Wednesday, July 20, 2016

roll servo repaired?

As mentioned before, neither of the autopilot servos were visible to the Dynon system.  I had already discovered a completely incorrect wiring of the pitch servo (under the seat) and was successful at re-wiring it a few weeks ago.  With DLZ closed for July, I started working on minor issues that needed attention, such as the roll servo behind the main bulkhead.  

I discovered at least one wire had pulled out its socket on inspection.  Upon removing the servo itself, another 2 wires were found or were pulled loose as well.  I identified them as being the data channels, so that’s a logical reason for the servo to remain invisible on the networks.  New sockets were applied and the servo was re-installed.  Since the main computer is back at Dynon for repairs, power up testing will have to wait.

 

IMG 5286

 

This is just a diagnostic photo of the plane’s side of the wiring harness.  Rather than trying to fit The Book into the back or running back and forth from the belly of the beast and my workbench, I just used this photo to verify that I had the correct pins & locations.

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

last flight of the summer! (sort of)


Last flight for a month! KDLZ is shut down as of tomorrow for "25 days" of unneeded runway work on behalf of JEGS, so they can land in wet weather. Well, I can't bitch too much, since it won't do any good. I took advantage of a great summer day to just have more fun. I really like shooting landings in this thing! So far, I haven't had a bad landing yet. That's not skill, that's luck.

Did some landings at DLZ, practiced entering a destination into the nav software and headed up to Marion. There, I had the field to myself and did another "cloverleaf" of Rwys 31, 7, 13 and 25 in order. Winds were 220 @ 8, but not really noticible in the plane. I'm actually looking forward to finding a nice crosswind to work with since I had such good luck a while back. Still having problems with the indicated fuel suddenly dropping to 0, 1 or 2 gals with the attendant verbal warnings.

During the summer shutdown, I'll be tacking that issue as well as a few items on my punch list. Of note, the Dynon 1000T gave me an error message that boiled down to "hard drive failing". Dynon had me send it back for warranty replacement. Good timing! The drive is sent out while the airport is closed. I'm on vacation for a week, but when I get back, I'll work on my punch list and hopefully have the main computer back before flights resume.  

IMG 5170

“SYSTEM EVENT 5"

Sunday, July 10, 2016

glider practice in the RV

more landings, just for fun. There's a definate improvement in my ability to predict float and make more precise touchdowns. right now, it's easy to not worry too much about undershoots, as Rwy 28 has a 500' displaced threshhold due to constuction, so even if I had touched down short of the line, it would be on runway, not an undershoot. As it turned out, I am still floating a bit or hitting the numbers. I had the prop stop again on rollout #5, so I decided to go with it as a concept and renewed my glider mentality. On pattern #6 I shut off the ignitions and slowed to about 65 kts to stop the prop. Ignitions back to ON in case I needed an in-air restart, and then glided to an uneventful landing. As expected, with the prop stopped there was even more float, but now I have an idea of how this plane really does behave in an engine out condition.