Conducted 4/26/2013 –
John’s flight report to the Cozy list is below:
“I had taken the day off this past Thursday, hoping to make good use of what was predicted to be perfectly clear skies to get through all the climb testing. Instead I spent it staring at clouds. I went home disappointed. Friday, turned out to be perfectly sunny, so as soon as Christine got back from work, we rushed to the airport. I figured there were about 7 flights left, maybe 8 if everything went perfectly smooth and there was a little time left to just ‘fly off’. I hoped to get 2 of these flights done Friday afternoon/evening before sunset. During my preflight I discovered a slight problem though. I ran the speed brake down and inspected the hinge and retaining nuts. But upon flipping the switch to “up”, there was no movement. I could hear the relay on the deck clicking, so I thought perhaps a wire came loose from the board. After pulling the seat out and verifying the wires were all secure and power was flowing the correct direction for both up and down, I did what I should have done first. Check power at the actuator. Power was good in both directions at the actuator, so the problem was clearly inside it. I had Christine push on the speed brake a bit while I applied power in the up direction. Viola’! It ran up. Wondering if it was just a fluke I made the stupid mistake of running it back down again…and of course, it wouldn’t go back up again. Again, I had Christine push on the brake a bit, but this time no movement. In frustration I whacked the actuator with my palm, and it instantly ran up. This time I disconnected the power wire so it couldn’t accidentally run down. I rarely use the speed brake, as the constant speed prop aids in providing a plenty steep descent angle. The big drawback to all this was the daylight wasted in tracking this down. I only got 1 flight in on Friday evening, but all went well with it.
The EFIS really makes the testing go quickly. When I designed my flight test program, I ran through each of the protocols on X-Plane, so I could determine how long each test would take. In that exercise I hand wrote all the data. Now, with the EFIS recording all the data, I only needed to concentrate on flying. Climb at the set airspeeds through the altitude points, level off for a bit to allow the temps to stabilize, and then conduct a descent test. Then rinse and repeat in the opposite direction and move on to the next airspeed point.”