This evening Tanya and I flew to Fredericksburg (T82) about 60mi. SW just to get some flight time. Nothing too eventful. We just went out, did pre-flight, and launched, came back, got fuel, and put it away :). Pretty cool. The prop surged a little (less than 100 rpm) with cool oil on takeoff. The new prop governor has been ordered and is probably about two weeks out. I’m currently planning on replacing it after LOE.
After putting all of the wheel pants and fairings back on and getting some lunch, Tanya and I went up for a little local flight. I didn’t aggravate the prop governor due to passenger-onboard. This flight was a chance for Tanya to finally get some real stick time. We ended up just flying around home within about 25mi. for a little over two hours. We climbed up to 9k feet where it was 62 degrees and smooth. Tanya did most of the flying and tinkered with power settings, leaning, climbs, decents, turns, autopilot control, EFIS display options, slow flight, etc.. She found something of interest with each and every little thing now that she was flying. I can’t tell you how much it totally rocks having a wife onboard that is a pilot and fully capable of transferring PIC to. I think we are working out a good rule of always annunciating clearly “You have control”, “I have the airplane”. That way there is no doubt so someone is always in control and the copilot can provide only useful information and not criticism. There is a fine line when multiple people think they are in control. We spent a lot of time just trying to bring her up to speed on how it feels and what kind of parameters are normal in different conditions. Stuff like when we slow down, the oil temperature rises, when we climb too slow, the CHT goes up and how much is acceptable to the builder.
We just flew around among the clouds at 9k’ while she explored all this stuff. We were burning barely 7gph. I had a complete blast and we didn’t even go anywhere. I was a little surprised at just how much I have learned the intimate little details of how this machine that we built performs and reacts to specific inputs. I can’t say that I have ever before known a single aircraft so well to be able to say what power, prop, mixture, altitude would yield what speed or climb or decent, etc. Tanya learned just how slippery our bird is when it comes time to slow down and get down. She flew the majority of the approach and handed it to me 1000′ AGL on (long) final :). That resulted in a great demonstration of just what full flaps in a -9A can do with a constant speed prop. Much fun!
Today I went out to test fly the prop governor among other things. The verdict is ‘nah’, not good enough. The modified (version -F) governor isn’t nearly as stable in basic cruise and wanders 30-40 RPM every now and then. When the oil is over 200 deg, it definitely surges on takeoff by about 120 RPM. Not nearly as bad as previously, but definitely not good enough. I’ll be ordering a PCU5000 on Monday. It is reported to be the end-all solution.
The new COM belly whip antenna on COM2 that replaced the wing tip antenna is a very major improvement. I’m super happy with that. The GNS430 ARINC 429 configuration change didn’t work out. When the gps came up with the ARINC output configured to be GAMA 429 (this is for vertical steering command output), it continuously jumped to the user waypoint input screen! Completely inoperable. I found that if I turned off, or configured the GTX330 transponder to not output “Garmin w/tis” the GNS430 calmed down and looked ok. That will require more digging. For this flight, I just set it back to what I know works and moved on.
This evening I had one main objective, to get the nose wheel bushings staked as described many times on VAF. The objective is to be able to use a lower wheel axle torque to impart less wheel drag without the bushing turning with the wheel. With the correct screws in hand I got down to business. I jacked nose wheel off the ground and removed the wheel and fork assembly. On the bench, I marked where to drill the holes. I decided on a location 40 degrees off of the top of the fork, inline with the axle hole, and 0.40″ from the edge of the axle hole. With the holes marked I jigged the whole assembly up on the drill press and went for it. The holes were drilled, deburred, tapped, machine countersunk, etc. It all came out great. I had it all reassembled and back on the plane with new cotter pins and all in about two hours. Note that this is “hangar time”, so it includes a few minutes to talk to visitors, a few minutes to stand in front of the fan and watch/listen to crazy people in the pattern above, etc..
The prop governor is back from MT. I will be reinstalling it tomorrow while Tanya puts the seat pans back in. Also the new com2 belly whip antenna is installed. I just clipped the antenna wire going out to the wing and put a new connector on it. I disconnected the coax at the wingtip antenna and just abandoned the coax in place for now. I’ll probably remove it at some later date. Right now, it is just time to get back in the air.
I did pretty much a full weekend of sanding on the wheel pants and gear leg fairings. I think they are just about ready for a good “final” coat of primer.
Tanya came out one day and removed the seat pans (bunch of screws), helped install nutplates for the upper intersection fairings, and cleaned up most of the oil mess from the removal of the prop governor. I used this opportunity to carefully inspect all of the control hardware and replace the elevator trim relay. The community has come to understand that the original RAC trim relay has a very high failure rate. I decided not to wait for the failure, but to go ahead and replace the relay with their new unit.
I have an ACS order arriving today that includes another Comant com antenna and the proper hardware to “stake” the nose wheel bushings. I have decided to abandon the Archer wing tip com antenna and install another whip antenna on the bottom of the fuselage in the area of the left gear weldament. This is for my com2 SL-40 radio. I just wasn’t really happy with the marginal reception of the internal tip antenna. I found myself all too often tuning ATIS or AWOS in on com2, only to try again on com1 because of reception distance or aircraft structure shielding.
Also, while I have things taken apart and am waiting for the return of my prop governor, I think I’m going to remove the nose gear fork and “stake” the bearing bushings to provide some more flexibility in setting the pre-load torque of the axle. This is just a preemptive measure.
I’m working towards having all my little tasks finished and things put back together by the time the prop governor gets back. It will arrive at MT in Florida today, hopefully I’ll have it back by the weekend. I figure I need to get back in the air as quickly as possible if we’re going to really consider making the LOE flyin. I need to get some more stable time on the machine before we head off across west Texas.