Most likely my Uncle will get the first ride since he helped buck a bunch of rivets...Then my wife...Then my other RV buddies that want to see what the view is like out of a tipper....
Squawks?
1. Safeair static ports were not accurate at all...long story. Fixed em and moved on. Seems really accurate now.
2. Already cracked the left aft corner of my baffles since I did not install a cross brace or beef that corner up with a piece of angle.
3. Already broke one of the eyes off the bottom cowl to firewall hinges.
4. Slightly heavy left wing (Even when burning enough gas out of the left to compensate for my fat butt)
5. I am going to have to finish the lower intersection fairings and slick up all the glass work before I can turn it over to the painter next year
6. It cost alot in fuel to run a new rebuilt engine wide open for hours and hours and hours and hours full rich!!! I have been leaning over the past 10 hours and that helps some.
7. I had a whistle that came from the front of the canopy because I was flying without a seal in place in the front. It was really really loud at high speed. Scary loud like something was about to fly apart. Gone now with the seal in place.
8. The engine is still using more oil than I would like. I am going to go another oil change while staying with mineral oil to see if it gets better. In the beginning I was babying the power settings since the whistle would start to worry me but once I finally found the root cause of that, it has been above 75% power ever since...
9. The engine will heat up on warm days on extended high performance climbs. Once the CHT's hit 400-410 I have to push the nose down.
10. I have to work instead of fly!!!
I have learned a ton about how to fly an RV with a FP prop. On takeoff once your off the ground, you can get much more performance if you let the airspeed built to at least 100kts before pulling up. It is like catching another gear.. You can actually feal the prop start to really bite. If I pull too soon, the plane feels like it never grabs hold and the performance suffers on climbout.
I like to get off the ground and fly at about 10-15 ft till the kick in the pants hits (~100kts) and then I pull... Gets me to pattern altitude almost before the end of our 5700ft runway.
Keep us up to date on how phase one goes and safe flying.
Are you flying to Oshkosh this year?