Thursday, October 20, 2011

Dialed in

At long last, the plane is 100% squawk free!  The prop sync issue turned out to be a problem with how they wired it up when doing the prop overhaul.  The shop pulled off the prop and sent it back to Stockton propellor for warranty repair, put it back on and boom, they synced up perfectly.  I took a flight down to LA and what a difference.  Also the fuel flow issue on the JPI is finally resolved, it still fluctuates a little bit but now only by a few tenths of a gallon, not 3-4 gallons like it used to.  It's accurate enough now that I know precisely what I'm burning and what my fuel flow is as I go lean of peak.  On the flight to LA I was truing out at 190kts on 22 gph running LOP at 8-9k.  CHT's were all in the 330-365 range with the higher ones being the #6 on both engines.  So now, at long last everything works... I mean everything, including the little clock on the yoke!  The engines are running so smooth...


Tuesday, October 4, 2011

back in the shop

The plane is back in the shop getting its remaining squawks resolved, as well as the first oil change and a boot job.  I saw the boots and they look freakin great, gleaming and shinny instead of dull and chalky.  It looked like a lot of scrubbing work with chemicals so I was glad to have them do it.  The other squawks are the prop synchrophaser is still not working, and it appears that Stockton propeller may have miswired something within one of the props, so they are popping it off and sending it back over there to get fixed.  The other issue is that the fuel flow on the JPI is still erratic, so the shop has been working with JPI to try to figure that one out.  Last I heard they are downloading the data from the unit to send to JPI.  Hopefully we'll get all the bugs worked out here shortly, the main one that irks me to no end is the prop sync.  I don't know how someone could own a twin without one.