I went out to the airport this morning to be part of a work party that was clearing snow from around the runway and ramp lights. It took about two hours to get the job done, then I cleared the snow in front of the hangar.

After lunch I did a static system leak check, to confirm no impact on airspeed system accuracy. I have noted that the recorded airspeeds are about 3 kt higher than they were before the aircraft was painted. This may be due to less drag from the clean, smooth paint job. Or, it could have been an artifact of a static system leak, which would cause the airspeed to read too high.

Then I drained most of the fuel from right fuel tank, and poured it into the left tank, so I could check the unusable fuel quantity in the right tank. I selected the left tank for take-off and climb to 2500 ft, then selected right tank as I circled overhead the airfield. I selected the left tank after the engine faltered, then returned for landing.

After landing, I drained less than 0.1 lb of fuel from the right tank, so the unusable fuel is less than 0.02 USG. 21.68 USG were required to fill the tank, so the usable fuel is more than 21.6 USG. The left tank had 21.47 USG usable fuel, so I will claim 43 USG usable fuel for the whole aircraft (Van's spec is 42 USG, but that seems to be conservative).

After filling both tanks, I took off again, intending to do some more cruise performance testing with the wheel pants off. But, I discovered the weather wasn't nearly as nice as I expected, with a snow shower moving in. I aborted the flight and landed after 20 minutes.