it is important to actually demonstrate that the whole thing doesn't just fall out of the sky running on only one mag and the instrument panel all off. That is what we did. Demonstrated flight with all electrical off, efis reboot in flight, electronic ignition off... Things get very simple real quick. While we were at it, this was a good time to introduce Tanya to flying with the engine completely shut down (mixture pulled off). We were just a big RV glider for a couple of minutes. Tanya set it up and pulled the mixture and just flew the airplane. "It flies just fine" she commented. You can hardly tell it isn't running except for the decent rate to maintain airspeed and the lack of idle popping in the exhaust pipes. The mixture is put back in and we have power again. Note that we set this up in perfect position to spiral directly down onto the numbers of the active runway if for some reason the power didn't return. These are good exercises for us that I think work well with the conclusion of our annual condition inspection. Smooth skies they weren't in the 102 degree heat.
