The Oil Temp & CHT issues are FIXED!! Last night I closely examined (and cleaned) all the sensor-related connections and found that the Oil Temp sensor ground wire into the spade connector was completely loose. I could pull it out easily... I did also find that the sensor wires were bundled together with the alternator wire for a few inches and that's a no-no (I didn't do it...), so I fixed that too. I flew this morning and all was perfect!!
I uploaded the engine data from the two flights on Saturday where the oil temp went crazy. Interesting to compare them to two previous flights where everything was fine.
Went for a flight a couple of days ago and the oil temperature went through the roof (redline!). It also happened a couple of flights ago. It was 75F outside, so not crazy hot.
The only new thing is that I did an oil change about 5 flight hours ago using all standard Rotax parts and procedures. Oil pressure is perfectly normal for the whole flight. I did notice when viewing the video after the flight that one of the CHT measurements seems kind of wacky.
Some people on Rotax-owner.com said that the oil temperature was changing way too fast for that to be real. Agree? Thoughts? The weather has finally gotten nice here, so I want to fly!
I'd really appreciate any ideas you'd have on this. I sent this to Dean at Lockwood, but haven't heard back.
Full flight video:
Well, I'm definitely going to Oshkosh this year, but after much consideration, I've decided to not fly Sadie there.
With the crappy weather we've had over the last several months I've not flown as much as I thought I would and it's looking like a stretch to have my Instrument ticket by the time of OSH. I really wanted to have that before flying the roughly 900 miles to get there. Maybe I'm being overly conservative, but I consider that a virtue in flying, so I'm OK with disappointing some people with it not being there. 😎
I'll be there from Tuesday morning until Friday morning, so this time I WON'T miss the Sling Ding! 😁
Can't wait!!
When not flying in Sadie, I've been flying with my home simulator. It's now a great setup using X-Plane, with a Garmin GTN 650 emulator from RealityXP on my iPhone and a physical device from RealSimGear emulating the Garmin GFC 500 Autopilot all running within the sim. Using that with PilotEdge for practicing real ATC communications, I've got an amazing setup to make sure I have the buttonology (and comms) nailed down. It even connects automatically to ForeFlight!
As you can see in this video it is super cool. I'm still trying to get VNAV working though as most planes in X-Plane don't seem to support that autopilot functionality for some reason. Apparently, people have gotten it working, but just not me yet...
