Scott & Tanya Card RV9A build log (N4822C)

Today this project turned into a real aircraft when the airworthiness certificate was issued. Wow, what a milestone. Not a single issue was found. The inspector only praised our workmanship. It was relatively painless since he didn’t find anything to complain about. We had many visitors and congratulations today and I thank everyone for them. Oh, and my phase I flight test area is a 300nm radius!
After coming down off of the inspection nerves and getting some lunch, Tanya and I spent the whole rest of the day re-assembling the airplane in prep for first flight. It is truly amazing how many screws hold on how many panels that have always been off of this thing. We finally got everything closed up and the seats in it around 8:30pm and are beat. Maybe the weather, flight crew schedules, and my preparation will all come together at some point tomorrow for a first flight?

That ain’t no stinkin’ pile of aluminum. It is an airplane!

I finally got my GRT XM weather unit the other day. I spent a few hours getting it mounted in the plane. I’m having some problems getting it to activate that I’ll work on some more next time.
This GRT XM setup is cheesy to say the least. It is an aluminum GRT box with the WxWorx consumer hardware screwed to the top. It looks like they chose not to actually license the technology, but rather just resell the WxWorx receiver. This is what we accept for a low price. The WxWorx hardware clearly isn’t what I would call “aviation quality”. It is a big plastic box with an antenna connector, USB connector, and a normal consumer electronics barrel power connector. This whole setup weighs surely twice as much as it has to. Oh well, once I see radar on the displays, I won’t care.

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

I pulled the cowl and carefully inspected for any rubbing from the engine run. Looks good. That is about it for engine runs until first flight so I removed all of the access panels, fairings, wing tips in prep for the inspection. I bled the brakes one more time just to be sure. I’ve been continuing to just go around the whole thing looking for anything I’ve missed. I safetied a couple more hose clamps.

The other thing I’ve been committing a lot of time to is first flight planning. I’ve been doing a lot of calculation for time, distance, speed, and position for engine out senarios in that first 30-40 seconds. All in hopes of having some clue as to what is possible and what isn’t in the worst case.

I did some low speed taxi tests. I put the cowl on and went for a little ride over to Jim’s hangar. This was the first time that I’ve run the engine with the cowl on. Still have yet to take it off to check for rubbing. I did a short runup to 1800rpm and got the prop to cycle just a few rpms. That was a first to verify that the prop works. So far so good. Next I’ll pull the cowl and continue my “inspections” and cleanup the hangar. This thing is very done and just waiting for the airworthiness inspection. I’m ready to fly.

 

  

 

I got the N numbers N4822C stuck on the side of the airplane. I didn’t fret too much about placement as this is really just temporary (6-9mo.) until they get stripped off for paint. I have been doing research into engine instrumentation parameter limits. What values are high, low, preferred for cylinder head temperature, oil temp, oil pressure, fuel pressure. There are different values in even the official lycoming documentation (overhaul manual vs. operating manual). I consumed all the data and came to numbers that made me happy, until I find otherwise. With that, I could program some alarm limits into the engine instrumentation. I defined numbers initially that are sufficiently out of bounds to not produce any false positives during the first flights but still give indication that something must be done. The last thing I need on the first flight is a bunch of engine alarms for things that really aren’t a problem. So that was at least a good 45min. of tinkering with EIS and EFIS config stuff (the fun part).
My SL40 com2 radio needed some adjustment in the side tone. Side tone is the audio you hear in the headset coming directly from your microphone input when transmitting. I’ve run across a number of people that fly certified airplanes that didn’t even know this was adjustable. Anyway, when I would transmit on that radio, my voice would come back into the headset very, very loud. There is a software configuration in the SL40 to adjust this. I turned it down to half, no change. I turned it down half again, a little change. I turned it down some more and found a spot I was much happier with.
As the sun started getting low, I loaded up my fuel cans and headed to the fuel pumps again. I pumped 10gal. of fuel and dumped it into one tank that already had a few gallons in it. This is to calibrate the fuel level senders (vans float senders). I overshot my mark as the indicator stopped increasing before I had 14gal of fuel in the tank. The tanks hold 18gal. This is an expected result. Now I know what the floats read when they are full. I just need to close in on exactly how much fuel that really is. It looks like it is about 13-14gal.. Now I’ll start draining the fuel out of this tank and put it in the other for a similar trial. I’ll close in on the real numbers there. Oh, and no leaks in the fuel tank yet! That is good news.
Another thing I worked on was configuring the fuel pressure sender in the EIS for the proper range. I hadn’t done this and was getting pressure readings of 27+psi (not real). I input the config data and now am seeing real fuel pressure in the .5-5psi range.