Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Visiting family

Every time I go up north in the winter I am reminded of how thankful I am for the good ole south.

Got the privilege of having uncle Oren give me some hangar space for a few nights.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Rv-12

I got the privilege to fly in the worlds in only Jabiru 3300 powered RV-12 today. Ultra smooth running engine.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Synthetic Vision

I have had a Dynon Skyview EFIS in my airplane now with 230+ hrs of flight time and while it does look nice while flying I sometimes wonder if it really is useful or worth the extra money.

I have flew a lot of IMC approaches with it and while it does provide a really nice platform for situational awareness, I never really thought of it as a "have to have" item and still don't. However, last weekend I was presented with a problem that made this feature useful.

I was flying from Russelville, Ky to Mountain View, Mo and due to getting out of a meeting late the flight would end after night fall at the destination.  I had called ahead and talked to a local pilot there and he informed me that the last he knew only a few of the runway lights worked.  With this information I told him I would try for Mountain View but if it was to dark and I could not comfortably see the runway I would just go to West Plains because without having a precision instrument approach I may have trouble lining up with the runway.

When we arrived at the airport I was mostly looking out the window trying to locate what may look like a runway but all I could find was the reflection of a few hangars and a row of 4 vasi lights but I could not tell which side of the vasi's the runway was on.  By this time we had flown over the airport and I was back looking at the GPS moving map and planning the turn down wind based on the runway depiction on the GPS.  What I did not think about was the runway was on the EFIS (synthetic vision) before we flew over and would have provided a great way to line up with it but I had been too busy looking out the window trying to see it.

I made the turn downwind and base still fully expecting to just go back around and fly to the alternate.

I turned final and then noticed on the EFIS...right there was the runway. Man, why didn't I think of that! It was no problem then to get lined up with the runway and then fly down low enough for the landing lights to illuminate the markings.

Had a great time doing it.

 
This is a file image of the Skyview and is basically what I was seeing when I finally looked at the EFIS.

Here is some pics from out the window.





 
 
End.

Friday, February 1, 2013

I have always wanted to tape all the joints and farings up on this airplane and see what speeds it will make in a semi-race configuration.
Yesterday afternoon I found time to completely wax the airplane man what a job. Reminded me of polishing a 38' smooth side aluminum dump trailer when I was trucking :eek:
I then taped up all of the seams and inersections to provide a smoother air flow accross the joints and to prevent air from entering or exiting.

The method used for determining TAS during this test was per NTPS using there 3-way gps spreadsheet.

I started before daylight in an attempt to provide a more uniform air mass for testing. The sun did not have time to start warming the air and cause the air mass to start rising.
Test #1 
Density Alt 8000
MAP 23.8
RPM 2700
Mixture  Approx 175 deg ROP
GPH 18.5
TAS per ntps 189.3
TAS 189.8 per Dynon
Test #2  Note : I was trying for 75% power here but when I got back on the ground and did the calculations correcting for temp it wound up being more like 79% power.
Density Alt 9910
MAP 21.9
RPM 2700
Mixture    Approx 175 deg ROP
GPH 16.9
TAS 186.7 per ntps
TAS 187.4 per Dynon
Test #3   Note : This is the same as above but running Lean of Peak
Density Alt 9910
MAP 21.9
RPM 2700
Mixture    Average readings of 10 deg Lean of Peak
GPH 12.1
TAS 182.6 per ntps
TAS 183.0 per Dynon
Test #4   Note : This is at Sea Level with the hammer down:D
Density Alt 0
MAP 29.4
RPM 2800
Mixture     Approx 175 Rich of Peak
GPH 27.5:eek:
TAS 193.1 per ntsp
TAS 195.5 per Dynon

This shows that the Dynon TAS may have a slight error on the high side but is well within my needs. 1-2knots is close enough for planning.
By the way......it was a lot of fun :D:D