May 12, 2004

After a couple of days cooped up at the in-laws house (I don't mean to make it sound bad, they're great to hang out with), I had to get out and do some flying. I snuck down to Livermore and took off for Gustine (3O8). Gustine has just about the cheapest fuel in northern California, at $2.39. How sad is that?! Well, anyway, I wanted to top off for the trip home the next day. We had just enough fuel plus reserve, but there's no need to push it. On takeoff, Livermore tower offered me an early right turn to cut inside a Skyhawk...um, yeah, I'll take it...thank you, sir! Seemed like I was at 2500' before the Skyhawk turned crosswind.

Anyway, here's a shot I took of the ACS2002 on the way down to Gustine. I've been running lean-of-peak (LOP) whenever I'm not in a hurry to get somewhere. Today at 7500' I was running 20" at 2300 RPM or so, leaned to 100 LOP (97 LOP pictured here), and I was burning only 5.8 gallons per hour (not bad for a fire-burning 200hp four-banger). It still trued out at about 140 knots, which is not bad considering the economy of it. CHTs were a chilly 280F or so, and oil temp was hovering down near 180F.

This AeroSport engine with the Airflow Performance injection system rocks! The injectors all peak at exactly the same point regardless of the power setting. I've never flown an injected engine that is this well behaved so deep into the LOP regime.

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Dan Checkoway ()