It's been a couple months now that I have been a high performance Test Pilot, flying my X-10 aircraft, and have just about completed the Phase 1 fly-off. During the first 25 hours I found that little items that needed to be resolved, such as ignition wire chafing in the baffling, a small oil leak coming from the accessory pad, plugging up all the small air baffling leaks, and the Garmin transponder antenna not being fully attached at the back of the avionics panel. These are all small but easily fixed items that still allow the 40 hour fly off testing phase to continue. And during the first 30 hour conditional inspection (last week) the only item that I fixed was using some wire ties and tying up the stainless steel braded brake fluid lines so as not to interfere with each other while I operate the rudder controls. Now that I believe that the oil consumption has stabilized I can begin to think about installing the wheel fairing system and see what the true top speed of the aircraft is. Fast, stable and fun aircraft but during testing I fly with the mixture control fully rich and 70% or greater engine power setting where I obtain 18 to 20 g.p.h. fuel consumption.
