sportflyer

sportflyer

Member
After Oshkosh this year and meeting all of the VAF guys in the tent, made up my mind and ordered an RV-8 kite. Also was impressed by the grove gear, so ordered them as well.
Well the empenage arrived end August and is now done. Lot of time spent building a spray booth, good decision as the spray results are good.
Inventoried the kit yesterday and no problems. Started assembling the wings today. Should be painting later in the week, what a great kit!
Instrument panel mostly done, will post photo soon. Had it water jet cut but have found that the online dxf provief by vans is the panel before being bent, so mine is about .75" too deep. Dont think I will change it,rather just shorten the stick if I need.
Engine is an EJ20 (160hp) with a reduction drive, wood prop and a dry sump (designed for inverted).
Engine is mostly built, and now that I have confirmed that the firewall dimensions are correct I can start on the mount.
Will post pics soon, too busy building at present. :D
 
RV8 and Subie

Hi Sportflyer,
Just purchased a RV8 kit myself and also going down the Subie route. Have already built the engine and been flying behind it for 130 hrs. Mine is a 2.5lt STi turbo, running an Autoflight H6 300 reduction box with an IVO in flight adjustable prop. Using Motec engine management as I have worked with this for many years. Beautiful engine with some serious grunt, great for short field and high density altitude ops as we find here in the western areas of Australia.
Have some clips on you tube under gbrtech.
Will be designing and building a new engine mount soon and will probably run under wing rads to a design I have already built and used. Current aircraft is using an in cowl setup very successfully but cooling drag is enormous with this configuration. Underwing should be more efficient as proven on Spitfires etc. Man I am looking forward to this next adventure.
Cheers
 
cooling drag

I have an utoflight 160 for mine. Also have a turbo normalizer on the drawing board. I use a link enu www.linkecu.com very highly recommended.
Interesting comment about the rad location. Did you mount the rads up front like an eggenfeller or at the back of the cowl?
I have a friend with a ch601 who moved the rads from the front to under the fuse as he found that the pressure up front split the rads. I suspect the mass airflow required for an aircooled engine are so large that the pressure buildup when we put a slab of cooler in front of it is too large.
My idea is to run some trials and perhaps block off the cowl till a good compramise is determined. I know there are speed cowls for an rv that have smaller inlets, may form a good model?

regards
 
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Cooling drag

I set my rad at bottom rear of cowl and made sure it was well sealed so all airflow thru cowl has to exit thru rad. My oil cooler is also water cooled so rad basically doing two jobs. I also have an air to air intercooler and the air flowing thru this also exits thru the main cooling rad so all in all the cooling system is doing a great job. Positioning the rads under the wings will allow me to use smaller coolers but in a better location for efficiency as I will build a proper duct to slow the air down as it comes in then speed it up again as it exits so delta p accross the rads will be enhanced. The Egg system is totally inadequate as most guys using his package have discovered and even the rad placement goes against all cooling requirement convention.
I am running the stock Sti turbo, in the stock position and basically run the engine at 30 map and adjust throttle and prop pitch as I increase altitude to keep 30 map or normalised. I even have the stock waste gate, not going down the adjustable wastegate route. So far so good and hopfully it all translates accross to the 8 with the same results.
Cheers
 
Photos please

Guys

a picture is worth a 1000 words!!!

I am running a Wam 120, and while I hit all my design goals I know I can reduce drag with a better set up.


Best Steve
 
Pics

Hi Steve,
If you wish to have a look on you tube and search gbrtech you will find 3 vids of my current aircraft and engine installation. This engine installation is going into the 8. This aircraft has basically been the 'Mule' and will be put back to its original configuration.
In my previous job I built the V6 and V8 engine installations for the Supermarine Spitfire MK26 and MK26B and the underwing cooling system for the V8 and then retrospectively for the V6. Rad design was absolutely faultless. I will use much the same as this as I know it already works extremely efficiently. As soon as I get my hands on the kit I will get wings under construction so I can build in all the hardware, plumbing etc that I know I will need. Another option is under fuse rad as per P51 but too many mods to fuse to make this as viable as the under wing option. I will get pics happening as soon as I can.
Cheers
Geoff
 
Kit arrived plus extra,s

Finally safe in the garage, one RV8 QB fuse and everything else to build a complete aircraft including a full RV8 instrument panel with instruments, radio, transponder etc and also a TRU TRAK auto pilot brand new still in the box, flap and aileron trim kits and tools to build said kit....cannot believe my luck!!!!!!
Now to start building....we are so excited!!!!!
 
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