Guys,
I have to take any opportunities I can with the way the weather has been
around here and the busy schedule of life in general. I have checked
everything that I can think of under the hood for the small vibration I
noticed on the first flight. These include compression check, wiring
checked, prop index, prop torque, spinner, prop tracking and looking
every thing over. It was cold and cloudy this morning but the wind was
light enough and I had an hour in between chores this morning, Sooo out I
went. I preheated the engine to 80 deg. and pulled 357CJ out and fired
her up. Preflight was good and the engine and all the instruments showed
good numbers. I taxied to 29, did the run up, called for departure to the
pattern. Down the runway we went. Just a couple seconds into the roll
some movement caught my eye. I glanced over to the canopy and saw it was
unlatched. I was most likely at take off speed al;ready then but decided
to abort. I went to the turn off and called clear and latched the canopy
down. So much for the take off check list. I taxied back to try again.
This time every thing seemed better and we were in the air in a matter of
seconds. I set climb at 85 mph and had just shy of 900'/min. climb. I was
barely a 1/4 mile past the end the runway and at pattern altitude. I
leveled off and trimmed for level flight and throttled back to hold 85 to
90 mph in the pattern. I forgot to look at the rpm's at this point. It
really don't take long to get around the pattern. Almost to quickly I had
to start the decent and being more aware of how fast speed can build I
was able to control rpm's and decent and airspeed little better. I did
not use any flaps this time ( I think partly because I forgot). I set up
a little longer finial to be lined up and adjust speed. I crossed the
threshold at about 10' and 75 mph. A couple feet left of centerline with
right wing just slightly down for the north crosswind. Touch down was
almost exactly where lift off was. It was a little fast and skipped back
up a couple feet and settled right back down.( This sounds better then
bouncing it inn) Roll out was fine and easily controllable. It was a far
better than my first survivable impact with the runway. I was out of time
by now so I packed it inn for the morning.
The flight and plane was fine for the short pattern work but
there is still a little vibration that nags at me. Hopefully more
tomorrow.
Still a happy guy
Joe Horton, Coopersburg, Pa.
joe.kr2s.buil...@juno.com
