Al Gietzen wrote:

Ah-h-h; at last the smell of fuel and exhaust instead of epoxy.  One
milestone in an airplane building project like this is running the engine on
the plane for the first time.  I was able to do that today.  It was
successful; and quite short.

The reason for its brevity was the loss of use of the EM-2 engine monitor.
This happened before the run - the display was dead the second time I turned
it on for reasons yet to be determined.  After some checks, and a couple
calls to Tracy, we agreed there were no further checks I could effectively
do, so it and the connecting cable is removed and packed for shipment to
RWS.

I chose to proceed with a brief run anyway just to see that everything
needed for engine operation was functional.  The engine fired off promptly
and ran just above idle just long enough for oil and coolant to flow and get
detectably warm.  After checking everything out, there were no leaks, and I
knew oil was flowing by the slight warmth of the filters and cooler.  I
fired it up again, adjusted mixture a bit, ran for a bit, added a bit of
throttle a couple of times, and shutdown.  This time I could also verify
warm coolant flow throughout the system, and all air bled out of both
radiators.  Very nice.

Disappointed there will be no more runs until I have a functional engine
monitoring system - delighted that everything else was just fine!

How does it sound? POWERFULL!

Al

 
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