Yak

Took my Yak-54 out today primarily to tune it. Slightly breezy but I got to fly her for two flights anyway, as I tried to find a sweet spot in the needles. High end seems good after some fiddling, not rich, not too lean. The mixture screw was a pain and I still don't know that it's as good as it gets, but it's close. Seems that whether I go in or out, the transition during quick change from low idle to full throttle causes the engine to run very slow, and sometimes it never gets to full speed unless I back down to some mid throttle position, then go WOT again. On the rich side of the mixture screw, the engine smokes a lot in the transition; on the lean side it smokes less in the transition. BUT in both cases, the engine just runs slow till mid throttle is given, OR it picks up speed extremely slowly. The cure seems to be just advancing the throttle slightly less than instantaneously going to WOT, and then the engine transitions nicely at the current setting. Not impressive, the tach seems to show only about 7500rpm at WOT with the 16x8MAS. I think I may need to try a smaller prop. The plane however has pretty good speed with the current prop and needle settings.

Giles 202

Took out the Giles 202 for a day of fun in the sun. It was a very calm wind with nary a breeze, not even crosswind! Had 4 flights with the Giles; the OS 160FX was on the money today, very powerful and smooth with a touch of smoke trail. I flew it a little tighter than usual. Only gaff today was the remote needle nuts loosened so the needle valve was wobbling around in the cowl when about to take off for the 4th flight. I noticed it and killed the engine. I had to take off the spinner, prop and cowl to get to the nuts to tighten them. After that I had one more flight with the plane but am a click or two away from the sweet setting. Jer and Joe both had muffler probs with their big Extra's, and were grounded after Joe's muffler lost both bolts in the air, and Jer's completely fractured off and fell of the plane during flight!

I also flew the Apache, and had some bubbly air a couple times, but nothing to brag about. Launch height seems below normal, and might be due to me relocating one aileron servo, and causing both ailerons to flex down a smidge. I think it dirties the wing, and I need to reset the aileron servo again.

Intruder

It was another warm day filled with sunshine, and a little stronger wind out of the north. Still, it was a great day of flying the Intruder for 4 flights of smooth and rail-like aerobatics. That is still one of my fave planes...makes me look like a good pilot! The challenge today was the long line of sprinklers along the SE corner of the runway, making approaches from there a little wet. Along the south edge of the runway at the west end were two lengths of extra sprinkler pipe with heads on them, so that made another obstacle. And finally the sprinkler pipes were laid along the dirt road beginning at the west end of the runway, and they were turned on for added fun. Joe overran the runway twice with the WM Extra that he maidened today, and ended up in the sprinkler radius over there, getting lightly sprinkled both times. Joe and I helped inspect John Doan's 50cc Edge 540T (KPM), after Jeff did some repair work to it since its last outing. I flew it for John, and then he took over on a solo flight of his own. There was concern about it porpoising out of control in its last outing. The first thing I observed when Jeff turned it on was that up and down elevator were reversed, so maybe they tried to fly it that way last time and were lucky to get it back with just engine mount damage. It flew fine for me, and then for John. They were most appreciative.

Extra Nice Day!

On a beautiful day of 85F or more, I flew my Extra 330L twice today. Tad went too, but we cut it short because of a JB mower on the field. Tad did not even assemble his plane. The DL-50 in mine barked after 30 flips with choke on, then started in another 5 with choke off. That is normal for it. Great running engine, but it still spits out a fine black mist on the LE of the left wing and the left LG. Don't care too much as long as it runs sweet like it does. Flew some with low and high rates, and was happy that high is not too sensitive around neutral. In fact it felt the same as low rates. Was able to hover some up high, but not very good. Landings were pretty nice today, no problems at all.

Flight Log: 08/23/2011

Toledo Special flew today at least 4 flights. Had many more takeoffs and landings than that as I tried to tune the Saito 82. It seemed to be honking around real fast on the first flight and seemed too lean, so I tried to tone it down, richen it a bit, but then it never purred smoothly. Seemed to hunt up and down. Couldn't find the original setting, but got close in sound and flight speed, yet my tach says max rpm was only around 6500rpm! Way too slow. Will try smaller diameter prop to get the rpms up. Still it flew nicely, and landed gently too. Mowed the field when I was done.

Update: changed from 14x8MAS to 13x8MAS. Balanced prop and repainted white tips.

Flight Log: 08/21/2011

Flew the Yak 54 for four flights today. Like yesterday it was sunny and got pretty hot by the time I quit at 1PM...around 90F. The Yak flew great with a good trail of exhaust. Might need to lean it a little bit. That might help a tendency for the engine to lose power in violent vertical maneuver such as uphill snaps. Other than that, the plane flew smoothly and gracefully in all maneuvers. Did some of the lowest slow rolls yet with this plane. Also executed a couple of very nice rolling circles up higher, doing 4 rolls in one circle. Getting less doubt doing the last quarter of the circle (coming at me and the pits). Replacement LG from a UCANDO are holding up nicely.

Tad flew his Extra very nicely. DLE-55 started and ran great all day. Landings were light.

Quang showed up with a new Hangar 9 Denight Special, with electric power. It flew way faster than my glow Shoestring, and was very entertaining!

KRCA Valley Challenge

On Oct 1, we will have the challenge pitting the top three finishers in each club's individual challenge contest against each other. Today we held the KRCA individual contest. Somehow I lucked out and came out on top, with 900 of a possible 1000 points. Ron finished 2nd with 800, and Joe beat out Jer in a tie-breaker fly off for 3rd place, both with 700. The Imagine 50 was pretty well suited to the 4 tasks we flew in 4 separate flights. At first I wished I had brought the SNAFU, but it turns out it could have been too slow for the timed flight through the gates at each end of the runway. I believe my only 100 pt deduction came for flying too fast on Task 2, where I had to complete two passes through the gates in 4 seconds each. The first pass was 3.8 seconds, the second was between 4 and 5 seconds, AOK. Anything can happen in the finals with different weather and wind conditions. We had about a 5mph crosswind out of the North today, and about 90F by the time we ended around 1PM. I will add a scan of the task directions given us at the pilot's briefing.

Flight Log: 08/17/2011

It's been two week sinces I last flew, due to the family trip to Hawaii. I took out the SNAFU to get the feel for it again, in prep for the Valley Challenge event our club is hosting. Had at least 4 flights practicing loops, landings, and just flying low and slow. Felt good to be back in the air. Not sure if I will fly this plane or another in the VC.