NetHeads, Today I managed another 1.5 hours, despite forecasts of gloom and doom. I've now adopted a weather prognostication method of looking at the rock....if it's dry.... Well, you get the picture. The weather guys are clueless, so you just have to seize the moment when it arrives. I make a point of walking by the company windsock (the flags out front) during lunch to get an idea of whether or not I can handle it. Today was a writeoff, until 4:00. I'm standing in the kitchen looking at the fairly calm trees in the yard, and Jeanie says "Just go...why not? It'll be a week before you can fly again"...so I took her up on it. It was only an 8 knot crosswind when I took off, and down to 3 when I landed, with beautiful blue skies. It was predicted to rain all day and be extremely windy.
First thing I did was a stall series of 7 stalls, which came out to 74 indicated, on average. I knew that wasn't right, so now I had to calibrate the ASI at 74 mph. I did that at Tullahoma on their 5000' runway, watching GPS ground speed and airspeed during landing. Rather than a normal touch n go, I'd run along on the ground for a few seconds at 75 mph IAS and see what the GPS read. Bottom line was 58 mph. So stall speed with flaps is pretty close to 58 mph. "Clean" is about 62 mph. These are probably a little lower in ground effect. This is not surprising considering my plane is 725 pounds empty, with full fuel, me, and flight bag/laptop stuff gets it up around 970 pounds. Climb rate like this is a dismal 775 ft/min for the first 3000', but gap seals will help that considerably. The stalls were pretty uneventful, with the left wing dropping on a few of them, but it was easily caught with throttle without losing much altitude. At the other end of the spectrum, this Sterba (whatever it is) and the 2700cc Corvair were doing an average of 144 indicated, 158 gps, at 7500' wide open, turning 2950 rpm. Contrast that with the Sensenich 54x54, where I got 158 indicated, 173 mph gps @3250 rpm, and you can see that turning up the wick on the engine makes a difference. Keep in mind that I still don't have a spinner or wheel fairings, among other things. With the Sensenich I could do 190 mph in a slight dive turning 3500, so I really think the 3100cc engine will get me up close to 190, still without the fairings. Obviously my static system is still quite hosed up on the bottom end, so now that I'm more comfortable with the plane, I'll start fine tuning the static ports with welding rod and aluminum tape placed behind the holes. Eventually I'll get it to read correctly on the bottom end, which is where it matters. I'm still dialing in the carb's idle mixture setting, and now I'm pretty close. Given that I now know that the Ellison's diaphragm can be bought for $8, I've started putting 93 octane Raceway swill in it, rather than Amoco. My cars haven't complained in 18 years of burning it... Mark Langford, Harvest, AL see homebuilt airplane at http://www.N56ML.com email to N56ML "at" hiwaay.net
