Welcome
to Tim’s Cozy MK IV project!
" What a long
strange trip it's been"
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Project
Plane status as of Dec 2011:
IT Flys!
On Dec 12 2011 N175PT took flight for the first time. For some weeks
now the plane has been ready to fly
and today all the planets were aligned correctly, it felt right and I
was able to get the right people there to
help with the aircraft's first flight. First some Thank-Yous are in
order and I hope I don't overlook anyone.
First & foremost is my wife Paula who has been writing checks and
living as a widow for several years now.
Also a heartfelt thanks to Jay"Cookie" Skovbjerg my tech and flight
counselor. He has traveled up to
see the project several times and this last week allowed me to take his
plane by the left seat and give it a
good thrashing around the pattern for a couple of hours. Thanks Jay!
Also Jon Dembs, who has been a great
help over the years by reminding me to follow the plans ("that's
what I did "; was his typical response)
Rex Daniels a local multiple-offender RV/Glass-star/Velo builder, flyer
and engine guru, helped with the
engine assembly and has been there looking things over several times
and offering advice and tools. He also
flew chase in his RV-8 today. Vari guy John Graves served was our "guy
on the ground" helping with comm
and rescue coordination, recording info relayed from the flight; and
allowed me to fly his RV 6A for a while
recently as I was getting my flying skills back to their normal sub-par
level. I also was able to get some of
the guys from work over in an engine to provide fire/rescue if needed.
Thank-you all very much!
First flight was conducted at Red Bluff's 5600' X 100' RWY 33. OAT was
50°, Wind 340 @ 5-8 kts The plane
was flown at 1580 lbs, CG 99". I wore a parachute as Rex offered it and
I thought why eliminate an option? A
good whack on the head by the prop would beat screaming all the way to
the ground. After everyone was
briefed I jumped in, Rex helped strap me into the chute and 4 pt
harness. I fired the engine up and taxied off to the
run-up area. Check list complete, engine numbers all in the green,
thumbs up to Rex and I taxied into position on
RWY 33. At this point I'll admit I was reaching deep to push the
throttle up, lots of doubts, demons and dragons
may lie down that pavement somewhere. But I pushed it up and off I went
down the runway. At 65 kts I started
adding a little back pressure and just as it had done twice before on
high speed runs the nose came up right on up.
Only this time the throttle was full foward and off it flew. In an
instant I knew it would all go well, I had good
control and started a shallow turn to down wind as soon as I dared.
Gear up on downwind and continuing to
climb to 4500'. Engine temps at this point were: Oil 213°, Lowest
CHT was #3 at 255°, highest was 370°
(don't recall which one). So good news bad news I have low temps but
some balance work to do, the temps
only got better as the flight progressed and were all mid 300's by the
end of the flight except 3 which is almost
too cold; oil temp around 180~190° by this time. BTW, I'm using
Eric Westland's Velocity Generator idea on the
NACA inlet. I cant say how it works without them but I'm not going to
be in a hurry to find out.
We flew as a flight of 2 (Yes Rex is experienced in this) with Rex
coming in close every few minutes to have a look.
I kept the power up near 75% for the next 30 minutes or so to help with
engine break-in. After this I reduced power,
slowed to 90kts and spent some time exploring the flight controls, ie
5° yaw L&R; 10 & 20° turns L&R.
Then cycled the gear twice and the landing brake once. Then I went down
to 65 kts to see if I could get a pitch buck, it
never happened and I had already determined not to go any lower than
that. The plane fly's hands off after pitch
trim is dialed in and I never touched the roll trim. (yeah Jon, the one
you told me I didn't need) The bubble is centered
also so evidently all the errors I made during construction canceled
each other out nicely. Pattern work turned out a
little better than I had been doing in Jay's plane; mostly I think
because I had a better fit to the rudder pedals
and I was easily able to trim down to 75 kts (and up to 160 kts, max
speed today) Jay had taught me to use
100 down wind, 90 on base and 80 on final and this worked out fine. The
landing was not the best, but not too bad.
I seem to have trouble with the roll coupling on the rudders. It's
surprising how powerful they are and how much roll you get. As I
try to align to the RWY with rudder, I'm a bit late correcting the roll
with aileron. I think I can get this sorted out
with more experience in the plane, but this is something that surprised
me and which I had not heard much of before.
After everyone left I took the cowls off and had a good look at the
engine compartment, found nothing & put it all
back together. I then went back up for a "joy ride" as I didn't have my
2nd set of test cards with me. I just flew
around for a bit, rechecked all the instruments and let "George" fly
for a while so I could see how that worked and try
to fix a few configuration issues I have with the EFIS's. 2nd landing
about the same as the first, not too bad but nothing I'd post on u-tube.
All in all a very rewarding experience! 1.1 hours on the hobbs, all the
squawks appear to be minor, and I think are all
config issue with the EFIS units, ie; Altitude and terrain warnings I
don't need and the compass needs to be "swung"
as it appears to be off about 10°.
Favorite
quotations
Project
log:
Chapter
Activity
Start / Finish
Hours
Status
Total logged
hours at completion 3332 hrs. (real number probably close
to 4000)
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