Flight #3

The morning flight went so well, that I decided to do an afternoon flight by myself after the ground crew had gone home.

The purpose of this flight was continued break-in of the engine, and departing the local Manassas class D airspace to get outside the SFRA. This enabled me to get some altitude under the wings, and gave me some added gliding distance if anything unusual happened with the engine.

I filed for departure at 18:15 and return at 19:15. I left Manassas and was over Warrenton in only 5 minutes. Amazing how fast things happen at 160 KTAS.

Outside the class D and SFRA, I climbed to ~6500-7000 feet MSL and just did laps around Warrenton & Culpeper keeping the two airports within several miles.

Flight #3 Data

Flight #3 Map

Post flight observations:

Good CHTs in Cruise…the engine seems to be slowly cooling off this flight even though I constantly increased the RPM throughout the flight.

Oil Temps are maxing out around 178F which is a bit too low…I may try to cover 1/3 of the oil cooler air inlet which may also help with more air for cooling the CHTs.

I noticed some grease being thrown from both main gear wheel bearings and some from the nose gear wheel bearing. The nose gear seems to grab/release when pushing the plane backwards. I will have to watch this and plan to upgrade the nose gear bearing per some of the links on VAF soon.

The prop threw a little grease from the prop hub. This is normal for the first 10 hours, I understand.

This flight started with 41 gallons on board, but the fuel totalizer started at 40 gallons I think.

Right tank dipstick measurement post flight: 13 gallons remaining

Left tank dipstick measurement post flight: 13 gallons remaining

Gauges say 15 + 15 remaining

Totalizer says 15.9 gallons used (24.1 remaining)

Oil is 6.0 to 6.1 quarts remaining

Add to the todo list: print new checklist, add switch tanks to checklist, tape front right cowl gap to see if it helps with cooling.

Fuel truck added 7.3 gallons to each tank (14.6 gallons vs 15.9 on totalizer).