N1BZRich(at)aol.com
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 Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2008 7:49 pm Post subject: Flight from SYI to JGG |
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After a busy two weeks at Arion HQ I finally flew back to Virginia today. Great flight and I will cover some figures below. But first, let me say a few words about my visit. Although I had intended to only stay a week to ten days, the weather over the TN / NC / VA mountains and near "home plate" kept me from flying home before today. The extra time allowed me to help the guys a little more and I hope that is some small way it makes their preparation for SNF easier.
I have mentioned the test flights I did in the prototype testing out the new trim system. You have already heard Nick and me say how much better we thought it was. But one other benefit of the extra test sorties is that we have decided to make the trim tab a little larger. We even tried two other sizes on the prototype and that knowledge is what determined the final size of the tab for those that order the kit.
The extra time also allowed me to help with fitting the gear leg fairings, wheel pants, and a few other final details to get the new 2008 Demo ready for SNF. I also was able to fly it on two test sorties and logged about 2.7 hours on it. At some time in the future (probably early May) I will go back to Tennessee and do a flight evaluation for the newsletter. I don't want to do that until it has the fairings and pants, so the performance will be what a builder can expect.
Now for my fight back home today. Remember I had an effective 40 + knots headwind going out there, so I was expecting about that much tail wind coming home. Well, it was wasn't quite that good, but close. Initially out of SYI there was only 15 knots of tail wind as I climbed to 7.5. However soon had to go to 11.5 to clear some build ups near Knoxville. At 11.5 the winds were 20 on the tail but by the time I got to central Virginia I had 30 to 35. It was neat to occasionally see a ground speed of around 200 mph.
On previous postings I have mentioned that my cross country cruise technique is to set a fuel flow and go with what ever speed that gives me at the altitude I am flying at. I normally set it around 6 gph for cruise and by the time I pull the power back for descent and the flow decreases, my flight average will be about 5.8 gph and my average speed will be 160 TAS mph or so. I average my speed from the time I take the runway to the time I turn off the runway, so that includes my takeoff roll, climb to altitude, descent, pattern entry and landing. If I just look at cruise speed at altitude it will be about 170. The above are pretty much no wind.
With today's winds, my runway to runway speed worked out to about 189 mph so I guess the tail wind average was 25 to 30 mph. But I did one other thing different today. Instead of setting a fuel flow of 6 gph, today, knowing I had a tailwind, I set it at 5 while at cruise. Now remember it is much higher during the initial climb to 7.5 and then the climb to 11.5. Having said that my average fuel burn for the entire trip was 5.3 gph. That is measured from engine start, taxi out, TO, climb cruise at 7.5, climb to 11.5, cruise, descent, landing and taxi in. I used 15.5 gallons for the 550 mile trip that took 2.9 hours of flying time from runway to runway. If you want to impress your non pilot friends that works out to 35.5 mpg at 190 mph - yes the wind helped, but no wind it would still be about 31 mpg at 160 mph - beats any car I know about.
Hope to see lots of the Lightning listers at SNF. Remember the Wed noon forum and the Thur noon get together at the Lightning booth.
Blue Skies,
Buz
PS: Just to confirm, the previous message about the "cat out of the bag" was actually a bag of "bravo sierra" seeing that it was 1 April. Now you know for sure. Some thought there really was a retractable gear on the new 2008 Demo. Sorry.
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