I've been on the road a fair bit lately, and I've had a bit of spare time in the evenings. So I did a lot more work on my Pilot's Operating Handbook for the RV-8. I had originally started using OpenOffice to create it, but I ended up not being able to get the figures looking the way I wanted. Most people use Microsoft Word, but I don't have it installed on my home computer. I wanted something that would work both on my work PC laptop, and my home Macs. So I eventually decided to learn LaTeX, as it is very well suited to technical documents with figures, charts, etc.

LaTeX was a bit of a struggle at first, but I'm over the hump now. It integrates well with gnuplot, which will make it easy to get good looking graphs in the performance section.

I just finished the Cruise Power Chart, and I realized that some other RVers with IO-360A engines might be interested in it. I copied the format from a Mooney M20J, but all the data is from a spreadsheet I developed from the Lycoming Operator's Manual. I checked the manifold pressure and rpm combinations against the power charts for a Cessna 177RG and a Beech Sierra 200 B24R, both with IO-360-A1B6 engines. The spreadsheet matches the Cessna and Beech powers very closely. Mooney calls for manifold pressures that are about 1.5" higher than Cessna and Beech. That might explain why Mooneys are faster than other similar aircraft.

The spreadsheet to calculate power is available in my Links section. There is a link to it in the Top Links block on the right side of this page.

The Cruise Power Chart I created is available as a PDF file.