More flight test stuff

Another beautiful day. Still more burning up dead
dinosaurs at high speed to break in the engine.
The intake leak fix worked like magic. CHT
split is down and below 400F on all 4. Still
have a heavy left wing, but burning from the
left tank first evens it out quickly. I squeezed
the right aileron yesterday (a Vans trick) and that
helped a little too. I'm not going to mess with it
anymore until I get the wheel pants on.
I haven't done any required climb testing yet
because of the missing fairings, but it's pretty
easy to get 1500+ fpm (VSI) at 4K ft and stabilized
airspeeds from 100-130 KIAS. Fairings, an airspeed cal,
and a stopwatch will get me better data later. Getting
*down* after the climb tests is a little more interesting
since I want to keep running the engine hard for break-in.
80-85 deg bank angle and a good hard pull works well - that
big ol' rectangular wing loads up, airspeed bleeds quickly,
and it comes down quick.
When I *do* decide to pull the power, stalls are fun.
In general the airplane stalls straight ahead, with a 10 deg
or so wing drop to either side. On two or three, though,
I haven't had the ball well-centered and it's rolled off to
maybe 30-45 deg. I really buggered one with the flaps up
and got what I guess was about 1/2 turn incipient spin
before I relaxed aft stick. Popped right out of it.
I don't trim into stalls, so while the stick forces are
fairly light given the reduced airspeed, I still get kind
of a workout during entry.
Came back towards the field at speed today. Dropped down
under the class B, and got *pounded*. Gust response
at 145 KIAS is pretty impressive on a bumpy day.
Still haven't figured out that landing thing. I tend
to flare too high (but too low in other airplanes - go figure)
and drop it in. chirpchirpchirp. It's not too pretty,
but I get down OK. Flaring low and a shot of power just before
touchdown helps. Crosswinds don't.

Ready for next time.

Dave 'dasher' Hyde

On Sun, 11 Apr 2004 23:07:45 GMT, "nauga" wrote:

Still haven't figured out that landing thing. I tend
to flare too high (but too low in other airplanes - go figure)
and drop it in. chirpchirpchirp. It's not too pretty,
but I get down OK. Flaring low and a shot of power just before
touchdown helps. Crosswinds don't.

It's probably related to the sight picture still being a bit unfamiliar,
when you're landing.

I flew the Hevle Tandem Fly Baby a week ago (and shot air-to-air of it...
see http://www.bowersflybaby.com/pix/hevle1.JPG). I had no trouble from the
front seat, as the seat is in the same position as that of the single
seater. But the sight picture changed drastically when I soloed it, since
the CG requires the pilot to sit in back. While it was the same plane with
the same control fell, the sight picture was radically different. When I
flared, this whole *airplane* rose in front of me. Rather plopped down.

Obviously, Nauga, you need to get more accustomed to the sight picture. Go
fly more. :-)

Ron Wanttaja