I finally got around to make another flight to test Smart Glide. I will update this post with a video as soon as I have gotten a approval from the authorities to share this video. (it should not contain anything secret but you never know ;) )
Basically it works as advertised but I´m not so sure it is useful in most scenarios. I will use it if I have engine trouble at high altitude in IMC, for a short while, while I organize myself before manually setting up for an approach.
It has a lot of potential for improvements that could make it close to as useful as Auto Land. The system has all information needed to create and let the autopilot use a visual approach guidance to a runway threshold, using the sink rate you have programmed and accounting for wind. All the pilot would have to do then is to make a final flare :D
Garmin will soon give us G3X Touch users a nice new feature for free. In preparation for this I made a flight yesterday to collect the needed data for it. I wanted to verify earlier numbers.
Result from the worst case scenario (Engine still running but without power and prop full forward):
Measured at the best glide speed of 95kt IAS: vs -995fpm
There was a FB tread about formation flying and the question about an RV being able to fly around at 105kt. My responce was that lots of RV, fly at 90 +/-5 kt inbound to S&F and OSH for the fly-ins... then I realized that I have actually not done it myself yet for more than during downwind.
So off I went and first I did some fligt at low setting without any flap, at just below 120kt you can get a really good economy as shown in this picture (usable fuel in my RV is about 192-194L):
Next up was flying at 90kt, it is acually a lot of work since it is on the backside of the power curve. It was a little gusty and any wind that got me off the 90 setting would make the deviation continue to grow until I corrected.
Below is one reasonably stable power setting that with a small amount of flap kept me a 90kt, but if the wind pushed me to 92, the speed would continue to increase with the AP holding altitude and if the speed dropped tp 88, it would continue down in the same way.
My conclusion it therefore that any speed below about 95kt requires constant monitoring and regurlar adjustment from the pilot in my RV. At speeds of 100kt or above it is easy to find a setting that will allow the autopilot to fly for you and the speed will bounce back to that set speed as long as thermals and winds are reasonable.
Got an email from our EAA-flight operations manager that my manual is approved now and that he has requested to have the paper original printed. Hopefully he will receive the original tomorrow for final signing :D
I think all the other paperwork is also ok. so I hope I can receive the permit to fly in not to many days...
I try to fly at least weekly, having some fun:
I am also tinkering with some nice to have things like the TOGA button. (single pole but separated by diods, one will go to the 507 TOGA input and one to the GTN 625)
Made a slow 15 minute flight from my home base to ESSE close to Stockholm for the inspection.
Misjudged the height on landing and made my biggest jump so far. The RV-14 might be a little bit bouncy but at the same time very stable even when mistreated like this :)
I'll post a movie later, it's on yourube already.
The inspection went well, all signs in place and my small paperwork errors could be corrected on site :) The aircraft looks great, before the flight I found the loose screw that made my right fuel tank sender giving me intermittently faulty readings
Ordered some expensive but nice looking printed aluminium pieces for marking the switches and breakers.
Some screws are missing as they needed to be replaced, the Seat heat switch is not connected and installed and the same is thru for the TOGA button. Apart from that I can present the third version of the panel below:
Do not worry, the mag switches were just temporary hot while torquing the nuts.
The engine compartment part of the annual is done, some anti-chaffing improvements, all looks good. Still not enough rubbing from the baffling to clearly see where one should add some epoxy protection on the cowls. Probably at next annual.
Another fuel calibration and two more flights and I am up to the necessary 50 hours :D
POH and test protocols are written.
Left to do is:
- a mandatory extra annual/100-inspection
- mark all the switches again (ordered small 20x10mm signs yesterday. Before placing these, I will paint the center and right panel as I liked how the left panel turned out)
Then I will send in my material and request for a permanent permit to fly, our EAA organisation will send out an inspector to do a final certification inspection and then it will be done.
Got a visit from fellow RV builder Calle, joined him an his daughter on the first part of their flight from Eskilstuna to Håtuna. To bumpy for close formation.
After that I flew around for another 35 minutes and then made turns in a good area near Katrineholm airstrip at 3000 ft AGL, waiting for the left tank to run dry. Spotted the fuel pressure going down from 28 to 18 before the engine really quit making power. Switched to the right tank and stayed in the area for another 30 seconds to make sure all was fine and then returned to Eskilstuna and did the fuel calibration by first calibration for ground at 0L, then put it in flight attitude and calibrated for 0L.
Then fueled up to 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 and finally 90L. Storing calibration points after each fuel up.
My radio transmissions and reception looks to be good now, while at Katrineholm, I could hear Calle who was probably pretty far away, activating his flight plan and getting the first clearances towards Visby.
The plan was to first do a one turn spinn and if that went well, a 2-3 turn spinn. What happened was that at the break my body shifted about an inch forward, bumping the stick so the spin almost automatically stopped. As my stomach started to tell me that I had enough of aerobatics for the flight, I decided that that was a good enough test of spinns.
Continued with an hour long flight, flew over my first airfield ESCN (Tullinge) and made a simulated approach to the old runway 24, care full of not getting to low as the have build houses on the old runway :(
The RV14 now has 43.1 hours in the air and the draft POH is almost done.
Another great flight today. This evening i realized that I had 997.6 hours in my logbook. Time for a longer flight!
And an amazing flight it was, started with some formation flying, then 30 minutes of IMC followed by a tour around ESSB (Bromma) control zone, got 2.5 hours block time so my total flight time is now 1000.1 hours :D Tested in the flight was the new iPad min flush mount, worked great!
Update: another video for nerds only, now that I got the external camera home:
Another video, trying out some pic in pic video layouts:
The flush iPad mount will not fit next to the 7´´ G3X Touch screen without major modifications. I give up and will place it next to the G5 instead. Removed the left panel after the flight, at home with me now for the mount installation.
Sat myself in the car a few minutes after 5am and headed for the airport. Block off at 6:03 and airborne at 6:14, living closer to the airport is great! I am now in the air before I would have arrived at the airport if living at my old adress :D
Today's flight was just a another flight to verify that the G5 works as it should. My radio interception is now much improved and I listened to Sweden Control for most of the flight, happy to hear some traffic again, it sure has been silent on the radio for many weeks now.
I was hoping to do some IMC flying but I am not sure the cloud flying I did at the end of this video even qualifies for logging IMC... When flying in IMC with the pitot heat on at 11 degrees Celsius with all normal equipment on and a camera on the USB interface, my total system draw is only 15 Amps. Flying at -40 celsius should make the GAP 26 draw a maximum of another 6 amps, feels great to have lots of marginal :D
Was home at 8:05 the kids had just woken up and my wife's greeting included "...perfect tajming, the coffee is just ready to be served". Life is great!
To-do/squak list
Done
- Install Garmin G5
- Wrap center panel
- Clean up the wiring behind the panel (some minor stuff left to do)
- Fix/replace the non working canopy fan
To-do
- Install new TOGA switch
- Re-label the center panel
- Forgot mounting the light regulators in the panel, a 5 minute job
- Connect the canopy warning switch (not sure if I will)
- Provide a USB connector at, at least one external camera postions
- Install the new access doors/covers
- Install Wheelpant access doors (to be able to fill up the tires without having to dismantle the fairings)
Spent many hours with improving the wire management, wrapping the center panel section and installing the new Garmin G5. Below is panel version 2.5 (version three will be with the soon to be installed iPad flush mount)
I was tired and local time was way past 10PM but I could not skip testing out the G5 and this was also a great opportunity to check the landing light height adjustment.
Twilight ended at 23:26 at ESSU last night, I landed at 23:16, perfect! This was also the first flight with a working pitot heat. I turned off the heat when vacating the runway, it was still warm 6-8 minutes later when I had gotten out of the cockpit and checked it.
I need to tune the back light settings in the GMC507 and the ICOM. In real life, it is the G5, 625 and 470 that has a good brightness setting.
While I like loose chains when landing, I decided to replace the ugly (and draggy?) chains that keep the rudder and tail-wheel connected with a much neater solution. I also changed out the axle bolt for an axle that allows you to use a Cessna type tow bar.
I have now tested landing with about 6kt crosswind, to taxi is great and I felt no jinx when the tail wheel touched down.I have also used a tow-bar to drag the RV-14 100m to the cleaning place, some day I will make or buy a motorized towing solution!
Another great flight. During the pre-flight I took greater care than usual to make sure that all stuff in the RV was secured or put back in the hangar.
As I already have the basic data needed for Version 1 of the POH/Flight manual, it is time to start thinking about less essential things to verify. One of these things is to test some basic aerobatic maneuvers.
I don´t plan on doing any competition aerobatics or other types of advanced flying, I do not have a fuel pickup that can handle negative Gs, nor an oil system capable of sustained inverted flight.
I decided to start with two of the most classic maneuvers, the barrel roll and looping.
After reading about other RV-14/A pilots doing aerobatics in this model, I decided to follow their suggestion and use a higher speed than what I think I will use when more experienced in this aircraft. This means using 155-160kt IAS as entry speeds for these two maneuvers. It is stated that one does not have to use the normal IAC 4G pull for the looping entry and pull out (less is ok), 4G was anyway what I aimed for.
Reviewing the log shows that my feel for G forces are not way off but not great either, during the entry pull i maxed at 4.88G and for the pull out I used a max of 3.79G. Other interesting numbers is that I left the looping at only 100 feet below the entry alt and my speed only dropped 3 knots. The top was about 800 feet above the baseline, max/min vertical speed was 9670/-10232, all these figures are from the 1/s G3X log, I will review the internal faster updating log later.
The left and right barrel rolls was done by doing 2G pull up to place my shoes at the horizon and then about 75% aileron inputs while maintaining between 0.5 and 1 positive G. No rudder inputs (at least not deliberate) was made. during the rolls, the altitude went up by 165 and down by 134 feet compared to the starting altitude. Logs are great to have!
My external camera got tilted, I made the best of it :/
Today I finally got around to connect the two fans that wents the avionics and also help with getting fog of the canopy.
I also fixed the co-pilot trim up function, as last time it was the micro molex connector that had come loose. Last thing done was to set some squelch and mic gain, and other settings in the ICOM220.
Fueled the aircraft and then washed it for the first time. Take off video with the cleaned RV:
Got out to the airport to continue dismantling the radio, I got out the tray and decided to just try it in my lap before removing all wiring. I then realized that I could push the radio in another millimeter into the tray compared to when it was in the panel! Now I got reception from inside the hangar :D
I then tried turning on the intercom using the key on the radio (hold in dual for 2 seconds), I had not done this before as I have a dedicated intercom switch, another win, the intercom is working.
With this, I reconnected the G3X sound into the radio, mounted the tray into the panel, further out and went for a test flight. I am still not happy with the sound quality but everything is much improved.
Made two touch & go, all three landnings was good today, basically no bounce on any.
Flew to ESKU Sunne for the noise certification test. When I review the track I can clearly see that I was not cheating. I was both low, slow and initiated the climb late.
Consistent paths :D
Could have initiated the climb about 10m earlier :/
My radio problems are back, I am planning to make a new harness without reusing any of the old wiring.
