Ok, lemme think here...I've got all these photos from a couple of weeks ago. I need to try to remember what was up. This one's easy...it was fargin' hot.
Alright, lemme dive into the little issues I had during the first flight. First of all, the B & C voltage regulator wouldn't stop flashing "low voltage" at me despite bus voltage being held constant at 14.2V. What's up with that? Well, the theory is that somehow the lamp flasher circuit was shorted. Makes sense. Other than the annoying flashing, the thing worked tip-top. And B & C's initial advice was: "Hey, it's workin' fine. Just disconnect the warning light." Uh, yeah, uh...no thanks. After I told them that the flying I was doing is in a freshly cert'ed homebuilt with a whopping 0.1 hours on the airframe and engine, they understood my perspective...and told me that I should ship the voltage regulator back to them. B & C would fix it under warranty at no cost to me. Perfect. Well, not quite perfect, since I'd be grounded for about a week while waiting for the replacement...more on that in a second...
So let me say at this point, and let me make this very clear...
The best thing I ever did was make these front deck access panels.
Was that clear enough? Without jumping ahead too far, let me also say that I had these panels open at least half a dozen times during Phase I. Now, if you're luckier than I was, it will never be an issue for you...but had I not had these panels already in at this point, I would have been breaking out the nibbler and making them on the spot. Trust me, access panels are a GOOD THING™. Disclaimer: I do not endorse straying from the manufacturer's plans...please consult the manufacturer before doing anything like this, yadda yadda. After consulting Van's, do yourself a favor, break out the nibbler, and poke some holes, dude.
Anyway, the voltage regulator came out no problem. I sent it back to B & C, and on their advice I put "AOG" (aircraft on ground) on the packaging, which apparently would speed up the process of getting it repaired and returned.
The prospect of sitting on my ass for a week, waiting for the repair to come back was just not a friggin' option for me. I drove to Spruce with Visa card in hand and bought me a new 'un. $228 poorer, I installed it.
Sidebar...Laird Owens came by to personally congratulate me on getting airworthy and airborne. Laird's is the first RV I ever flew in. It's one from which I've stolen lots of ideas...and will probably continue to do so.
Ok, later in the day...I think this was still Monday, March 29. Let's talk about the other problem I had on my first flight...the engine monitor "going black." This was disconcerting in the least. My plan was to wait until Monday to contact Advanced Control Systems, and Monday morning I got an email from Rob Hickman, who had read my web site and wanted to know about the electrical problems I was having, and asked that I give him a call. I called him and discussed the symptoms, which were basically that the ACS2002 screen wouldn't boot up. With the master flipped on, you could see the screen lit slightly, but it didn't go through its normal bootup screen refresh. Rob was very apologetic and said that it sounded like a regulator in the screen/CPU may have burned out. He said that this was the first failure he has had. He offered to overnight me a new screen/CPU. Cool! He actually offered to fly it down the same day in his RV-4, but that wasn't necessary. Good customer support, nonetheless. Anyway, out came the old screen.
Ok...cut to the next day. The screen arrived in the morning. I installed it, and it booted right up just fine. Rob had said that I would need to swap out the clock chip with the one in the original screen, since the clock chip stores all of the calibration parameters. That would have been a royal pain if I had to recalibrate everything. Fortunately, after swapping the old clock chip into the new screen, my calibration was preserved, and everything seemed fine. I went flying.
Well, things worked great for a while, but eventually I started seeing some funky RPM indications. The RPM would periodically run up over redline and indicate 3000...the actual engine RPM wasn't changing. Weird. Anyway, long story short, the problem ended up being a bad crimp on the RPM sensor connector. In fact, over two flights, two of the connectors failed. I spoke to Rob about this and he mentioned that they have long since changed the crimper they use because of this. Well, I was stuck with the old crimper's stuff...my advice is to pull-test every crimped connection and visually check them as well. If they don't look good, give 'em a shot with your ratcheting crimper and you'll be fine. Anyway, this was something that I honestly hadn't really checked very thoroughly...I had just kinda figured whatever was supplied with the unit would be fine. 20:20 hindsight.
After having a few more fluky things happen with the ACS2002, Rob overnighted me a new analog box and ribbon cable. It ended up being mostly my own doing...what I found was that (and this is hard to describe unless you've seen the analog box) when making each wire connection to the analog box, it's easy to clamp down on the wire insulation, rather than on the wire strands. Make sure you clamp down on the wire strands. I had just kind of jammed the wires into the little cube-shaped sockets until they hit the back "wall," and then tightened the piss out of the clamp-down screws. I would have thought that would have ensured good contact with the wire forced into the back of the socket...nope. Anyway, just be sure to clamp down on the wire and you'll be fine.
Ok, enough about that. After sorting all of that out, it has been smooth sailing ever since, and I'm fully in love with the ACS2002 and all of its data logging stuff. It saves a snapshot of every parameter that it monitors every five seconds. You can export the data to a CSV (comma separated values) file, which you can open in Excel. Plot the values, and bam, you've got a great visualization of what went on during the flight. I suppose you could do this in flight, but it's a little more than I would want to take on in a busy cockpit environment. Anyway, if you want to see some data from some of my very first flights, here you go.
Ok...moving on...this was a formation flight I had with John Hughes at some point. I stupidly took this photo in macro mode, and I did my best to sharpen it. Oh, well. You've seen much nicer photos of Yellowtail on this site before.
The story behind the next photo is kinda funny (and kinda embarrassing).
After about nine or so hours of flight testing, everything was running great, feeling great, and rock solid. I had pulled about +3G max so far, and I had run airspeed up to 224mph (Vne is 230mph). Felt fine. It was time to put this plane through its paces and really feel it out. First I pulled 4.4G to expand the envelope a bit, and that was fine. I had already stalled the crap out of the plane in all sorts of configurations. It was predictable and controllable, yadda yadda. Flies like an airplane, 'nuff said? It was time to spin this puppy.
Now before I go on, I need you to sign a waiver saying that you will NOT try to repeat anything I describe here unless you have been trained to do so. You need to agree that you're not gonna go out and try some of this stuff "just because Dan did it and lived to tell." Most of you have probably seen my RV7and7A Yahoo group ramblings -- I initially posted some comments about how the plane behaved in a spin and aerobatics, and a few people got on my case about it. I responded with a huge legal disclaimer, because frankly I want to make it crystal clear that my commentary on flight testing is just an account of what I did...not a prescription for action. Let's just be safe and assume that your own plane and your own flight experience are completely different from mine. Please understand and agree that you'd have to be a serious moron to try any of the things I'm about to describe without having had lots of training for it previously.
Ok, that was painful, but you never know with a public forum...
My goal at this point in flight testing was really just to fly a handful of aerobatic maneuvers. As you'll see in your operating limitations (issued by the FAA and/or DAR), if aerobatics are to be performed during the course of normal flying, you have to have previously demonstrated that specific maneuvers are safe and controllable...and you have demonstrated that during Phase I. There's a specific airframe logbook endorsement required for this. So as I said, I wanted to run through these maneuvers to satisfy that requirement, and to see how the thing behaved. I had already done tons of rolls at this point. I wanted to run through split-Ss, loops, and Immelmans.
In my experience, an Immelman puts you in kind of an awkward position if you don't manage your energy well. At the top, as you roll out, if you don't have enough energy you're gonna stall, and you're probably gonna spin. It has happened to me on numerous occasions -- I've spun out of a handful of Immelmans. So before I would even consider doing an Immelman in this plane, I absolutely wanted to have spun it. The last place I wanted a "Surprise! You're inverted and spinning!" is when I've never done a spin in this plane before period.
So I spun it. I climbed up to 10,500', which ended up being more like 11,000' by the time I got it slowed up and stallable. During the stall testing I had done, I had felt the tendency for one or the other wing to drop during a prolonged developed stall, so I was kind of aware of how the entry to the spin would feel, at least at first. But I'll tell you...when the spin really kicks in, it is agressive. Just "feeling it out" through 1/8 or 1/4 turn or whatever doesn't really give you any sense of what is about to happen if you push it further. As the plane stalled, I held full aft elevator and kicked in full left rudder. For about 1/8 turn or so, it was just a flat, buffety kind of feeling. The plane would have gladly recovered had I just centered the controls and/or just let go. With full left rudder held past that 1/8 turn or so, BAM! The thing snapped over faster than you can blink, and it went into a rapid spin. My intent on the first one was to recover ASAP, um...obviously, right?! As soon as I felt it kick over, I applied full right rudder and forward stick, and I was surprised at how quickly it recovered. I don't think I actually made it through half a turn on that first one. The thing came right out.
Again, let me say that I am not describing how YOUR PLANE will behave. I'm describing my own experience in this unique particular plane.
Put it this way, I was barely nervous for the first flight. After this little half spin, my heart was pumping and my adrenaline was flowing. But, having seen how responsive the plane was during the initial spin development, I was happy and eager to proceed further. I in no way wanted to find the limits of the plane or of myself, but I did want to let the spin develop a little further to feel it out. Let's try a full one-turn spin. Same entry, same procedure, and with my heart pumping I had to force myself to be honest about a full rotation. If you've done spins you know what I mean. If you've sat in a Decathlon and counted, "half...one...half...two" you know precisely what I mean. But in a Decathlon, you've got a lot more time to see the ground whirling around. In the RV, at least in mine, it happens VERY quickly. But still, "if self-preservation is an instinct you possess" (Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction), then you will WANT to recover from the spin as soon as you possibly can, especially with that kind of aggression kicking the plane over into a vertical attitude with such a rapid rotation. Regardless of how fast the thing is spinning, your mind will say, "Get me the hell out of this" even faster. So as I said, I had to force myself to let the spin go a full rotation. After kicking over and around, it took maybe 1/2 a second...one second at most.
But in the end, the plane responded what seemed like immediately to my input. Opposite rudder, forward stick, bam, I'm out...pull hard, nose on the horizon...it's over?
I repeated this and then forced myself to do a one-and-a-half turn spin. Recovery was just as quick. That is GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME. I have no desire to push the plane or my abilities beyond that. I have a feeling that around 2 turns the thing would tuck in even tighter. I'm no test pilot, so I'm good with 1.5. I know a lot of RV pilots who have never spun their plane. I respect that. A little fear is a healthy thing. In my case, I absolutely would not accept spins being a big question mark in my book. I honestly feel that spinning my plane is the point where I really felt connected to it. I know what it's gonna do, and I know how friggin' fast and violently it happens. If I ever do get into some weird situation where a spin occurs, I've got no qualms about recovery, and I know what to expect. Do I recommend that you do this with your plane? NO. Get the proper training before you even consider it.
Well, anyway, spins were done. Time to move on to the fun stuff. I had asked around about loops in RVs. My biggest fear was having the speed build up on the down line and blowing right past Vne. Upon recommendation from a few people, I decided to do split-S testing first. That's the smart way to approach it, I believe, because with a split-S you can easily control your entry speed, and then see what your down line and exit speed ends up being. This is a good precursor to loops in my opinion. So I started with a split-S with an 80mph entry. At this point, I don't recall the max speed that built up, but it didn't even come close to the yellow arc. I pulled a solid 3-4 Gs through it. I did one at 90mph entry, and then one at 110mph. The airspeed didn't end up being a factor...probably because I pulled very aggressively through it.
Well, let's do a loop. I entered around 170mph indicated or so, with an initial pull of about 3-3.5G. It was like any other loop I had done...just kinda floated over the top, pulled hard through the bottom, and thunk...flew through my propwash on the exit. I'd say it's easy, but that would probably encourage people to take risks...it was really difficult, an intricate maneuver, and one that should only be attempted while under the supervision...whatever. Get the training, and then try it if you're interested.
After a couple of loops, I ventured into the Immelman. I started it like a loop, and then as I came over the top I held the nose on the horizon. Shit!!! What's this?!?! Oh, man. Those are my tools pinned to the top of the canopy. What a frickin' dumbass I am. I rolled upright, and whap, it all went crashing down into the baggage area. Stupid. All the other maneuvers have been positive-G stuff, so I got complacent.
Up until that point, I had been flying with just a cardboard box in the cockpit with tools, rags, and various doodads I considered essential in case I got stranded somewhere and needed to take the cowl off or what have you. Well, after that, I switched to a bag for tools and will definitely be much more aware of maneuvers that can potentially "float" the loose items of the cockpit.
In fact, I'm pretty much done with Immelmans in this plane, I think. Over the top, as I levelled the nose on the horizon, the ACS2002 yapped, "Check oil pressure." I don't have an inverted oil system, so this isn't something I want to do on a regular basis. To top it off, when I got down the belly was COVERED in oil, and it had chucked about 1/2 a quart. I don't have an air-oil separator...and during the past several flight hours I've found that one is not really necessary with the breather-pointed-at-exhaust setup. Anyway, I'm gonna limit myself to positive-G maneuvers going forward, barring extreme circumstances when I just gotta go inverted or whatever. Flop tubes? Wish I never installed 'em. I have no intention of doing anything hard-core in this thing, especially without inverted oil. Who knows...maybe someday I'll add inverted oil, but it's doubtful.
But the moral of this story is that I had performed all of the aerobatic maneuvers that I intend on flying in the future, so I can actually make the endorsement in the logbook and be covered down the line.
That was a really fun flight. It was definitely enriching to connect with the airframe on those levels. Up until that point I had felt a little timid with the brand new airframe, but since then I haven't questioned its integrity much. 8-)
Fast forward a few days...it's April 5. I've got a little more than a dozen hours on the plane, and I've started to see some good things and bad things. First the bad, and it's pretty minor. Two pop rivet heads managed to break loose on the baffle air seals. Weird.
Now the good. The air seals are showing visible signs of sealing. You can see the honeycomb pattern of the top cowl here on the seal. You can see this all around the engine. I had one spot where the seal was curving away from sealing, and one small slice cured that.
Also in the top cowl you can see what is developing to be a solid black chafe line all around. This is good.
CHTs haven't gone over 350F, and oil temp has dropped down a bit, averaging about 210-215F. Oil consumption is essentially nil. Think the rings have seated.