NetHeads, Today was gorgeous, at least from the ground. When I checked the wind before lunch it was something like "light and variable". By the time I got to the airport, it was a lot different, but was only 10 knots or so, so I figured I could handle that. So off I went...and it was the roughest ride so far! I put two g's on the meter just climbing out, but once I got to 4000' everything smoothed out. I decided right then that I wasn't coming back until it was almost too dark to see, hoping things would calm down a bit. I flew around in a 40 mile radius or so, and throttled back to conserve fuel, following county roads to see where they go, and that kind of thing. I needed some slow flight practice anyway. : )
I kept checking the AWOS and hearing stuff like 15k winds, gusting to 18k, and that's a ninety degree crosswind at my airport. I didn't need an altimeter, because any time I got below 4000', it was like sailing in high seas. While flying I determined that I had about a 40k wind to contend with at altitude, so getting in the pattern was interesting, without getting blown way off course. Anyway, things had indeed calmed down somewhat on the ground at sunset, and I landed on that short, narrow strip like I'd been doing it all my life, uneventfully. Today's was the longest flight yet, covering 2.8 hours, and burning 12.3 gallons start to finish. I'm up to 108 hours on the plane, and those are flying hours, since the EIS doesn't count them unless I'm turning at least 1200 rpm (user programmable). I definitely need to slide my CG aft or change the horizontal stabilizer incidence. The slowest I could trim for hands off was 110 mph @ 2200 rpm. That was at 6000', burning 2.4 gallons per hour (fuel flow meter is calibrated now). Slower than that and I had to hold a little back pressure on it. I'm sure that's way out of the drag bucket too. My plane operates only in the top quarter of the trim indicator's range, so that's not a surprise. Maybe there are a few MPH's hiding in there. I guess it's time to do some more serious flight testing... Mark Langford, Huntsville, Alabama see KR2S project N56ML at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford email to N56ML "at" hiwaay.net --------------------------------------------------------------
