Today I spent the morning taking care of a list of squawks.
First, I found an oil leak in the engine. One of the cylinder drain tubes was leaking from where it joins to the cylinder. I took off the tube and discovered that it was cracking right at the base of the flare for the AN fitting. That was an easy fix.
Second, I was seeing higher CHT’s on the last flight. The only thing I changed that could have effected this was the sealing foam tape I had put on the top of the runners where they mate to the firewall/NACA duct. After the last flight, I had taken this foam tape off, thinking it wasn’t doing any good. So, I put it back and secured it in place.
Third was the Dynon Skyview. I had upgraded it to the new v4.0 firmware before the last flight, and midway thru the flight, it shut down my ADAHRS indicating network failure. Not a good thing. After a bit of hunting, I found that previous versions did not bring network errors to the pilots attention. This version does. I eventually found that I had one of the network wire pairs to my ADAHRS were mixed up. I set them right, and all the network errors went away.
Finally, to further try to correct my left roll tendency, I further drooped the ailerons to ~3/16″ (they were at 1/8″).
Time to fly. I had been concerned on my first couple flights about a long takeoff roll. I’ve refined my takeoff technique a bit and shortened them up considerably. The critical part is the initial roll to ~40kts. I’ve found that that portion can be significantly lengthened by using too much brakes to keep it straight. On the last few flights, I’ve tried to let it go off the center line initially and correct once I get enough speed that the rudders become active. Little pulses on the brakes keep me out of the grass until then. Also, I used to taxi onto the runway and then sit there for a few seconds gathering my thoughts before pegging the throttle. The problem with this is it always takes a little while to get the nose gear straightened using up valuable takeoff roll with braking. Now, I’ve found it better to do a rolling takeoff – its much easier to line up the nose wheel with a bit of speed and you can use the momentum you developed taxiing onto the runway. Those tricks have really reduced my takeoff lengths and CloudAhoy indicates they’re ~1000′ which is fine with me.I’ve also tried to reduce my landing speed and hence the amount of runway I eat up. I’ve got several 3000′ runways in my test flight area, so I’m trying to get ready for them.
I did a bunch of touch and goes today. I seem to be slamming the nose wheel down more and even did a bit of a bounce on one today. Not sure what I was doing wrong.
Other than that, I took it up to 4000′ and toodled around the area around KORH checking if the roll tendency had been improved (still wanted to roll left) and how the CHT’s looked (#3 got to 430F at one point – still a little troubling, others were pretty good, oil temp stayed <220). I tested the autopilot – it worked very well. I was pleased as punch to be flying hands off, turning a knob to set my heading. It was a bit rough with some mild to medium turbulence, and other than asking for trim adjustments, it held altitude very well.
Back at the hangar, I always look into the engine first, fully expecting to see a cowling full of oil (not sure why). But this time I did see a bunch of oil. On first inspection, I thought I might have a crank seal leakage as it was all under the prop extension. Then I found the culprit – there was a stream of oil from the oil vent tube under the cowling, along the bottom of the cowling, then it turned the corner to the inside of the cowling behind the prop. Must have been drawn into the vacuum there. I had just topped of the oil as it went below 6qts. Looks like it is happy at 6qts as I previously didn’t seem much coming out the vent tube. I cleaned up the oil mess and rolled it into the hangar for the night. Tomorrow, I’ll start investigating my wing angle of incidence to see if I need to do some shimming to get it to fly without rolling.
Here’s the CloudAhoy log for the flight.