NetHeads, Over the last few days and weeks, I've been doing trial runs in N891JF, getting ready for the trip to Chino. I needed to calibrate the fuel consumption displayed by the MGL Explorer, calibrate the airspeed indicator, and make sure I could survive three hours in that awful sling seat without my back seizing up, among other things, so I flew up to Kentucky and back in about 2.5 hours. The "mission" was a complete success, yielding a minor tweak to both totalizer and IAS factors. One neat thing about electronic instruments is you can adjust out most inaccuracies caused by off-nominal sensors, peculiarities of static/pitot systems...that kind of thing.
My main goal was to do a long-distance run at a steady-state fuel burn rate that would yield something in the neighborhood of 145 mph IAS, and quantify the fuel burn rate, engine RPM, and other engine parameters, so I could validate the flight planning. I've discovered that 150 mph TAS is easy enough to maintain at 7500 density altitude, while getting well under 4 gallons per hour, which is around 40 miles per gallon. More totalizer calibration on the long trip to Chino will refine this some more though. And since the Explorer shows true airspeed and density altitude all the time (no need to estimate in my head anymore), I took it up to 7500' density altitude to do a wide open "cruise speed" test, which turned out to be 163 mph. Not bad on a 2180 cc VW engine! I finally got around to installing the interior, and what a difference some padding on the sling seat and plywood seatback makes! It's also nice to have pockets in the side panels to put headset batteries, sunglasses, pencils, etc. If all goes well, Joe Horton will drop in Wednesday afternoon, and we'll take off early Thursday for Las Alamos to meet up with Jeff Scott, Rob Schmitt, Terry Chizek, and hopefully Marty Roberts (flying a Luscombe) and Larry Flesner. We'll fly to Chino together with Jeff Friday morning, and others are welcome to join us. Keep your fingers crossed for good weather. If we were leaving tomorrow, weather would be quite favorable, I think. Mark Langford ML at N56ML.com website at http://www.N56ML.com --------------------------------------------------------
