This is the problem that David and I have had. They have been ground tested by us. They have been flight tested by someone who has a Murphy Moose and of course me. This is where I believe Bud shines. He had over 400 hours in his Wheeler and if it was not for the fuel line I am sure he would have another 400 more by now.
Expect an engine failure at any time
Self brief yourself before every takeoff on what you will do- maintain airspeed, what switches to throw etc. Emergency procedures need to be as instinctive as possible because when it really happens, it will still never be exactly as you train for.
Mentally prepare yourself that you may not be able to make the runway and that you will damage your plane. At all costs, you will maintain best glide speed down to the flare.
Never conduct the test flight unless everything is 100% and never unless you have tested things first on the ground as much as you can. You never NEED to go flying.
Don't conduct this sort of test flying from a short runway surrounded by trees, houses or obstructions. Simply a bad idea, leaving you no options if things go wrong.
Remain overhead the airport at least 2000 feet AGL. XC trips can come much later in the program
Watch all the engine instrumentation like a hawk. If anything does not feel or look right, get the thing on the ground a find out why. Don't diagnose in the air.
Use test cards for each flight with a pre-flight plan of what you want to accomplish for the flight. Don't just fly around.
Get the cowling off after every flight and check everything. Don't assume anything is ok without checking.
There have been numerous engine failures on various V8 powered experimentals and I've heard some scary stories through the grapevine of what was behind them.
Many have the mistaken notion that they can bolt on a cheap crate engine and go flying. This is highly unlikely, at least for very long.
Time and time again, I see people with no clue about engines and tuning launching off into the unknown. Some people have been working with these engines for years and are on their 3rd or 4th one after multiple failures. Within the lines, I see the words "engine expert" mentioned. Jack Roush is an engine expert. Most of these guys having failures with 5-10 hours are obviously not.
From a safety perspective, treat this development with the utmost respect is all I can say:
Expect an engine failure at any time
Self brief yourself before every takeoff on what you will do- maintain airspeed, what switches to throw etc. Emergency procedures need to be as instinctive as possible because when it really happens, it will still never be exactly as you train for.
Mentally prepare yourself that you may not be able to make the runway and that you will damage your plane. At all costs, you will maintain best glide speed down to the flare.
Never conduct the test flight unless everything is 100% and never unless you have tested things first on the ground as much as you can. You never NEED to go flying.
Don't conduct this sort of test flying from a short runway surrounded by trees, houses or obstructions. Simply a bad idea, leaving you no options if things go wrong.
Remain overhead the airport at least 2000 feet AGL. XC trips can come much later in the program
Watch all the engine instrumentation like a hawk. If anything does not feel or look right, get the thing on the ground a find out why. Don't diagnose in the air.
Use test cards for each flight with a pre-flight plan of what you want to accomplish for the flight. Don't just fly around.
Get the cowling off after every flight and check everything. Don't assume anything is ok without checking .
-----so it will be a couple more weeks before we are flying again.
....We took a total of 35 lbs off by removing the supercharger and its associated hardware......
Atta Boy Todd! You're moving in the right direction. Less lead weight needed for ballast, but most of all you lose all that un-necessary complexity (read reduced reliability). The simplest solution will always be the best for long term reliability. Hopefully this next batch of flights will work out well.
Thanks for the update and good luck on the next flight.
Be Safe,
Stein
Sometimes things aren't always the way the appear! I am really starting to believe our battery management system is not working and could have been the root cause of our engine problems. I had the engine running great for a while and then bam once I dropped down to idle the thing dies. I looked at the voltage and it had dropped almost to 10.0. Once the voltage goes you lose both ignition and fuel injectors. We are getting our electronics guy to come out as soon as possible. I will keep you posted. AARRRRGGGGH!
Good decision. If you have an electrically dependent engine, the last thing you want is a complex, unproven electrical system design. Complex systems often have unpredicted failure modes and/or unexpected interactions. If the design doesn't have a substantial service history in similar applications, then the chances of these sort of problems is even higher.Yes, I think it will. I never really liked the system from the beginning. I could not follow the logic of it and we were planning on replacing anyway. The plane will not go anywhere until the unit is gone! Dan's RV-10 crashed because of electrical issues and not the engine. I don't want to follow in his footsteps.
I didn't like the system from the get-go. After it was put together by an avionics guy, he wires avionics in Gulfstreams and such, I started looking at and found several points that could fail and shut the plane down. Everything will have two or three points that have to fail before it crashes(The system that is) now. We have the design but we were waiting for the engine problems to be fixed before tackling the electric. The waiting game starts again. Good thing I have a C-150 and a Tiger to fly! But I really miss flying the -10!Good decision. If you have an electrically dependent engine, the last thing you want is a complex, unproven electrical system design. Complex systems often have unpredicted failure modes and/or unexpected interactions. If the design doesn't have a substantial service history in similar applications, then the chances of these sort of problems is even higher.
Go for a simple system, with enough redundancy to ensure you can handle any single failure, or any single annunciated failure + any dormant failures (a dormant failure is a failure that occurred some time in the past, but you don't know about it yet because there is no obvious way to detect the failure - e.g. failure of one of two redundant ground paths) . That way you can have some hope of predicting its performance, failure modes, response to operator input, etc.
Are you saying that low system voltage may have triggered the engine problem?After loosing my patience waiting for our avionics guy to troubleshoot our electrical system and fix it I decided to dive into it. In less than 2 hours I found the source of all our problems. It took a whole 2 minutes to fix but I am almost 100% sure that this is what caused the destruction of my engine.
Passive indications like this are fine for day VFR aircraft with non-electrically dependent engines. But, if you need the electrical system to be available for safety reasons, you shouldn't count on the pilot to actively monitor system indications as the means to detect alternator failure. It is all too easy for the pilot to get busy and forget to check the amp and volt meters. If you need the electrical system to keep the engine running, you need to have active indication of alternator failure or low bus voltage. This indication needs to be designed to be very alerting. Accept no less. This is not a place to cut corners.We are going to add amp meters on the alternators and batteries.
We are going to hook the amp meters into the EFIS/ONE. The voltage is already displayed. The backwards way of wiring was letting a voltage reading go through with very few amps with it. Right now we monitor the battery voltages but I really like your suggestion of the bus voltage also.
Audio would be nice. Anybody have an audio solution that is somewhat easy to install and doesn't cost $1.2 million?
Got any new news Todd ?
Very Soon. Jim still hasn't made it back!Todd: Just one word for you---Ridgeland. You know what to do!!
Congratulations!
Lee...
The thing I hate the most is our flap switch, auto down and no auto up. Makes it a nightmare for go arounds and touch and goes.
I have about 22.6 hours in the air now and I am still alive. Nothing eventful has really happened. The plane is running great. Full throttle take-offs are a blast! This was just a long distance,speed calibration and fuel burn test. I have to check the fuel burn again just to make sure but I was burning 11.3 gph at 11,500, MP 21.5 at a true airseed of 174 knots. I was running 93 Oct with 10%ethanol in it. I was getting about 17.6 mpg. The best news:$2.58 a gallon! The thing I hate the most is our flap switch, auto down and no auto up. Makes it a nightmare for go arounds and touch and goes. Weather has been terrible here lately so it has stopped any more testing for now.