With all the nasty winter weather, fighting a case of pneumonia, and schedule conflicts, I finally got a flight in the KR yesterday, the first since Christmas morning. With a layoff like that I forget what a nice flyer it is and how much I hate putting it back in the hangar when the flight is over. On takeoff the last 1/4 throttle makes my KR surge forward with such acceleration that it presses me to my seat. WOW !!! The density altitude was -2450 feet. I had to climb 3250 feet to get to pattern altitude. :-)
My one concern on the flight is the cold temps. I had the engine warmed to toasty hot before the flight with preheat so the start was uneventful. My concern was it flight the oil temp and CHT ran much too cool. My oil temp is usually 200F after 20 minutes of flight and the pressure holds at 42 pounds at cruise. Yesterday, temps approx. 30 F, the oil temp hardly moved off the 120F peg on the meter, CHT was 275F in cruise, and dropped to near 200F with power reduction in the pattern. With the oil so cool the pressure was running at least 15 pounds higher then normal, still below red line. It wouldn't surprise me if the oil temp came down from the preheat. I'm not comfortable running the engine that cool. I may have to somehow restrict the air inlets in this kind of weather. The thing is I don't recall seeing this in the past winter flying before the engine rebuild. It always ran cooler but I don't recall it ever running that cold. With the oil temp cool and the pressure above normal I trust the gauges are accurate. I guess this concern is better than trying to cool things down.
Larry Flesner _______________________________________________ Search the KRnet Archives at https://www.mail-archive.com/krnet@list.krnet.org/. Please see LIST RULES and KRnet info at http://www.krnet.org/info.html. see http://list.krnet.org/mailman/listinfo/krnet_list.krnet.org to change options. To UNsubscribe from KRnet, send a message to krnet-le...@list.krnet.org
