So I took off around 6pm or so and flew over to one of my usual spots for doing fun stuff. It had been a while (at least a few months) since I had done a loop, so I wanted to do some "G conditioning" before diving right in. I started out with some tight turns and worked up to about 3.2 on the G meter. I must be getting old, since that felt like a lot. Anyway, I set up for the loop, cleared the area, and went at it. I looked left and yanked hard...up through vertical I eased up on the back pressure...transition to looking up/forward...there's the horizon (hard to miss it in an RV canopy)...float over the top...start the pull...yank hard...harder...done. Woohoo! It probably takes about 3x as long to read that as it took to do it. I glanced at the G meter. Minimum 0.0, that's cool...good float over the top. But maximum of 4.8, what the...?! It had been a while. I must have yanked that sucker good and hard around the back side. One of my semi-paranoias about aerobatics in the RV is that it's so friggin' slippery on the down lines. Even with a chopped throttle, when you're pointed straight down, the airspeed just comes whippin' around. I need to do loops and split-S's more often to keep on top of the feel...because I obviously over-pulled. Anyway, for whatever reason the Dynon didn't keep the minimum G setting after I shut down (a possible bug? I'll have to ask them about this if I can reproduce it), but the max was stored.
That was fun. Did a bunch of rolls and stuff. I just love the way the plane feels when it's nice and light like that. Light fuel load, leave the heavy tool bag at home (I'm not going anywhere but home anyway), etc. It's incredibly resonsive. Four-point rolls, eight-point rolls, aileron rolls, barrel rolls, and I did a couple of double aileron rolls. This definitely scratched the itch for the time being...I try to roll on just about every flight, but it's only once in a while that I really go at it like this. The sun was setting, so it was time to head back to base and change the oil.
I did the usual thing...elevated the tail to level the sump as it drained.
I haven't had a single hint of a problem with the Lightspeed ignition since I rewired the coil connectors with these PIDG fast-ons. But something I had been meaning to do was drop some solder on there just for a little extra insurance. This looks like I just gobbed it onto the top of the connector, but what I did was heat up the connector and feed about an inch of solder into it...definitely saturated these puppies. They're not going anywhere.
Between the last two oil changes, I basically had no problems until the Lightspeed connectors started acting up. I thought I would be able to go between oil changes without touching anything...no joy. But this time around, I literally did NOT TOUCH A THING between oil changes. 25 hours of trouble-free flying. I did have the top cowl off once, that day when my coworker wanted to see the engine, but that was it. This is a really satisfying feeling. I would like to say that the plane is finally "stable." Put fuel in and go. It's the way to be!
That said, I don't mean to imply that I didn't have a list of items to address. I did. Just a few really minor things, and mostly stuff I just wanted to look at since I hadn't checked 'em in a while. Among those things was the air filter and airbox, which hadn't been removed since that night they were installed when the Patriots won the superbowl...it had been a while. So I pulled the FAB and filter and inspected 'em. No surprises. I just wanted to make sure there weren't any cracks or flaking/bubbling in the airbox.
Once the oil from the sump had drained completely, I let the tail back down and did the usual thing on the oil filter -- draining it before removing it. I've taken pictures of this before, but here it is again. I get the filter loosened, just barely turning, and I poke a hole in the top at the aft end. I loosen the filter 180 degrees and it drains into a funnel that I safety wire in place.
It drains into the bucket via tubing. No mess. I let it sit good and long, and every once in a while I rotate the filter a few degrees and some more pours out. Only after it stops dripping do I remove the filter.
The SCAT tubing between the airbox and alternate air duct had been chafing the cowl a bit (it took over 200 hours for it to chafe through, so it wasn't that bad), but I replaced that length of tubing with new stuff. I relieved the cowl with a Dremel where it had been chafing.
My idle mixture had been running a bit too lean, so I adjusted it a tiny bit richer. Refer to your manual, but on the Airflow Performance FM-200, here's the adjustment -- the link coming off the throttle arm. FYI, Don from Airflow Performance read through my site and commented that I didn't have a throttle stop spacer on the top end of the throttle shaft. There's actually supposed to be a spacer on that top end, so I had AFP send me one (not pictured).
Also on the list of things to do was to adjust the prop governor cable. The lever on the quadrant was hitting the quadrant stop as it hit the governor fine pitch stop. I wanted it to hit the governor stop before the quadrant lever hit. Just needed to tweak the cable a bit. Also on my list of stuff to do is to increase the fine pitch stop, since I can only get 2680 RPM max...usually 2670 or so. It's a really simple adjustment, but I'll wait to do that. I don't like changing too many things at once...I'll do the idle mixture and cable tweak now, but I'll do the pitch stop adjustment in isolation later.
