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soooo anyway... After 7 months, I again resumed my flight testing. To be honest my spirit took more damage than the bird last time and I really was reluctant to continue this journey. But I did. I trailered down to Wauchula and met Ernie there were we put on my new blades. For those who have forgotten they were damaged in a gear box failure incident a while back. This time I decided to try Ernie's wide chord, heavy lift blades. My machine comes in at 707 or 714 pounds can't remember off hand, and with my goal of flying anyone who can fit in the seat, these blades seem to fit my need.
Slow Joe, was nice enough to let me hangar with him for a few weeks so Ernie and I went to his hangar and strung the new blades. The new blades come with what is called the Dragon Truss. In spite of what you might thing it has nothing to do with a rupture it has to do with bracing against lateral flex, and if I got that wrong ask him. The cool thing is when you want to string them you simply twist one of the rods that make up the truss and you can move the string to exactly where it needs to be. See the pics.
So my first flight seemed uneventful but when I landed the gearbox reservoir had about 8 ounces of gear oil in it and showed no signs of draining back in. So I called Jan and reached his answering machine. A few minutes later I asked Ernie to call and luckily he answered. We described the issue and he suggested we drain the fluid, refill it with 12 ounces of gear oil, fly it and see what happened. We did so and after a 10 minute flight I landed and the reservoir held 9 ounces of the 12 we had put in. We called back and Jan did not have a solution however he did agree that If I brought it back he would attempt to find one.
I was all set to trailer the machine back from Wauchula when I decided to try to resolve the issue myself. The last time I returned for what I thought was a warranty repair, I got an unpleasant surprise in the form of a rather large repair bill, and I have decided that I do not wish to repeat that. (In fairness, this week in the mail I got a check for 25% of the amount that I had paid for the repair service and although I thought it should have been covered as a manufacturers defect I did appreciate the refund.)
So I went back down to Wauchula and with the help of Slow Joe, Dave Bliss, and Dave Seace came up with an idea how to solve the issue. After another 9 or 10 hours of testing I believe the problem is resolved. Last Thursday I had a neighbor fly me down in the morning, then mounted up and flew the bird out of Wauchula home, a trip of about about 100 miles. It was a pleasant uneventful flight. It took 1 hour and 17 minutes.
Then this week I began adding weight to represent a passenger. I started with 85 pounds and it went well. This week I will add another 40 pounds and continue the practice.
That’s it for now.