Scott & Tanya Card RV9A build log (N4822C)

I got a short flight in this evening. I finally had some smooth air and was able to do some performance testing.

Today I flew to San Antonio and back. Much fun playing among the clouds (vfr clearance of course). All is well on the machine right now. I’m getting closer to getting the main wheel pants on it. I’m going to have to borrow some wing jacks to accomplish that.
The San Antonio controllers were very interested in the RV. Approach control was asking how fast it would go and how much it would carry. The tower controller was chatty as well, as I was landing on a parallel runway to a B737 arrival. I told the tower controller that the RV9 was the king of slow flight in the RV series. I showed him a classic RV9-A landing, touching down just above stall, approx. 53mph, with the nose in the air. I guess he was impressed.
Back at Georgetown, I was #4 in the pattern for landing runway 36. This was a normal Sunday afternoon of training traffic in the pattern. It can get pretty exciting. I got in behind a Cessna on downwind. The way this usually goes with this many students in the pattern is that the base leg goes from 1.5mi. out to 4mi. real quick. I decided it was time to use those long RV9A wings again and I slowed up on downwind to about 70mph and just hung out while the base legs of the other traffic got further and further out. I just strolled downwind watching the other traffic. I ended up turning about a 2mi. base behind #3. It looked like his base leg must have been 5mi. downwind! This was a pretty cool use of the slow flight capabilities of the -9.

Build Tip: Good seats are awesome! My butt doesn’t hurt or even complain after sitting in the plane for over two hours. I don’t think I’ve ever flown anything else that I could say that about. Another random build tip is that the blue fuel pump ON indicator lamp that I installed is pretty much useless. It isn’t bright enough to hardly see, much less get your attention (daytime of course).

 

  

  

  

  

 

I did a couple more flights this Saturday. I actually landed at Rockdale this time. I have now flown over it more times than I can count. It is a pretty small field. The runway is only 50′ wide. Good practice after being spoiled at Georgetown. On my second flight, I decided to go down to San Marcos and check out the ILS. San Marcos is an uncontrolled field, but they have an ILS approach. Yep, the pilot isn’t so good, but all the ILS equipment works!
No real maintenance today. I did a little more fiberglass work on the main wheel pants.

I took Friday off of real work to spend the day at the airport. I’m making progress. The oil temp probe is still rock solid. Yeah! Carb temp has a new symptom of slowly rising to 127deg. and just sitting there. I don’t care much about that at this point. That is a mystery for rainy day. I installed the nose gear leg fairing and intersection fairing before flying today. I could feel that it made a little improvement. I haven’t looked at the data yet to see exactly how much.
I have expanded my flight test area south to Lockhart (50R) today. I actually did my first touch-and-go today at Lockhart. I was a little surprised that it has taken this long to do one, but I haven’t been spending much time in the pattern for temps.
I took a few pictures today. The in flight images are out by Caldwell level at 7500′ with the autopilot fully coupled and the monkey just along for the ride.

 

  

  

  

  

  

 

The first flight test of the new oil temp probe was a success. The oil temp indication was rock solid the whole flight. It sure is nice to fly with the oil temp sensor working. It is just a little less stressful.
There was a little bit of a haze layer this evening. I flew out to Caldwell (east) via my normal test route with lots of airports in between. Once I got out there and turned around to come back I was a little alarmed to find the sun getting low in the sky, directly in my face, and lighting up the light haze layer so much as to really reduce forward visibility. I didn’t get above it by 8k’ so I went lower and called Houston Center for a little extra safety on my way back. If I was going to have to let down because of visibility issues, I didn’t want to have to do it from way up high, which could take a while. At that point, the objective was to get back home and on the ground. Kind of a weird situation as the sky was “clear” and visibility greater than 10mi., but not from my seat at that particular point in time. All pretty much due to the angle of the sun. All was well and I decided to go around the pattern one more time once I got back. My oil temperature sure doesn’t like spending any extra time on the ground or in the pattern after a flight. It was high (218) as I turned crosswind for my extra lap. As were CHTs. As expected at this point.