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N437T is now an airplane!!! Whoohoo!!!

Chattin35

Well Known Member
This turned out to be a much larger, frustrating, rewarding, and educational experience than I ever anticipated. I put a ton of my blood (literally), sweat, and many curse words into this project. Yesterday culminated two+ years of effort with the first flight. The collection of parts and hardware that became N437T earlier this month left the ground and officially became an airplane!

The -7 flew great! Van's designed a absolutely phenomenal aircraft. And, the IO-360-M1B / Hartzell BA CS prop is a sweet sweet combo. The plane has tons of power and felt perfectly balanced in all axis.

Although I spent quite a bit of time planning contingencies. Ie: what I was going to do in X situation at X altitude, everything pretty much went out the window when I pushed up the throttle. It doesn't look like it from the video, but my hair was on fire.

However, the flight was pretty much uneventful. Engine ran smooth and cool. The max CHT I saw was just over 400'.

Man, it feels good.

Like many awesome things in life, there were many people involved in making this happen... So, I just wanted to give a quick shout out to everyone here and say thanks for sharing your hard earned wisdom. This wouldn't have happened without the direct and indirect help from this community.
 
Some pics...

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Great job Chris!

Was that first flight in your RV-7 better then "Heli Skiing"?

"Sometimes life does not suck..."
 
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Chris, It is great you are flying now, but beating me to be done is not right!!
Now that you are flying, you can spend your time working with me on my plane!!

Are you going to keep your 7 at Nampa or Caldwell?
 
Chris, It is great you are flying now, but beating me to be done is not right!!
Now that you are flying, you can spend your time working with me on my plane!!

Are you going to keep your 7 at Nampa or Caldwell?

Rocky! I remember you teaching me how to dimple in your garage back when I was looking at various RV's. Crazy how little I knew back then, haha.

It'll be based at KMAN for the near future.

Hit me up anytime. I'd love to swing by and help.
 
Wow, congratulations, two years! That's quite the inspiration.

When you can, come up to Joseph Oregon (KJSY) and I'll buy you lunch!
 
Congratulation's! nice piloting skills there, that thing jumped off the runway! any mods to the engine?
 
Congrats Chris! She flew quite nicely, inside view really showed how fast you were off the ground, awesome.
 
Engine...

Congratulation's! nice piloting skills there, that thing jumped off the runway! any mods to the engine?

Nope. It's a bone stock YIO-360-M1B from Van's paired with a 72" Hartzell BA prop.

W&B for the first flight...

Aircraft 1043 78 81241
Fuel 180 80 14400
Pilot 185 97 17945
Passenger 0 97 0
Baggage 0 127 0
Total 1408 113586

First Flight CG 81

Flight 2 happening today! Objective is to continue verifying safe operation of the main systems and run the engine hard for a good break in. Plan is to fill the tanks all the way and do laps above the airfield for a couple hours with the throttle wide open. Pretty boring profile. But, it's still a test flight. So, I'll be on high alert.

If everything is going smoothly after an hour or so, I may venture out away from the airfield a little (staying over other airstrips and good landing spots of course).

Oh man this is fun!
 
Chris, I will be out this morning at KMAN in the 172 for my lesson. I hope I don't slow you down too much in the pattern!!!
 
Test Flying

Thanks all.

Flight 2 and 3 are in the books!

On the second flight, I planned to stay up for a couple hours and run the engine as hard as I could to help it break in. Well, the #2 cylinder was indicating about 100'F colder than the others. At 290'F it was below Lycoming's recommendations for continuous ops so I decided to land and see what was up.

I pulled the plugs and probes on the #2 and #4 cylinders to make sure they were connected properly and the plugs were firing as expected. I also peaked inside both cylinders with a borescope. Everything looked normal. So, I put all back together and took it up again. And, guess what... it was working fine. #2 is now my hottest cylinder by about 10'F. All were within 20-30'F of each other.

Go figure, eh?

The third flight was a 2.3 doing laps and running the engine hard. All cylinders where around 380-390'F occasionally poking above 400'F when I was messing around with the mixture. When I landed, it was idling much smoother on the ground. So, I think it may have broken in?

Same plan for the next flight. Then, first oil change and a thorough inspection of the whole airframe -- looking for things that may be rubbing, come out of torque, etc.

Thanks again for the kind words all. Hopefully, I'll see some of you out there flying around. I'll do more write-ups in the test flying section.
 
Lycoming Minimum CHT Recommendation for Continous Ops

Chattin35,

Can you point to a reference for this minimum value? I have an IO360A1D in an RV6 that runs below 290 in cruise and has since I installed a method to monitor that. May have for the last 2300 hours for all I know.

I have looked in the past and can only find maximum values.

Thanks,

Dennis
 
First landing...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae6tjv-_-r8

(should be good for the next 90 days, haha)

Ha-Ha is right!!

I flew with a friend in the 7 last week and found it much more difficult to land than the 8 due to springy gear system, especially on hard surface.

Landing on grass easier as grass seems to suck it in once it touches.

Congrats on the build and flying it.

Notice you are flying from right seat, great!

All fighter pilots have stick in right hand, throttle in left. :)
 
Can you point to a reference for this minimum value? I have an IO360A1D in an RV6 that runs below 290 in cruise and has since I installed a method to monitor that. May have for the last 2300 hours for all I know.

I have looked in the past and can only find maximum values.

Hi Dennis,

For some reason, I had 320'F in my head. But after reading through the manual again, I think you're right. I couldn't find a reference to that number. Thanks for pointing that out.

Either way, I think it was a good decision to call the flight short. Something wasn't right with it 100'F lower than the others. Better to land unnecessarily and check things out than to push it and hurt my new engine.

Not really sure what it was. But, I suspect the probe wasn't properly contacting the cylinder inside the connection. I flew again yesterday and everything appears normal.

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