![](\"http:\/\/www.jasonbeaver.com\/rv7\/rv7pictures\/Originals\/20140309\/IMG_2310.jpg\")
<\/a><\/center><\/p>\nI also adjusted the high RPM stop on the governor 1 full turn to increase the maximum RPM a bit. \u00a0I’ve only been seeing a little over 2600 RPM at the stop. \u00a0Although I’ll likely have to adjust it further, I redid the safety wire to ensure this can’t move.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/center><\/p>\nI buttoned everything back up and took off again. \u00a0I figured I could get at least an hour of flight time before landing at Hollister again. \u00a0I decided to shoot an instrument approach to get some more experience with the autopilot and interaction between the GTN and the SkyView. \u00a0I loaded up the GPS 31 approach at CVH with the RUDNY transition and engaged the autopilot. \u00a0I duplicated the approach waypoints in the SkyView since they don’t yet automatically stay in sync with the GTN (though this is coming). \u00a0The GTN did turn anticipation and smoothly guided the autopilot onto the initial leg of the transition. \u00a0I programmed an altitude step-down and commanded a 500 fpm descent. \u00a0The autopilot turned smoothly to intercept the final approach course and held the descent rate rock solid. \u00a0I broke off the approach a couple of miles out and climbed back up to 6,000 ft.<\/p>\n
I headed over to the acro practice area and did a couple of rolls to warm up. \u00a0I then tried a loop for the first time. \u00a0The plane really builds speed fast on the down line, but pulling some G’s takes care of that nicely. \u00a0Next, I tried a hammerhead on about an 80\u00ba upline to keep some positive G on the engine for oil pressure. \u00a0The rudder is quite a bit more powerful than anything I’ve flown before, so the rotation at the top was crisp and quick.<\/p>\n
Finally, I decided to do a few spins to learn how the plane recovers. \u00a0The plan was to start with an incipient spin entry with an immediate recovery. \u00a0I climbed up to 8,000 ft and positioned myself near the South County airport in case I needed it. \u00a0I pulled the power smoothly back to idle and started slowing up. \u00a0Right at the stall break, I fed in full left rudder and the plane rolled about 90\u00ba to the left and the engine stopped cold. \u00a0The prop came to an immediate stop straight up. \u00a0I had already initiated the spin recovery and I immediately rolled level and got the nose down into a glide.<\/p>\n
One of the questions Dave Morss asked me to determine if I was ready for flight testing was how I reacted in an emergency situation. \u00a0I’ve only had a couple of surprises in my years of flying, but I knew that I tend to remain calm and work the problem. \u00a0When the prop stopped, my only reaction was to utter the word “interesting”. \u00a0After establishing the glide, I hit the engine start button and got the propeller windmilling again, but the engine still wasn’t producing power. \u00a0I still had the mixture pulled way out, so I opened the throttle to give the engine some more air. \u00a0After a few seconds, the power came back smoothly. \u00a0I climbed back up and decided to try again, but this time over Hollister since they have much bigger runways in case I couldn’t get the engine started again.<\/p>\n
After arriving over the airport, I again pulled the power to idle and started to slow up. \u00a0I slowed more gradually this time so that I could monitor the engine more closely. \u00a0As the plane slowed, the engine RPM slowly dropped. \u00a0When it got down to around 400 RPM, I knew something was wrong and I added power back. \u00a0The engine stumbled a bit as the power came back up, but it ran smoothly again at around 75% power. \u00a0I pulled back to around 40-50% power and the engine started running rough again. \u00a0I brought the power back in and started examining the engine monitor more closely. \u00a0My EGTs were down a bit, so I decided to try leaning the engine further and repeating the approach to stall. \u00a0This time, the RPM held steady at about 700 RPM all the way through the stall break. \u00a0I didn’t repeat the spin entry, but I feel comfortable now that the problem was simply an over rich mixture for the altitude.<\/p>\n
I landed at Hollister to help Greg with his RV again. \u00a0It took much longer than we expected, but we were able to wrap up all of the spar bolts and get the nuts torqued. \u00a0The ailerons and flaps still need to be hooked up, but other than that, the plane looks pretty close to being ready for inspection.<\/p>\n
I knew I was pretty close to empty on the left tank, but I wanted to run it dry on the flight back, so I left a little early to ensure I would have sufficient light. \u00a0I ended up flying for nearly 20 minutes before the tank ran dry. \u00a0I then switched to the right tank and landed at South County.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I got down to the airport really early this morning because I wanted to take care of a couple of things and get some flight time before heading back to Hollister to help Greg. \u00a0I pulled the cowl and gave everything a thorough inspection. \u00a0One of the things I found was that the oil filler … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-firewall-forward","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jasonbeaver.com\/rv7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jasonbeaver.com\/rv7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jasonbeaver.com\/rv7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jasonbeaver.com\/rv7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jasonbeaver.com\/rv7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/jasonbeaver.com\/rv7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3726,"href":"http:\/\/jasonbeaver.com\/rv7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions\/3726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jasonbeaver.com\/rv7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jasonbeaver.com\/rv7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jasonbeaver.com\/rv7\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}