I had a very busy week - went to Toronto early Monday morning for two days of meetings. Tuesday night I flew to Brazil, arriving Wednesday morning, and went straight to Embraer for meetings. Thursday I did an ERJ175 autoland flight test, more meetings on Friday, then flew home Friday night, arriving Saturday morning. Tired. Very tired.

This afternoon I went to the hangar, and installed the forward and aft baggage compartment floors, the spinner and cowling. All I need to do before I fly is put some more fuel in the tanks. I have no idea when the paperwork will arrive. If it comes on Monday, maybe I’ll get the first flight off Monday evening. Otherwise I’ll be heading on the road again Tuesday morning, coming home late in the week.

I didn’t get much done in the first half of the week due to the bug I was fighting. Thursday and today I got a whole bunch done. I changed the O-rings in the brake system - I had screwed up, due to a misinterpretation of some info, and had O-rings made from EPDM, which were not compatible with my chosen MIL-PRF-83282 brake fluid. I went back to the stock Buna-N O-rings.

I removed the right flap, removed the UMHW tape adhesive that was causing it to bind, and reinstalled it.

I put foil heat shield on the insides of the cowling in the areas where the exhaust pipes are routed close to the fibreglas.

I got most of the access panels, floors, seats, etc back in. I just need to reinstall the baggage compartment floors, install the spinner and cowling and the plane will be ready to fly.

Now I just need the paperwork and I can start the flight testing.

I had grand hopes to clean off the loose ends so the plane was ready to fly this weekend, just in case the paperwork arrives in time. But, I have been fighting some sort of digestive tract illness for several days now. Some days are better than others, but I have had to stick pretty close to the facilities most of the time. This has greatly hindered my hangar work session plans, and it now seems quite unlikely that I will be ready to fly this weekend. I will endeavour to close off those loose items by the end of the weekend, so the aircraft is ready to fly.

Monday I head on the road for the week - two days in Toronto, then two nights in Brazil. I fly overnight each way for the Brazil trip fly down Tuesday night, and arrive back home Saturday morning. Needless to say I won’t be doing any RV flying on that Saturday (the 23rd). Maybe Sunday the 24th, if the paperwork is here, and the weather is suitable.

So, it is hard to say when this thing will get airborne.

I got a few hours work in at the hangar today. I got about half the reassembly work done, added a placard by the external canopy handle, and sorted out the remaining paperwork.

The transparent label material looks great when used in the cockpit, but it doesn’t look nearly as transparent when used on the silver paint on the canopy skirt. But, it only has to stay like this until the aircraft is painted, so I’m not going to lose any sleep over it now. I will revise the wording though, as the current wording doesn’t mention the need to pull aft after rotating the handle. I think I’ll change the placard to:

Rescue
1. Rotate handle
2. Pull handle aft

The new words will be to the right of the arrow. I’ll also trim closer to the arrow and words, to minimize the amount of “transparent” label material that is visible.

I got back from Wichita Friday afternoon. I got up at 0530 this morning, and zipped out to Smiths Falls, to get the aircraft ready for the final inspection. I had a short list of little things to sort out, then I removed the seats, cockpit floors, baggage compartment floors, wing and empennage intersection fairings, all inspection covers, etc.

Pierre Marcotte, one of the local MD-RA inspectors, showed up at on schedule at noon. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but he was very helpful, friendly and reasonable. He took about 90 minutes to inspect the aircraft, and only had one gripe - he noted that I didn’t have any markings by the external canopy latch handle. He wanted me to identify this as the means to open the canopy, with an arrow showing which way to rotate the handle. I had planned to add such a placard, but never got around to it. I drew one up late this afternoon, and printed it out on a clear sticky label. I’ll head back out to Smiths Falls tomorrow afternoon to put it on.

After Pierre was done with the inspection, he wanted to observe an engine run. I put the front seat and seat belts back in, and did a short run, including cycling the prop, while he observed the prop tracking, looked for leaks, and confirmed proper functioning of the engine instruments.

I need to sign the back of the inspection form to confirm to Pierre that I have added the canopy opening placard, and send him the application for the Special Certificate of Airworthiness, a copy of the log book entries, and a photocopy of the Certificate of Registration. He signs the paperwork, and forwards it to his MD-RA people. They then fax me the Special Certificate of Airworthiness. It is hard to know how long this process will take. In the meantime, I have several hours of work to put the aircraft back together, and I have a short list of niggly items that I need to close off before I am ready to do taxi testing and first flight.

I am so happy to have the final inspection out of the way. Terry and I popped the cork on a bottle of Champagne to celebrate.

I had hoped to be able to do my final inspection and first flight this week. But, I ran into a scheduling problem with the guy who is doing my final inspection. The way our respective schedules line up, I won’t be able to get the inspection done until sometime after we get back from Oshkosh. And to add insult to injury, I learned that I had misunderstood how the process worked. I thought that I would be given the Special Certificate of Airworthiness at the end of the inspection, so I could fly right away. But, it turns out that the process is to send the inspection paperwork to MD-RA headquarters in Hamilton for their audit, and they send me the Special C of A later. This can apparently take weeks :(

So, it looks like first flight no earlier than mid-August, with a significant risk of a delay until late August. Drat.

Update 22 July 08 - My work schedule has suddenly started to fill up. I will be on the road of much of August, and all of September. It won't take much of a paperwork delay, or bad weather on the few days I am in town, to push the first flight into October. Double Drat.

I spent several hours reinstalling everything on the aircraft - spinner, plenum chamber, cowling, ELT, landing gear leg fairings, wheel pants, first aid kit, rear seat riser, seats, seat belts, all missing screws, etc. On Saturday I borrowed a very nice set of Intercomp ACII scales from Ron M., the Aircraft Maintenance Engineer based at Smiths Falls, and weighed the aircraft. Intercomp’s main business is making race car scales, and they apparently are the official scale supplier of scales for many automotive racing leagues. The scales I borrowed were appropriately calibrated for use with certificated aircraft, so I am comfortable that my weight and balance is accurate.

I had to close the hangar door during the weighing, to ensure that any wind did not affect the results. It was really, really hot inside that closed hangar, so I was really looking forward to a cold beer when I got back home.

The aircraft weighed a bit more than I hoped, but the same could be said about me. I was hoping for a weight around 1150 lb, but it weighed in at 1177 lb. This is with the oil sump filled to capacity (8 US quarts), all fairings, etc. I forgot to remove the pitot tube cover, but it’s weight is negligible, and counterbalances the ELT antenna that I had forgotten at home. My aircraft has a lot of extra equipment, which helps explain why it is so heavy - full IFR panel with second navigation radio, heated pitot tube, wing leveler, heavy IO-360-A1B6 engine, Hartzell constant speed prop, inverted fuel and oil systems, firewall thermal insulation, leather seats, cockpit sidewall upholstery, baggage compartment tie downs, etc.

I weighed the aircraft with and without landing gear leg fairings and wheel pants. It weighed 1170 lb without all the fairings, which is the configuration that it will be in for the first few flights.

In Canada, we need to do a fuel flow test before we can receive the Special Certificate of Airworthiness for the aircraft. The aircraft is supposed to be at the maximum climb pitch attitude. The crafter of that requirement has side stepped the question of how one would know the maximum climb pitch attitude before doing any flight testing.

It was raining this morning, so I cleaned up a few odds and ends, then did a big inspection of the engine installation. I found a few loose ends, which I tied off. This afternoon the rain stopped, so I called Jim M., who conveniently lives in the town of Smiths Falls, and made the mistake once of telling me to phone him if I ever needed some help. He didn't seem too upset when I asked him if he could come out to the airport - I'm guessing he used it as an excuse to beg off working on his "Honey Do List".

I disconnected the fuel line at the fuel injection servo, and put the end in a gas can that Jim held. I ran the boost pump for 60 seconds, and then weighed the gas can with a set of fishing scales. I subtracted the weight of the empty gas can, and determined that the fuel flow was about 45 USG/hr. The fishing scales were calibrated against several known weights - they have an error of 0.1 lb or less.

The official fuel flow test description is silent on the pass-fail criteria, so I decided to use FAR 23.955 as guidance - 125% of the fuel flow at max take-off power. I figure the fuel flow at take-off power should be no more than 20 USG/hr, so I set the pass-fail criteria at 25 USG/hr. The actual result of 45 USG/hr is way more than enough, so I am happy.

I did two sets of tests - one on a flat taxiway (11° pitch attitude), and one with the aircraft at 21° pitch attitude. The results were essentially the same for all conditions, so I am comfortable that there would be no problem at even higher pitch attitudes.

I had minimum fuel in the tanks. In fact, the first time I tried the left tank, I sucked the tank dry before getting 60 seconds of fuel - I had to add a bit more. The last time I tried the right tank, the fuel pressure fell after 55 seconds, as the tank started to run dry.

After I got home yesterday, I tried to contact Grand Rapids Technologies to ask for assistance with the fuel flow activation problem. I couldn’t get anyone to answer the phone, so resorted to e-mail. Tim, the EIS technical support guy, e-mailed back with some advice, but that didn’t help.

It looked like the engine monitor would have to go back to the factory, so this morning, I zipped into the hangar to carefully record all the configuration settings, then removed the unit. Today is a holiday up here, but I planned to courier it out tomorrow.

Tim, the tech support guy, e-mailed me back mid-day today with another possible fix - he had dug into their records, and found that the unit had been calibrated twice. The activation code was changed when it was calibrated the second time, but they sent me the first, out-of-date, activation code. I tried the correct code, and it worked. It was a wasted trip to the hangar, but it did force me to update my record of the configuration settings. I’m going to put them in the POH, so they are handy in case the unit ever loses its memory somehow.

This afternoon and evening I got two rounds of fibreglas work done on the cowling to plenum chamber transition. Things are coming along nicely, but there are at least two more days required to finish that off.

I’ll be heading on the road for most of the week, and will have family in town for a week starting on Saturday. So I won’t make any real progress until the week of 14 July. If things go very smoothly, I could possibly have the final inspection late that week.

I took the day off work today, and spent the morning at the hangar. I had noted yesterday that the idle mixture was very rich. At 700 rpm, if you pull the mixture back very slowly from full rich, the rpm should increase 10 to 50 rpm. I had over a 200 rpm increase. I wasn’t sure whether this was simply way out of adjustment, or whether it was a symptom of some other issue. The idle mixture should have been set during the engine run in the test cell after the overhaul, so I wanted to be sure that there wasn’t something else going on. A web search indicated that a rich idle mixture could be caused by an internal leak inside the fuel injection servo. Such a leak, if present, could be seen by removing the air induction “snorkel”, and putting a cap on the metered fuel line going from the fuel injection servo to the “spider” on top of the engine. Then you select full throttle and rich mixture, and pressurize the system with the boost pump. An internal leak will cause fuel to come out of the small tubes that can be seen in the throat of the fuel injection servo. There was no leak in my system.

Another possible cause of too rich mixture could be too much oil on the K&N air filter. So, I put the induction snorkel back in place without the air filter for a quick test. I still got more than a 200 rpm rise when I pulled the mixture back at 700 rpm, so the air filter was not the cause. After putting the air filter back in place, I adjusted the idle mixture and idle speed to be approximately correct. As a point of reference, I needed to turn the adjusting wheel about one full turn to get the mixture approximately in the right range. I’ll do the final adjustment after the engine is broken in.

I chased down two small brake system leaks in the cockpit, and spent quite a while looking for, but failed to find, the source of a fuel smell in the cockpit.

I’ve got some sort of problem with the activation of the fuel flow option on the EIS 4000 engine monitor. You need to enter two codes to activate that option, but my system refuses to accept the codes. I couldn’t raise GRT on the phone, so sent an e-mail.

This afternoon I did some sanding on the transition ducts I made to connect the cowl air inlets to the plenum chamber on top of the engine, then applied some more fibreglas filler.