Firstlight
Active Member
Hello Folks,
I had an interesting evening tonight. I've been having some mixture related problems with my "new to me" RV4. I arranged to take a day off work to fly and wrench all day, with big hopes of getting the carb set up and my mixture issues dialled in. A day off with the boss's blessing and great weather. What a luxury! But of course I had to get "just one thing" done first, and the entire day got wasted dealing with customs and tax issues, finally making it out to the airport a bit after 6:00 PM. Gary Wilcox was out there with his super cool (and fast) 200 HP RV7. I was green with envy that he was warming up while I was opening hangar doors.
I hauled the airplane out, pre-flighted it, poured in a quart of oil and got it lit. The wind was favouring runway 23, but I opted for the much longer 27 just in case. I made a couple of circuits, experimenting with mixture and throttle response, etc. Nothing seemed to be going my way: the flaps jumped out of the second notch on short final, just as the screw backed itself out of the well-worn ball on my canopy-opening latch and everything fell out. "Fly the plane, Wayne. Fly the plane!"
I taxied back, took off and climbed in a steep arc into the downwind in that beautiful way that only an RV4 can. But when I pulled the throttle back, it would not come back past the half-way point. It was physically jammed against something, and pulling back any harder felt like the wrong thing to do. I was stuck with about 1900 RPM with carb heat on and about 10 pounds of back-pressure in my hand, and was having a very hard time getting slowed down. I circled the field and climbed slowly while thinking about my options. I did not want to open the throttle in case whatever was jamming it got worse. Eventually I hauled the nose up steeply to scrub off some speed, and try to get below flap speed. I had to let go of the throttle to pull on flaps, and that increased the RPM enough to make the whole operation a bit of a left-handed fuster cluck. I had visions of accident investigators looking into my smoking crater and scratching their heads...
Anyway, I eventually had to kill the engine and land dead stick. It was, as always seems to be the case, my absolute best landing ever in the airplane, and I rolled off at the intersection and coasted up towards Gary's hangar. I got myself ready for a runaway throttle, and re-started the airplane. It idled beautifully. Curious and curiouser!
Anyway, after a walk and guffaw session to settle my jangled nerves, I started back up ready for anything, and taxied easily to my hangar. I pulled the cowls, and noticed a missing cowling pin. Where did I find it? Stuck in the intake!
God obviously protects drunks, fools and pilots.
Cheers,
WBK
I had an interesting evening tonight. I've been having some mixture related problems with my "new to me" RV4. I arranged to take a day off work to fly and wrench all day, with big hopes of getting the carb set up and my mixture issues dialled in. A day off with the boss's blessing and great weather. What a luxury! But of course I had to get "just one thing" done first, and the entire day got wasted dealing with customs and tax issues, finally making it out to the airport a bit after 6:00 PM. Gary Wilcox was out there with his super cool (and fast) 200 HP RV7. I was green with envy that he was warming up while I was opening hangar doors.
I hauled the airplane out, pre-flighted it, poured in a quart of oil and got it lit. The wind was favouring runway 23, but I opted for the much longer 27 just in case. I made a couple of circuits, experimenting with mixture and throttle response, etc. Nothing seemed to be going my way: the flaps jumped out of the second notch on short final, just as the screw backed itself out of the well-worn ball on my canopy-opening latch and everything fell out. "Fly the plane, Wayne. Fly the plane!"
I taxied back, took off and climbed in a steep arc into the downwind in that beautiful way that only an RV4 can. But when I pulled the throttle back, it would not come back past the half-way point. It was physically jammed against something, and pulling back any harder felt like the wrong thing to do. I was stuck with about 1900 RPM with carb heat on and about 10 pounds of back-pressure in my hand, and was having a very hard time getting slowed down. I circled the field and climbed slowly while thinking about my options. I did not want to open the throttle in case whatever was jamming it got worse. Eventually I hauled the nose up steeply to scrub off some speed, and try to get below flap speed. I had to let go of the throttle to pull on flaps, and that increased the RPM enough to make the whole operation a bit of a left-handed fuster cluck. I had visions of accident investigators looking into my smoking crater and scratching their heads...
Anyway, I eventually had to kill the engine and land dead stick. It was, as always seems to be the case, my absolute best landing ever in the airplane, and I rolled off at the intersection and coasted up towards Gary's hangar. I got myself ready for a runaway throttle, and re-started the airplane. It idled beautifully. Curious and curiouser!
Anyway, after a walk and guffaw session to settle my jangled nerves, I started back up ready for anything, and taxied easily to my hangar. I pulled the cowls, and noticed a missing cowling pin. Where did I find it? Stuck in the intake!
God obviously protects drunks, fools and pilots.
Cheers,
WBK
