Fall is here and flights are expected to be less regular. I therefore made an oil change despite only having 22 hours on the oil, I like to have fresh oil at the beginning of the cold season.
The numbers are still as they should be, screen shots from my two most used cruise setting, the sight seeing setting and the economy travel setting.
Yesterday I performed the last parts of the mandatory annual inspection.
Today I made a check flight to make sure that I have not messed up anything. Once again I was made aware of the importance of making a check flight in good conditions after any maintenance.
When taking of, the AOA warning stayed on longer than expected. I did not realize it during the flight but when reviewing the logs I can see that my airspeed indication was a little optimistic, I flew with settings that should give me 120kt IAS but it showed almost 125. When on final, I got the feeling of flying slower than shown and the AOA signal started warning me well above 75kt. I started to suspect something wrong with the static, dynamic or AOA inputs, either a loose line or that water had entered the system during the washing after the last flight. After an uneventful landing and taxi, I shut don the engine and systems and found the problem almost immediately after opening the canopy: One of the static input lines had loosened in the T-connection that splits the input from the static inputs to the G3X-GSU25 adhrs and the G5. The effect being that both the G5 and G3X system got static pressure from within the cockpit. I guess this was a good test, now I know what happens if I use the alternate static pressure valve :)
All is good now and I have just sent in the paperwork and expect to be approved for another year.
I have had the RV tied down outside on a grass field for a few days (drag racing at my home airfield). While removing the tie-downs I saw a problem.
I always check all flight control surface connections during each daily pre-flight but I now realize that I almost always only check this flap hinge attachment from the bolt head side, I usually never look at it from the nut side. This incident shows that I have to change my walk around routine.
Picture showing the problem:
And how it looks after a 5-minute fix:
Another day with many hours in the hangar. in retrospect, I should have gotten me some better cutting wheels for my dremel... Anyway, now the tank sealant is hardening, tomorrow I will hopefully just have a few minutes of cutting away some excess sealant and then I´m done with this task.
I followed tips from different builders and did not drill the #19 holes directly, I first drilled #30 holes so I could use regular clecos to hold things for match drilling.
Last part involved removing access plates in the fuselage and wings (did not have the phone with me when I was under the wings). and check things out. I found no new problems :)
The traditional spark plugs also looked good, gap was ok...
This Thursday I got around to making a warm-up flight and then change the engine oil. Less mess this time.
At 97 hours and with 30 days to the deadline, it is time to start the annual inspection.
This year I started at the both ends. First I took a look at the front, in general everything firewall forward looked great.Engine controls including the cables still looks like new and all cotter pins are in place :)
There is a small leak between the injector house and the sump, nothing I worry about.
I will remove the magneto to perform two service bulletins in a few days, I checked the timing anyway just to see the status. It has creeped a bit, it should go off at 20 degrees before tdc but it was triggered at 22-23 degrees. I set it back to 20 for now. I have not seen any difference in the logs between flights directly after the last annual when I knew it was at 20 and the flights that have been flown recently. Not surprising as at all setting but full power the magneto will lag significantly behind the e-mag.
Speaking of the e-mag, a small cable that sits between two poles on the connector was broken, allowing the e-mag to use the more aggressive timing scheme.... again I have not noticed any downside to this in the logs but I fixed it as I want a greater margin and the fuel savings from the more aggressive timing is barley noticeable.
To be done FW-forward is to check&clean or exchange spark plugs, clean the air filter, perform the mag SBs and do an oil&oil filter change..
While at the front I also checked the prop, gear legs, fairings, brake lines and tires. All looked good, I plan to re-grease the wheel bearings but it might have to wait until slightly after the annual as I do not have any good lifting solutions at the hangar now.
I then removed some fairings and panels at the back. Looks great, nothing has come loose and it looks just as clean or dirty as it did during final assembly.
A few days ago, the weather was finally good enough for a flight to warm up the oil, after the flight I exchanged the oil while the engine was still warm. Hassle free and nothing special to report. At that time I had not yet received new oil filters so that had to wait.
Last night I got around to changing the oil filter. Temperature was just below freezing inside the hangar, the cold temperature is actually helping when exchanging the filter as the slow flowing oil makes it easier to change the filter without getting a lot of oil splilled out in the engine room. I also used the good tip of first loosening up the filter and then wrapping the filer with a plastic bag before completly removing it.
Finally some good (well not good but in an IFR capable machine there was plenty of room for worse without affecting saftey).
Needed to set the intercom squelch level to the max 30 setting to keep the mics from staying open. The ICOM220-Sennheizer combo seems to be a bit tricky.
ps. this was my first flight using the checklist in the iPad. Not perfect as I would like to keep the chart/map in that screen. Once I find the screen rotate setting on my phone, I will try using that for the checklist.
Received the radio yesterday. Today I installed it and did a good ground check (it was snowing with a cealing of 3-400 feet so I did not perform a flight test today.
I am still waiting for my repaired radio. I have a handheld radio and on weekends there is no formal requirement for a radio at my field so had the weather cooperated, I would have flown this weekend.
I was at the field on both Saturday and Sunday, On Saturday I made a checkout as the aircraft has not flown in over a month,
I noticed that I have gotten some air into the brake lines, I remember that I only had brake fluid enough to barley get any fluid into the reservoir, apparently the cold temperature and around 18 months of leakage has emptied what was in the reservoir.
Today I filled the reservoir to 75%.
