Author Archives: bbarrett

2014 Annual

N8861R goes in to AirTec for it’s annual inspection tomorrow. There are no major issues I’m aware of, so it should be a fairly standard inspection and hopefully not take too long.

As with every other year, I made a couple upgrades to the airplane already:

  • Replaced the old, failing 35 amp generator and mechanical regulator with a Plane Power 70 amp alternator and solid-state regulator. In addition to more power in cruise flight (so more head room for avionics upgrades), the alternator can actually put out more power at idle than the generator could in cruise. So no more low voltage / discharge alarms on the EDM-900 during taxi! Oh, and a gain of 8 pounds of useful load helps, too.
  • Replaced the engine control cables. The old throttle and prop cables were original and starting to look real bad. The mixture cable was in good shape, but had been replaced about a decade ago, but was not the right length (it looks like someone used a pre-made size, not the factory length).
  • Returned the engine control cable mounting brackets to their (supposedly) original locations, which makes some of the tighter parts of the cowling fit a little bit better.
  • Fixed (hopefully) the fluctuations in MAP pressure by installing a snubber in the manifold pressure line.
  • Overhauled the suction gauge, which was of suspect accuracy

It’s also the year for pitot/static and transponder checks, which always makes me a bit nervous (altimeters and blind encoders aren’t cheap, and finding leaks in pitot or static lines sucks). The altimeter and blind encoder passed bench tests, so that’s one hurdle down.

Old School Heat

Last weekend, Jeff and I moved the second wing of his Kitfox out of the paint booth, so I had somewhere to spray the manifold heater for the Model A. A couple of new bolts later, and everything’s installed:

As you can see, it’s a pretty simple heating mechanism. Air flows through the radiator, enters the manifold heater (which is sitting on the exhaust manifold, so it’s hot), then enters the cabin. Works alright as long as you’re not moving too fast or too slow. But it’s better than nothing and didn’t require any additional modifications, since one of my relatives had already installed the firewall opening. The other option is to have a hot water radiator mechanism, but that means running water lines from the radiator to the cabin, which seems like a bad idea.

Windshield Wiper (and soon heat)

The last Model A club breakfast was a bit… chilly, reminding me that I really needed to order an exhaust shield, which is the final piece of the passive heating system once offered as an add-on in the Model A (the car had no heat). Basically, it’s a shroud that fits on top of the exhaust manifold and directs air from just behind the radiator into the cabin. Basically, the shroud gets hot from passive heating off the exhaust manifold and heats the already slightly warmer air coming through the radiator and dumps it in the cabin. As long as the exhaust system isn’t leaking, it’s not a bad system.

While ordering the shroud, I continued my hunt for a vacuum windshield wiper motor for a ’31 Slant Windshield. The motors are hard to come by, since they’re different than the one on the straight windshield As. Luck finally hit and Berts had just gotten one in stock. So I now have a windshield wiper that works.

Still have to paint the heat shroud, get some new bolts, and install it.

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Starter Swapped

The new starter arrived yesterday and was installed today. The plane’s now 11 pounds lighter and, more importantly, starts. As you can see, it’s quite a bit smaller than the original starter.

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Landing on Route 66

Ed, Teri, and I flew out to Santa Rosa for breakfast as a flight of two this morning. Their Cessna’s a little slower than the Bellanca, but I could stay in trail and keep the engine in the green, so still a fun flight. And I was able to run about 16-17 NM/gallon, which is a nice benefit of pulling the power back.

Santa Rosa’s 8/26 east/west runway is a mile of asphalt which used to be Route 66 (before I-40 replaced 66). So, of course, we decided to land on 26. 8/26 isn’t the primary runway and they’re apparently not spraying weed killer on it, so it wasn’t in great shape. But I can now say I’ve landed on old Route 66, which is pretty entertaining. We decided to take off on the much smoother 19, so I can’t say I’ve taken off on Rt 66.

While the airplane flew great, it’s time to replace the starter. I was planning on replacing the starter and generator next spring, since there’s no evidence either have ever been overhauled and are big, heavy, ancient things. The starter in particular has been slow in spinning the motor from time to time. The last couple of starts it hasn’t wanted to spin the engine first time the starter is engaged. Wait 5 seconds, hit the starter again, and it’s all good. This morning at Santa Rosa, it didn’t want to spin it at all. The relay engaged, but the starter didn’t spin the prop (Ed thinks I have a spot in the windings that’s shorting, so there’s a dead spot in the motor). Moving the prop by hand to the start of the next cylinder’s compression stroke seemed to get things started, but still not fun. Rather than try to overhaul the starter, I ordered a SkyTec C12ST3 starter from Spruce this afternoon. It’s a pretty quick swap (the paperwork may take longer than the hardware swap), so should be flying by next weekend.

Cruise Flight Happiness

Cleaning the fuel injectors Friday morning helped with the #5 cylinder acting funny with lower fuel pressure (due to lower fuel flow rates). Yesterday I went on another short test flight to verify everything with the engine was ok (which it was). So today I went for a longer flight to have some fun and test out the rest of the work we did this year. Good news: it all worked well.

There was one last adjustment that needed to be made on the engine monitor, adjusting the percent power indicator to match the engine configuration. Which was only difficult because the power tables for the Bellanca don’t give a lot of altitude choices for 70% power settings which are above the ground in central New Mexico.

In theory, adjusting all the tail surfaces to be rigged properly should have lowered the drag and increased the cruise speed. To test that theory, I did a speed test as well. At 9,500′, 65F, full throttle, 2300 RPM, and mixture leaned to peak, I saw 145 knots at 11 GPH. Which is about 5 knots faster than it used to be, so I’m happy with that result. I could get it down to about 10.5 GPH without losing more than a knot or two and the CHTs all stayed under 350 F in cruise, so that’s happy. The GAMI spread (difference in fuel flow between the first and last cylinder to reach peak EGT) was about 0.7 GPH, which is great for unbalanced fuel injectors. With GAMIjectors, I can probably squeeze another .2 GPH out of that and run a little bit leaner in long cruise. But 13 NMPG / 15 MPG isn’t too horrible for a 53 year old airplane.

I’m having way too much fun looking at all the data that can be downloaded from the engine monitor. Thus far, everything in the data looks really good, no obvious problems lurking. Unfortunately, the data analysis program that JPI ships is Windows only and kind of sucks. I found some fairly detailed documentation by someone who had reverse engineered the data format, so I’m thinking about writing a program to do some of the more detailed analysis for me. My GUI programming skills are lacking, so that might not be a good idea, but we’ll see.

After dealing with the fuel injectors, I also paid the bill for the airplane (right about where I expected it to be) and grabbed the log books. It’s amazing how much paperwork an airplane can generate in one year, and this was a relatively simple year. So the 2013 upgrade / annual is over. Next year’s annual should be significantly shorter, as the upgrades planned are way less ambitious: replace the starter, upgrade the generator to an alternator, and (probably) install GAMIjectors. The current starter is about 18 pounds and is starting to show its age. The SkyTec C12ST3 I’ll probably install is 7 pounds, will spin the motor faster, and draw less power (which is good, because the battery is in the tail, 20 feet from the starter). The generator’s 16 pounds, only puts out 35 Amps, and the regulator is a mechanical dinosaur, adjusted by bending a spring tab. The Plane Power alternator conversion only weighs 10 pounds, can produce 70 Amps (at lower engine RPM, so no more low amp warnings during taxi), and has a modern, solid state regulator. Finally, the GAMIjectors are just about lowering fuel burn in cruise. The generator might happen before the annual, because my generator regulator is starting to act up and there’s no point in putting more money into it.

Flight!

After fixing a last minute fuel leak on the 4th (which somehow was missed during 3 other run-ups), the Bellanca finally went for a flight on Sunday. Finally! In general, things look really good. The airplane generally flew straight and level, although it still wants to drop the right wing a little bit. When I had the plane leveled, I forgot to check that the inclinometer (ie, the ball) was centered, so I need to do that to make sure the ball is set right in flight. Then some tail rigging will be in my future.

The EDM generally performed well, although the manifold pressure reading is a bit skittish. I talked to JPI today and they say that’s a common problem with the 900 series and that there are a couple of fixes we can try. I also am having some problems with the #5 cylinder. When I’m leaning, it just cuts out entirely right around peak EGT. It shouldn’t do that and hopefully is just a dirty fuel injector (which I’ll clean on Friday). Other options are spark plugs (unlikely, since it cuts off entirely, which would suggest two plugs went bad at the same time, which would be really unlucky.

Jeff took this picture of me on a (slightly high) final to 27 after the flight. Almost looks like I know what I’m doing…

IMG_4769 - Comin in for a landing

No more painting!

The flying wires are now painted, ending the marathon of painting this year. I hate spraying enamel, largely because I suck at it. This time didn’t turn out too badly. No runs, but it’s not quite as smooth a coat as I’d like. Definitely better than it was and hopefully properly priming the flying wires will cause the enamel to actually, you know, stick this time.

I need to do a full power run-up to make sure that the fuel pressure is still adjusted properly (adding the fuel flow could theoretically reduce flow) and also adjust the generator output. Now that I have a voltmeter, I can see that the generator’s been setup a bit hot, which isn’t great for the battery. Hopefully won’t take too long, then it’s time to fly!

Primed (but not ready)…

This morning was cool enough to prime the flying wires, so now I just have to wait the 48 hours (ish) for the epoxy primer to cure and I can paint the flying wires. I must be getting better at spraying, because I managed to avoid the runs I had when I was painting some of the exterior parts for the EDM. There’s not much prep between the primer and the enamel paint, so I should be able to paint Tuesday or Wednesday night. Assuming John concurs, I should be able to go flying on the 4th :).

Straight and true?

Last weekend, I finished adjusting the flying wires and the tail feathers should now be straight and true. John inspected everything on Friday, which meant I could do the fabric repairs and paint.  Unfortunately, I let John convince me that I should repaint the flying wires while the plane’s down, so I also stripped the flying wires.  The paint won’t cure for 12 hours, so I need to wait until tomorrow morning before I can mask off the repaired sections to prime the flying wires. Tomorrow I should be able to prime the flying wires and then I can paint on the 4th.

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John and I had done a run-up two weeks ago and most everything looked good, although we noticed the heater muff on the exhaust was really close to the lower cowl. A new support clamp and some adjustments to the muffler and there’s more clearance now. I’m still going to have to watch it for the first couple hours, but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I also swung the gear with the cowl installed today and found a place where the gear rubbed on the cowl; a bit of work with the Dremel and it all looks good.

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The todo list before flight is pretty short: tighten the bands around the firesleeve on the fuel flow sensor and painting the flying wires. There’s a bunch of adjustments that I’ll need to make to the EDM-900 before it’s ready for a cross-country flight, but I need to make a couple short test flights first so that I can take up a safety pilot while I’m doing the adjustments.