First Week of January 2005

It looks like things are coming together.  The Plenum Box is finished.  Kade is painting the Nose Bowl.  I started the insurance up again on the 4th.  As a side note, my insurance company is Thomas/Pfeifer and handled by Trisha Hoover.  Great person and company.  They've been a pleasure to work with.  While I'm starting to think about actually flying again, the weather is not the best here in Michigan... in January... go figure.  Looks like it is going to rain, snow, and do other bad stuff until Sunday the 9th.  We'll see.

Anyway, A few last minute checks and we are ready to take flight.  Tighten everything I can get a wrench or screwdriver on... fuel, full tank.  Oil, 8 quarts of mineral oil.  Tires, inflated, brake fluid topped off, battery charged.  Everything in cockpit strapped down.  Cell phone plugged in.  Log books signed off, annual completed.  Insulated pants, sweatshirt, winter coat...

Basically, I want to get to the point where I run a tank of fuel through at full power to set the rings and not glaze the cylinders.  I have one concern... make that two... ah, three.  Anyway, I have a number of concerns but one of the first is the flying wires.   They took me quite a while to set so there was no vibration in the flying/anti-drag wires.  Since I removed them during the overhaul, I'm sure they are out of whack.  I don't want to fly around with wires flailing everywhere.

I have a plan in my head of what I want to do.  I'll call the tower (769-1830) tell them that I've just overhauled the engine and that I want to circle directly overhead for an hour or two.  I want a nice place to go right under me in case something bad happens.  With no engine all you have to do to find a place to land is throw out a brick... but you have to be careful the brick doesn't hit you in the head on the way down.  

It Flies!  - January 30, 2005

I never dreamed it would take this long to get back in the air, but today it flies once again... Wow!

I started off just doing high-speed taxis down the runway and deceived everything was looking good so I did one lap around the pattern and it felt wonderful.  Took it back to the hanger to check out any leaks and found a little oil in the oil cooler itself and some at the rear of the engine compartment.  I cleaned it off real well and will have another go.

January 31, 2005

Ok, took it up again for about a half hour.    WOW!!  You can really tell the difference!  Exhaust gas temps were about where they usually are.  Cylinder head temps were under 300 degrees and couldn't get oil temp over 160... of course it was 32 degrees outside.  But the amazing thing is that normally I can get about 124 indicated... Today I was indicating over 145!!  I knew the plenum was supposed to help the speed, but this is crazy!!

And that little oil leak... my bad.  There always has to be one connection that gets missed in every check.  The return from the oil cooler wasn't tight where it connects to the accessory case.   

30 Hour Check - New Prop 6/1/2005

I've flown the airplane down to Bentonville, Arkansas a couple of times and made a trip to Kansas City on the new engine.  Everything is running fine.  We wanted to re-torque everything and make sure all was still tight so we pulled the cowling and removed the plenum box so we could tighten everything up again.  That plenum works great and is very easy to remove so you can get to the cylinders.

While doing the checks of everything we noticed that one blade had a slight wiggle in it.   It's a McCauley 2D36C14XE constant speed prop.  I figured that it was best just to take care of everything all at once so I sent the prop out to have it overhauled by:

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