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Sunday, November 29, 2020

Oh, another thing I needed to address was the coolant.  The coolant that comes with the kit is Castrol Radicool SF, but that's impossible to find in the US.  My coolant was right at the minimum and I wanted to put some more in there, but I couldn't find any more of that particular coolant...

If you read about coolants and the Sling POH, you can't mix different types of coolant, so I wanted to make sure I got something that was completely compatible.  So, I contacted BP, the maker of Castrol.

They pointed me to Final Charge Global Coolant Extended Life, which they said is precisely the same as Radicool SF and can be mixed.  I looked at the specs and agree they're the same (they're both OAT-type and ethylene glycol).

Castrol SF-O (same as the SF)

Final Charge Global and more here.  I bought a gallon here and added some to the reservoir.


Well, I addressed two of the top-priority issues and was able to get Sadie back flying today.

Issue #1 was the ADS-B's GPS source to the GTN 650 (so no ADS-B Out).  I suspected it was a bad cable/adaptors between the 650 and the antenna, so Midwest Panel Builders made me two new custom cables for the G3X and 650 GPS antenna connections.  In the process of doing all this, it was discovered that I was using the wrong Garmin GPS antenna for the G3X.  It has to be the GA 56 and not the GA 35 that the 650 uses.

Once both of those were addressed I took the plane out of the hangar and to my great pleasure, both boxes began acquiring satellites.

Issue #2 was that the flaps on each side were slightly off.  The left side was slightly up and the right was slightly down, causing a slight left rolling tendency.  I fixed that and it's much better.  I still need to address rudder trim because, right now, you have to jam your foot on the right rudder pedal to make it fly straight.  I'll be making a rudder trim tab this week, so hopefully, that'll be fixed too.

That's not right....


And that's not right....

That's better!

Why did I not know that these 3-blade coax cutters exist??  Makes it SO easy to cut the cables right!

Nice!

Much better!

Anyone want a slightly used GA 35?  Great for GTN 650's!  If not, it's going on eBay...


So happy to see this....!

She flies! :-)


Monday, November 16, 2020

Well, Sadie is home at 6B6!!!!  It was about 10 hours of flying over 2 days from Norman, OK.

On the first leg we stopped in Mount Vernon, IL for fuel and lunch, then it was on to Dayton, OH for an overnight.

Then from Dayton we did it non-stop to 6B6 in 4 hours 22 minutes, burning 28 gallons of fuel.  Our average fuel burn was about 6 gph and we trued out at 115 kts.  We had amazing tailwinds for the whole trip, with our ground speed reaching nearly 180 mph (155 kts)!

Thanks SO much to Vergil Caskey, Jean D'Assonville, Bob Zaleski, Midwest Panel Builders, and Mike Busenitz of STOL Creek (Rotax!) for helping me get it finished and home!!!  There's NOTHING like the aviation community.  Great people.

Here's a video my local EAA chapter (196) put together of the arrival in Stow (thanks to Michael Smith and Andy Goldstein!):


Some other great pics:


Sadie rode in the backseat. :-)













Thursday, November 5, 2020

I know I haven't been posting much here, but things are starting to move down in Oklahoma.

Vergil has been flying nearly every day and working quickly through the required 40 hours.

He flew 4 hours 39 minutes this morning and you can see that flight and all the previous flights here.

The plan is to go down to Norman next Tuesday night, do my Flight Review and familiarization flying with Vergil on Wednesday and depart with Bob on Thursday morning.  Then it's a full day at the epic US Air Force Museum in Dayton, OH on Friday, departing there Saturday morning for the ~4 hour flight to 6B6 in Stow, MA.

Can't wait!