I took today off as vacation and accomplished quite a bit of Europa work. The
plane got its first ride on the dual axel flatbed trailer I fabbed up for it.
It went to Falcon Field and back and came out unscathed. (good news) The
trailer
probably weighs almost 2 times that of the plane and it sits higher than
a lot of the traffic. So the plane is protected pretty well. The prop has
gotten dynamically balanced and there was a noticeable change even on ground
runups. (good news). Initial taxi tests were undertaken and the plane tracks
very well. I didn't have to do a bunch of back and forth tap dancing on the
rudders to keep it straight on the line as had been my experience in a Cessna
140 and 2 other Europas I had taxied. However being more at ease in my own
plane
may have led to more measured footwork may account for the better tracking.
(good news). On the other hand my low speed taxi was more of a medium speed
taxi. With the throttle pulled back to its high i
dle (1500-1600) the taxi rate seemed to be approaching a very fast run by a
healthy
teenager. Brakes were being dragged almost the whole time. (bad news).
I haven't set the prop pitch stops yet on the Airmaster and I hope that is the
issue. A very cursory quick check showed about 30 degrees on the backside of
the prop and an inability to get up to 5000 rpm on one quick full power run.
What are those with Airmasters running for fine pitch?
The weight and balance was completed and the aircraft as it sits now primered
for fly off but now final paint has its Cg about 7/10 of an inch behind the
forward limit. (good news). I haven't permanately mounted the battery yet.
Right now the battery and its box of sorts in sitting centered under the right
access panel of the baggage bay shelf. Where are other's CG's at with an empty
weight? I need to do the calculations for all the people, baggage, fuel,
aux tank combinations to see if I need to do some fine tuning with the location.
Now for the (bad news) the empty weight is just about 900 lbs. Which is about
50 lbs more than I was hoping for, 91 % of the weight is on the mono and
9 % on the tailwheel. With some leeway available in the US for certing the
gross wt I would like to call it 1420 to get a good solid 500# payload. I can
fill it up with gas and still tote a 175# woman around. Just think of what
I could carry with a 125# woman aboard . . .! ! ?
I'm 205 sopping wet and I should be 195 so adjusting me should be a lot
easier
than drilling holes in everything to get more payload. How many out there
have their gross weights certificated for greater than 1370?
Steve Haga
A143
Mesa AZ
Getting closer!
Steve Hagar
hagargs@earthlink.net
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