Because of work and other distractions, it’s taken a while to get to this point. I am not just a hair under half-way through the Phase 1 testing period. The mandatory 40 hours of testing before I can carry passengers and go farther than 100nm from my base airport. What started as a simple set of race track patterns over the top of Aurora airport as now turned into multi-hour long sorties around the state to test various tweaks to the airframe and to expand the use of the avionics.
I’ve been working to correct the minor airframe “balance” so that the plane flies as straight and true as possible in cruise. There was a small left turning tendency due to a need for a rudder adjust and a heavy left wing. The rudder was correct by using a small plastic wedge affixed to the trailing edge to increase pressure on the rudder on one side. The aileron (heavy wing) is still being addressed and comes from and uneven amount of pressure on the ailerons on each side. A similar wedge is in place and is being tweaked to the proper size.
I’ve been testing the AFS Auto-Pilot and learning it’s capabilities. The plane is a ton of fun to fly, but it’s helpful to test the AP as it will be used a lot during non-visual flying conditions which we have a lot of here in the NW. I’ve been learning the rest of the AFS EFIS capabilities along with the Garmin GTN750 so that it becomes second nature when flying. Also important for bad weather flying – IMC.
I’ve done a lot of circuits around the 100nm testing area and have been averaging about 170kts true airspeed. That equates to about 195mph at about 11-12gph of fuel. Further tweaks and final body work with paint should eek out a few more knots to get us over 200mph as advertised. On a recent flight I computed that this plane is a good 25% faster than what I flew before. Though now I am having to learn about effective fuel leaning to reduce fuel consumption as it was never something I had to be too concerned with before.
A recent flight took be from Aurora, around the Dalles, down to Sunriver for lunch, over to Florence, up to New Port for dinner and back in under 3 hours and that was with two landings/take offs! This is also the first plane I’ve flown were I have to worry about overspeeding on descents. 230mph is the maximum speed allowed in the plane. So if you are cruising along at almost 200mph and start a steep descent, it doesn’t take much to get to red line quickly.
Some pictures below. The ramp pictures are from Scappoose – the first trip away from UAO to visit Oregon Aero. The second ramp picture is the first landing at S21 (Sunriver). The others are on another flight circuit over the cascades on the way to Sunriver with the Three Sisters and Mount Bachelor.
myrv10factory 