Test Flight 1: First Flight!

 

Test Flight: 1
Date: Sunday January 10th
Description: First flight of the aircraft
Objectives: Extensive preflight and run-up of the aircraft, high speed taxi / aborted takeoff, normal take off, initial systems checkout while in the pattern, depart the pattern for engine break in, return to base, normal landing.

Airplane Condition: 40 gallons of fuel, 9.5qts of oil as read on the dip stick, 50lbs of ballast in the baggage compartment, single pilot (150lbs)

Test Flight Track Log:

Test Flight Report:

 

 

Fuel Flow Test

 

Prior to the first start I had already cleaned, purged and tested the various aspects of the fuel system from the tanks through the filter and electric fuel pump, up to the fuel divider. I still wanted to run a full fuel flow test though. In fact when I emailed the DAR (not that I was not planning on already doing it) he had mentioned that he would want to see a fuel flow test. 

FAA AC 90-89B has some decent information on fuel flow testing. The RV-10 tanks are a pretty known design as is the engine combination, fuel line routing, boost pump, and filter setup. So really the test here is to make sure that the electric boost pump is wired and working correctly, that the flow through the lines is not restricted, that the lines themselves are free of debris, and that we can get the required flow rate out of our boost pump. Ideally I would have tested the "usable fuel" here as well, but Mackenzie was about done with the fuel test by the time we got through all of the essentials.

We started with the the plane in level flight attitude, and checking the various functions of the fuel selector and then ran the fuel flow test both on the left and the right tank. I purchased a nice fuel funnel from Aircraft Spruce that had both a water separator as well as a filter, so I ended up re-using the fuel for this test. From there we put the plane in the nose up pitch as far as we could (basically until the rear tie down was just off of the ground). 

Tests one and two we ran for 60 seconds for each tank. I will be honest, I did not get overly exact about measuring after we passed 4 qts in under well under 60 seconds. Regardless, the first test was over +67 gallons per hour (with the fuel being taken from the line at the input of the fuel servo). The second test was about +68 gallons per hour. I would say that the flow was probably a little more than that calculation, but my container was only 5 qts and I didn't want to make a mess. I opted not to go the other way around and have Mackenzie stop the timer at the 4 qt marker because I was in fear of the boost pump not coming off in time and there is A LOT of flow on that pump!

In looking through my engine documentation, I didn't see a fuel flow sensor on the max RPM test that was run so I am going to generalize a bit on max fuel flow for 2700 RPM. If we are running at mixture for peak power, the brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC) should be on the order of 0.5 pound/hp per hour, if the engine compression ratio is ~8.7:1. Let's round that up to 0.60 pounds/hour of fuel per each horsepower (even though our 9.0 compression ration should actually keep that number closer to 0.5).  Avgas weighs about 6 pounds/gallon, so we would expect about 10 hp for every one gph of fuel flow.  Take our Thunderbolt IO-540 engine rated at 295hp, we would get 29.5 gallons per hour (loosely). 

The rule of thumb here is that in our low wing electric boost pump enabled system we need about 125% of our max flow to be pushing through our line, so 36.9gph. I realize that I did not bring the line up to the spider, but our 68 gph is more than enough to meet our safety factor.

Cross bar dimensions

I keep forgetting to make a post about my engine mount crossbar dimensions, so while this is old news I still want to document it. With my cold air induction (Thunderbolt) I had to lower my crossbar in order to gain enough clearance for the engine.  The short of it is that the rear of the sump on the cold air setup is about ~3/4 lower than the standard sump.

This is a pretty standard modification and Barrett sells these crossbars with their cold air induction. The dimensions of my setup are in the photo below.

I unfortunately measured once and cut/welded twice. The first time I welded one in, I more or less eyeballed in the dimensions while the engine mount was on the weld table and not on the airframe. After I mounted the engine and allowed the mounts to sag a bit, I was not happy with the clearance I had remaining (1/16"). As such, I removed the engine off of the mount and welded a new cross bar in place. The tubing was pretty easy to find and I just ordered it from: McMaster Link

With the Thunderbolt IO-540 setup with Cold Air, .82" of cross bar drop got me a little over 1/2" of clearance on a mostly settled engine.

FM-300R on a L1B5 sump

This is a post that is completely out of order as I forgot to publish it when I was working through this fit up. I have a Lycoming Thunderbolt IO-540 with a cold air sump off of a L1B5. when trying to put the FM-300R onto this sump I ran into a bit of a snag. i.e. the sump is in my way!

As you can see here I have about an inch and a half up or out that I need to get in order to get things to line up. I think the BPE cold air sump has a very angled forward face to it that allows this fit up to work.



No real big deal here. This is a standard problem which many places sell spacers for just this problem. In my case I called Don at airflow and ordered a 4 degree spacer. I figured this would do the trick. So close!!! I am about 1/8" from fitting.If you look at the top corner of the spacer you will see it pulled away from the sump because of the top of the servo contacting the sump.



I have the servo on upside down here just to take a photo. This brass hex (the adjustable jet) is what is contacting the sump. I did contemplate just taking the 1/8" off of this hex. Also, Don had mentioned that we could remove the adjustability out of this...


I went back and forth with Don though, and Jeff Schans shipped him out a sump to work on some fit ups. Don agreed to help prototype a new bracket that would push the servo out the 1/8" while also giving me a place to mount up the linkage cables.

Presumably the straight spacer could be pulled back closer to the sump, but I am not sure that buys you any cowl clearance because the straight spacer will be pushing the servo inlet closer to the cowling.

Moving Day!

The time has come to move the plane out of the garage and into the hangar. We are pretty excited because we are not just going to a hangar, we are going to the EAA 186 Build Hangar. It will be nice to have the EAAs wealth of knowledge looking and criticizing the plane as the build continues.



The chapter had a converted boat trailer that we borrowed in order to move the plane. I was going to have a roll back come and pick it up, but in the end I decided I wanted to be responsible for the move and I also wanted to be able to load and unload at my own pace. This worked out even better than expected because my dad was in town to help with the process!



We got really lucky on the load. If you look carefully, the trailer in this position had the plane load in a level position. i.e. no incline to go up!



The drive was probably more stressful than the actual loading and unloading.



Time lapse of the load and unload:

March Status Photos

I have spent a good amount of time getting my panel console fitted. Everything for the most part goes right in, but there are minor cosmetic tweaks and fitting that does need to happen. It is good to see the panel looking like a panel!


As of now, I have the VPX, GTR-20, GSU primary and backup, GEA24 and the AUX fuse block mounted.


Looking back I have a mess!


The engine is coming together nicely. I got my exhaust from Vetterman and they did a wonderful job.


I have the doors complete, but I am waiting on the weather to warm up a bit before I finish cutting my plexi-glass.


Side view






I did notice that the desiccant on a couple of cylinders was starting to go clear. I replaced all of the desiccant in the plug adapters just to get ahead of that.



I have Beringer nosewheel and mains. I am waiting on the weather to warm to finishing dura-coating some of the wheel components.




I have spent a lot of time going through this door. My neighbor caught me the other day in the tail of the plane and I told them that I would be out in a minute because I was a little stuck at that point in time. They responded with "Looks like you should have built it a little bigger." If only it was that easy.

Mounting the Engine!

With my parents in town and my dad ready to spend some time in the garage, it was finally time to hang the engine. The long story short, this was a lot easier than the stories I heard with the motor mount not lining up to the mounting ears. With the engine load leveler on the hoist, this is actually a one person job (its not like you are trying to get the engine bell housing bolts in place while laying under a car!)

I would say the thing that took the most amount of time was getting the lower mounting ear bolts torqued. Not that it was impossible, it was a bit annoying and I ended up taking the rear down tubes off of the sump to get at the nuts.

I am happy to say that everything fit first try. That said, I am going to pop the engine off and re-weld my cross bar on the engine mount. I previously lowered the cross bar in order to clear the sump. I will admit, that when I measured everything up, I never fully mounted the engine mount to the engine. I was looking for about 1/2" of clearance, which I did end up getting... And then I torqued the engine mounts and took the weight off of the engine. I ended up with about 3/32" of an inch when all was said and done. While that may be fine, there is no reason not to re-weld this because it is going to take me all of an hour to take the engine off and put it back on. Plus, since I have procrastinating some building I have been doing a lot of 4130 TIG welding to keep my skills up. 1/16" 2% ceriated tungsten with some 1/16" ER70S-2 does a much better job than my previous 3/32 setup.

Thunderbolt IO-540 in a RV-10

With the engine out of the box (beautiful job on packing by the way) I was able to start seeing how this was going to fit in the RV-10. Putting a IO-540 in a 10 is not new by any means, but there are a couple of differences in my Thunderbolt build over the standard IO-540. Mainly, this engine was built closer to the specs of Red Bull setup rather than the stock balanced setup.


The first hiccup were the mounting ears. I had pulled out the dynafocal mounts and something didn't seem quite right. After a bit of research I found out that there are two sizes the large hole 19770 mounting ears are typically used on the 300 Extra and the Rockets. Unfortunately, the RV-10 engine mount is setup for the small hole 70456 mounting ears. In all honesty, I figured this was my problem and I was about to purchase a set on e-bay when I had sent Thunderbolt (Jeff Schans) and email with my situation. I sent that message late on Saturday and received an immediate response saying that they would get a new set of small hole ears color matched and sent out ASAP. Hurray!

Those came to my house within a couple of days and solved problem number 1!



Problem number two I was expecting, but I was not sure if it was going to be true or not until I got my mounting ears in place and the mount up next to the engine. I ordered this engine with the cold air induction. This cold air setup is again, off of the Red Bull series planes and can be found on the AEIO-540-L1B5. From a dimensions standpoint it looks a bit like the BPE setup. As you probably know, the BPE setup needs a modification to be performed on the engine mount in order to clear the sump. The Thunderbolt has similar clearance requirements.


With the top mounts in place, the oil screen boss *ALMOST* clears the engine mount. In all honesty, I did not try putting the lower mounts in first and then the top mounts to see if everything was going to clear. It may have, but when I saw this, I decided to just go ahead and lower the bar.




I had been expecting this, so a couple of weeks ago I had purchased a pre-bent bar from BPE.


If I were to do this again, I would probably the bar just a little further. Everything looks good, but there is no reason with the mount off of the fuselage at this point to not weld something in that should be compatible with other setups.


That is it for now. I just placed an order for the PlanePower vacuum pad mount alternator and a B&C oil filter spacer and adapter. Hopefully that will be the next post to detail how the rear of the engine looks with some of the accessories installed.

Thunderbolt YIO-540-EXP43

While the engine is off of the plane and none of the accessories are mounted I figured it would be a good time to take some photos of the engine. This is a YIO-540-EXP with the cold air induction off of the AEIO-540.



I had Thunderbolt remove the magnetos because I wanted to put in electronic ignition and there was no reason to pay for something that I was going to take out right away.


I will admit, I was not expecting this to be in the order. A FM-300R was a nice surprise. This is their light weight high flow unit with adjustable main jet, used on race planes (it was designed for the Red Bull race series). It makes sense, because I ended up getting a lower compression Red Bull engine from Thunderbolt... I talked a bit with Airflow if I should be running a 300R in a plane that I want to just turn the key and start after getting crabcakes in Tangier and here was Don's succinct response.  "The FM-300R is the Mac Daddy of our fuel control line.  I don't really know why you would want to switch from the FM-300R to a FM-300A.  If you are after the purge valve function you can just add the purge valve to your flow divider, of course your will need to install a return line to one of the tank feed lines and install a push-lock cable in the cockpit to operate the purge valve.  With the FM-300A you would need to use the purge valve for stopping and starting the engine (The mixture control valve is a rotary valve therefore ICO is not zero leak although it does give you the added ability to circulate fuel through the fuel injection system to purge hot fuel and vapor from the engine before starting).   The FM-300R has a different designed mixture control valve which is zero leak so the purge valve is not required for starting and stopping the engine."



Hartzel 200F-5002 Fuel Pump


The engine came with the large hole 19770 mounting ears and Thunderbolt quickly shipped me a new set of small ear 70456 models that work with the dynafocal mounts that we use in our RV-10s.


API Flow divider


Sky Tech Starter




Fly wheel and mounting boss


Chrome Rocker Box Covers


Cold Air Induction