NetHeads, I flew for 1.5 hours today, and figured out what my "miss" was. It was simply running too rich! Recall that I spent several hours over the weekend draining and flushing the fuel system, but didn't find a single drop of water. Today I watched the mixture meter carefully and discovered that the stumble is at full rich. The misfire then makes the meter drop into the lean zone, which is when I'd glance at it during the last flight, so that was somewhat confusing. Now I know that I need to adjust my mixture cable a little so that I can't get it that far into the rich range. I'll do that and do another test flight tomorrow if the winds aren't too high. The thing I've learned about winter flying is that the acceptable mixture range is reduced considerably over summertime temps. Well, at least I took the opportunity to clean out the fuel and air filters, which was overdue.
I did 10 landings at three different airports today, and I'd have to call every one of them a greaser! Even the last two at my home field (40' wide, 2600' long) were excellent, and on the last one I deliberately tried to stop as quick as I could and still had half the runway left! The weather is supposed to stink from tomorrow night forward for the next 7 days, so maybe I'll do some work behind the panel until then. I want to install a different (rectangular) mixture meter into the hole where my useless Tiny Tach was, add a fuel transfer timer, and add a starter relay that will allow my backup battery to help out when starting. I may also remove my VSI and do some testing on it to see why it's so worthless. Life is good... Mark Langford, Harvest, AL see homebuilt airplane at http://www.N56ML.com email to N56ML "at" hiwaay.net
