I wrapped up the hinge on the other gear leg. I’m probably going to end up shortening these since they’re a bit longer than necessary. I need to fabricate the clamping pads at the top of the fairings, and then I can align them to the longitudinal axis of the plane.
The clouds lifted enough in the afternoon that I could take the plane up for another flight. I took the opportunity to calibrate the AOA system. On the SkyView, this is done by doing a series of stalls in various flight configurations and hitting a button on the EFIS each time. I also took the plane up to 8,000 ft to measure the true airspeed. I’m still slow because the wheel pants and gear leg fairings are not installed, but I saw 162 kts. I expect to be near 175 kts after the fairings are installed.
I also intentionally ran my right tank dry in flight so that I can do the final fuel gauge calculation. The SkyView system annunciated “fuel pressure” just a second or two before the engine started stumbling. I switched tanks and hit the boost pump, and the engine surged back to life within 3-4 seconds. The experience was very different than when I’ve run a tank dry in my Bonanza. In the Bonanza, the engine power winds smoothly down with no surging or stuttering. After changing tanks, the power winds smoothly back up. In the RV, the power loss was much more abrupt and there was quite a bit of stumbling before power was smoothly restored.