Posted on Sunday 22 April 2007
It was Saturday March 3, the weather was finally clear and calm. Will I? Herb is away, I hadn’t flown well with Ken, only Lynne and I (and Grandma) home. Rang Herb, he won’t be home for a few days but suggested to go ahead.
Fired the bird up, taxied right down the strip and back again, all systems working well. Positioned Lynne half way down the strip for the photos. Lined up, rechecked everything, opened the throttle.
That is where I was left behind the aircraft. Everything went so fast I could not catch up. I had never flown anything with this much go. Before I was ready we were at rotate speed, rotated, we were off (we hadn’t reached the windsock yet, 150m, and Lynne was another 300 m down the strip – got good photo of the belly). As it took off the left wing sank dramatically, picked up the wing with a fare bit of right stick. By this time I notice that we were climbing so fast and the nose so high – “watch the airspeed!!”, pushed nose down a bit, checked airspeed – too high for flaps, ‘get flaps off”, settle plane down, 80 knots climbing @ 800 ft/min, can’t handle this yet, slow her down, throttle back to 2500 rpm and take a breath and catch up to her.
Climbed to 6500 ft for a stall to check stall speed and stall warning. All as it should be.
Time to put her down and take a breath. Decided to put her down on the long strip at the end of the place, and if I don’t not like the approach then divert to Armidale.
Approach went like clockwork, it glides in so smoothly, what a joy to fly. The only hiccup was that I still had considerably a lot of right stick input to keep her level. Better check that out before flying back to the home strip.
After taking cowls etc off for a check, and re toqueing the prop bolts, I investigated the low wing. Found 30litres more fuel in the left tank than the right, combined with my weight on that side created the low wing. The plane had been ready for the first flight for 2 weeks and had been sitting on the concrete slab that had a 1 inch fall. The fall was enough to put the wings 4 inches out at the wing tips and the fuel slowly moved accross. This is not noticeable with the sight glass level indicators. A trap that I now know, and keep the cross feed fuel taps off when hangered.
The left wing did still fly a little low so I have adjusted it a bit by adjusting the flaps. Won’t know exactly how it goes untill we have 2 up with full fuel.
So far it will cruize 120knts TAS @ 3000rpm, mostly fly @ 115knts @ 2800rpm
Climbs 600 - 800 f/m 1up and 4hrs fuel
Preliminary fuel burn test with what I’m doing (not long trips) 15l/h
Had a concern with the CHT going into bottom bit of red on T/O and hard climb. Jabiru suggest that it will reduce after run in period, and to run it in fairly hard, also suggested a couple of small cowl flaps to help air movement. It all seems to be settling down now and only getting hot on lengthly hard climbs.