Larry wrote: > You're about to catch me. I hit 207.3 at shutdown after todays > flight.
Quicker than you think....I shut mine down with 203.3 hours on it this afternoon. I flew over to Dan Heath's to help him get a little lead out of his KR flying effort, but I was just about as confounded as he is with what's up with his 21080cc VW engine. We reset the timing, readjusted the valves, checked the compression, and fiddled around with the Aerocarb with all three needles, and we still couldn't get it to idle properly. "Good luck with THAT, Dan!" I have to say that the attention to detail that Dan has crafted into that KR2 is absolutely astounding, and the engine installation is no exception ;(see http://www.krnet.org/misc/06042350m.jpg for an example). But there's some little grimlin in there somewhere that needs to go! The trip over was 330 miles at 9500' in 2 hours and 5 minutes, throttled back to save fuel, but I had a little tailwind early this morning too. Flying back I went to 12,500' to get over some clouds, and found I had a 55 mph headwind and an 80 mph ground speed, but I was only turning 2850 rpm on the Corvair and burning 3.0 gallons per hour at the time. I was trying to get back without refueling, so I dropped to 8500' and things improved. I ran it up to 3050 rpm (no where near wide open) burning 3.5 gallons per hour with 120 mph IAS (140 mph, roughly). I arrived at that setting by making the GPS's estimated time enroute match the EIS fuel totalizer's estimated fuel endurance, plus one hour. I landed 3.5 hours after takeoff with a 53 minute reserve, which was 3.1 gallons left in my 16 gallon tank. I was reminded of two things today...carb heat can smooth out a rough running engine by making the fuel mixture more uniform between cylinders, allowing you to lean it even further than normal, and 100LL will allow you to run the engine even leaner than with 93 octane auto fuel before the engine starts running slighly rough. I flew all the way back on 100LL with the air/fuel meter blinking the bottom LED on and off, but on the way over (with auto fuel) I had to leave both bottom LEDs on to keep the engine smooth. Both of these cases are slightly lean of peak, like 20-40 degrees F. And yes, I watched the CHT to make sure there was no detonation. This KR thing is quite the time machine, and continues to keep me quite entertained. Now that my radio is out of the plane for repair, I think I'll do some bodywork and finally install the spinner. It's time I started acting like I'm going to finish this thing some day, and now that it's warm enough to do composite and body work, I have no excuse... Mark Langford, Harvest, AL see homebuilt airplane at http://www.N56ML.com email to N56ML "at" hiwaay.net
