Testing the hot-start technique. Works great:


Clean as a whistle at 5 Hrs:

What a cool airplane!
The Aero LED nav strobes have been noisy in everything I have installed them in. I have known a few people to take them off and switch to AVEO strobes witch do not make noise.
The company that makes the AERO LEDs knows of the issue and will blame it on your wiring. They will send you noise filters that will supposedly fix the issue.

Great to hear she is really performing! I knew she would "wake up" with that fantastic conversion! After you get her broken in I will give you some power settings to experiment with, I think you will be pleased.

The noise with the Aero LED's need the filters, give them a call and they will send them out to you. I have Aero LED landing and taxi lights but do not have the strobes. The landing and taxi lights are VERY bright and I have no electrical noise with them. I love my Aero LED lights!

Sounds like your weight increase isn't too bad at all, if you only did a calculated weight before the conversion and did not actually weigh it I would bet it weighed more than what was calculated. Soooooo I bet the actual weight difference probably wasn't as much as you think.

Keep flying and keep us posted.

Kurt

I'm shopping for a second airplane and a 170/180HP bird is definitely on my short list!

jaudette,

You had a great "second" airplane and you sold it. Too bad I didn't get it , I would have loved to have that sweet Maule you had.

Kurt

She is looking strong! Very strong!

May your compression rings seat well and your oil stays clean! Fly high!

Pardon the hijack but.
Those of you with LED landing lights, do you find they Penetrate as far as the old lights?
Iv found with off road lights the LEDs are much brighter up close but I don't seem to be able to see as far?

River rat wrote:Pardon the hijack but.
Those of you with LED landing lights, do you find they Penetrate as far as the old lights?
Iv found with off road lights the LEDs are much brighter up close but I don't seem to be able to see as far?

Good question RR. I've wondered the same thing. On my pickup I had HID bulbs in the headlights and LEDs in my bumper. The combo worked great as the HIDs really penetrated, and the LEDs really brightened it up close and in the ditches.

I have HIDs for both the landing light and taxi light, and they do a marvelous job compared to stock incandescents. I have zip experience with LED landing lights, so I can't compare those. The HIDs are expensive, but they're likely to last a lot longer than either my airplane or I will. I had my IA install them, because they have power supplies which needed mounting, and frankly I'm not much of an aviation mechanic; I wanted them installed correctly.

The only real caveat is that to get the most out of them, they must be carefully aimed. I think I made 6 or 7 night landings before I was satisfied, and that's as annoying as heck, having to remove the cover, tweak the aiming, reinstall the cover, go fly, taxi back, go through the whole rigmarole again and again. But that was 10 years ago, and I haven't had to change the aim since.

About 3 or 4 years ago, I had my IA add a Precise Flight Pulselight module, so that the lights can be pulsed to make them more visible. The recommendation of the various vendors of HID lights is that the Pulselight works fine, if you first turn on the lights for a few seconds to warm up the power supplies. Then turn on the pulsing circuit, and they'll pulse at full brightness. That's what I do, and it works.

Cary

DP,

You had to have put some hours on conversion now. What is the final verdict before ski season. Happy?

Hi Brett,
Real happy!
I'll try to post more soon- it's dinner time here.
Hope you are doing well,
-DP

Brett,
Well, I've got about 25 hours on so far, and am quite impressed. I'm no factory test pilot, and I haven't been conducting disciplined before-and-after comparisons, but here are some seat-of-the-pants observations:

My home bases are between 1500' and 2000' ASL, and I like to fly in excess of 10,000' around the big mountains that we have in the backyard up here. The DA has been steadily dropping as winter arrives. Lately during normal ops I've had the VSI around 1300 FPM during climb-out, at near gross. I used to cruise around in the neighborhood of 90-100 MPH on 26" Goodyears, and wondered why the yellow arc on my ASI was even there. Now I'm regularly seeing 125 MPH on 29" ABWs and BBW, and having to actually think about how to slow it down on arrival.

Flying a lot of my old familiar out-and-back circuits, I am getting there and back faster, and taking less fuel to top off afterwards. Seeing 16 GPM on the CGR-30P at climb-out was a bit of a shocker at first, but leaning out to the low 8's in cruise more than makes up for it. I also realized that another efficiency comes from blasting off straight over the local terrain instead of needing to climb out around it.

Takeoff is awesome. No doubt the Sportsman and the AOA from the 29's has something to do with that, in addition to the horsepower and the prop. 500', give-or-take, at near gross, and I feel like I'm still learning how to maximize that. The Sportsman is very noticeable on landing too. I used to favor the tail-low wheel landing in the old days, and finesse the wheel a bit on touchdown. Now if I increase the AOA even slightly in the flare, I'm suddenly flying again. Still need to go play with stalls, and work on spot landings.

The CGR-30P is an amazing instrument. It's got too much info to fit on the home screen, so I find myself scrolling around with it, but it's all quite easy to navigate. %Horsepower is a neat feature, and fuel flow is a game changer. Also, Motoadve's old 695 is a great addition to the panel!

Well, dinnertime strikes again. Can't hardly wait till ski season!

-DP

p.s. on the injection: I am not missing my carb heat knob at all. I had a pilot of a carb'd O-300 along recently, and she commented that if her engine analyzer looked as even as mine, she'd assume it was broken.

DP,

Feel free to call or PM if you want to talk about power settings.

Kurt

Congrats DP. I bet you're looking forward to the ski season.

Just left the plane in Fairbanks for a 25-hour check-in. Paced my departure tracks in the snow when I got home. 400' in calm air and 3" of stiff snow. Getting the knack of this new bird a little more all the time.

-DP

G44 wrote:DP,

Feel free to call or PM if you want to talk about power settings.

Kurt

Kurt-

Sent you a PM- did you get it? Please PM me any power setting info you want. Thanks,

-DP

denalipilot wrote:Just left the plane in Fairbanks for a 25-hour check-in. Paced my departure tracks in the snow when I got home. 400' in calm air and 3" of stiff snow. Getting the knack of this new bird a little more all the time.

-DP

Mine should have been parked at the shop when you got there. Starting the annual in a couple days. Appreciate the recommendation for CMAS. Still looking forward to the ski photos this winter.

Brett

denalipilot wrote:

mtv wrote:Building those cowl doors to fit is a difficult task.....looks great so far. I assume you are planning on using some sort of safety device on the latches?

MTV

MTV- mostly I've just gone with the recommendations of the shop- as you know they are top-notch and have more and better ideas on most of this stuff than I would. In this case, I think quarter-turn fasteners all around should be pretty solid. This is an evolution of Mark's installation on his own 170, so the basics have been worked out already.
-DP

Catching up on this thread
I quickly learned to hate these fasteners on mine, and so I'm curious how you will like them in a year. You can always switch them out if you don't.

Hi Once&Future^^^ Good to still see you here.
I am quite pleased with the philips quarter-turn fasteners so far. There are seven on each cowl door (down the nose bowl seam and along the lower horizontal seam. The cowl is definitely very secure. The tradeoff is that I have to undo all seven to check the oil, which is a bit of a hassle, but since I enjoy looking at my new FWF, there's always a silver lining to it! I'm pleased to have the flush style vs. the wing-nut style. This way the cowl is really clean, and there is nothing to snag the lines on my engine cover or windscreen cover, etc. I'd do the same again. I should mention that Mark did an excellent job with the sheet-metal work, so everything lines up perfectly, and there is good reinforcement internally, so they feel very positive when you latch or unlatch them.

On another note, I've been getting off much shorter since ski season started. Only partly due to air density, I think. In the old days with the O-300 I had usually wheeled it off in a tail-high attitude, and I had largely continued that technique with the new power plant, prop and wing. First time out on skis I just let it fly itself off in a 3-point attitude, and was very impressed. It pretty much jumped off the ground in 14" of powder. I'm eager to try that on wheels now.

Cheers,

-DP

No replacement for displacement [emoji106]

Glad you're enjoying it.