I was supposed to fly a check ride in one of the Transport Canada aircraft yesterday afternoon, but it was broken. So, I took a half day of comp time, and went to Smiths Falls to fly the RV-8 instead.

First, I studied the upper cowling attachment to determine why I was having problems installing the long horizontal hinge pins that join it to the lower cowl. First, I put a tiny bit of BoeLube in the leading edge of each hinge eye on the lower cowl, and I put some on the hinge pin. Next, I took a good look at the way the hinge eyes stick past the edge of the upper cowl. I realized that my installation technique was not compatible with the design. I had been starting to align the hinge eyes at the front, and working aft. But, the way that Van says to install the hinge, doing it that way will lead to a condition where you need to give a hard rap of the hand to force the eyes past the edge of the lower cowl a few inches aft of the front. I managed to bend one of the hinge eyes by doing that. I carefully straightened the hinge eye, and from now on I will start the hinge eye alignment at the rear - it makes a big difference. The combination of these two things made a huge difference in the amount of effort to install the lower cowl.

For the flight, I concentrated on engine break-in, following the instructions in Lycoming Service Instruction SI-1427B. It is a long document, but in a nutshell it calls for one hour at 75% power, followed by one hour alternating between 75% and 65%, and then 30 minutes at the manufacturer’s maximum recommended power (whatever that is for an RV). I decided that the two previous flights had effectively been a total of a half hour at a bit more than 75% power, so yesterday I did a two hour flight - a half hour at 4500 ft and 2500 rpm and 24” MP (75% power), followed by an hour alternating between 75% and 2300 rpm and 23” MP (65% power), followed by 30 minutes at 2500 ft at 2700 rpm and full throttle. The engine seemed happy at all conditions, with the CHTs staying below 375 deg F, and the oil temperature hanging around 180 deg F, except at max power, when it got up to about 195 deg F. The OAT at 2500 ft was about 25 deg C (77 deg F).

While I was droning around, I tested the Microair 760 COM reception. It uses an Archer antenna, inside the left wing tip. It was able to clearly pick up ATIS from an airport 50 nm away. The reception was slighty weaker if the station was off the right wing tip, but it was still readable. I didn’t try any long range transmission yet. I also confirmed the NAVs on the GNS430 and Narco 122D were working. And, I spent some time becoming familiar with the pages and menus of the GNS430.

I discovered that my round dial Van’s MP gauge intermittently seems to have died. Hopefully it is just a loose connection. Fortunately I also have MP on the Grand Rapids EIS 4000, and it works well. The Dynon EFIS heading seemed to be reading strangely sometimes. I may need to do another compass calibration - the original one was done with the engine OFF to avoid low power running. After the engine is broken in I’ll do another one with the engine running.