Date:	12-4-2010
Number of Hours:	0.00
Brief Description:	Corrected a few things
Before today’s flight I attempted to take care of all the issues I identified yesterday. I was able to correct the navigation lights with a slight wiring change and they work great now. When I looked at the fuel leak, the tank was dry where the leak was last time. I may have to keep looking at this. As for the rudder adjustment, I looked closely at the rudder pedals and all the rigging and everything seemed ok. I did notice that the vertical stab looks like the top is a little crooked which may be the problem. I’ll start looking at trying to straighten the fiberglass top so make it straighter. Applying heat with pressure in the right direction may be all that’s necessary to take the slight lean out of the fiberglass tip. I checked and tightened all the connections from the alternator to the regulator to the battery and thought everything looked ok. When I went flying, the voltage did go up to about 13.3 volts for a short time, but most of the time it stayed around 12.9 volts. The voltage should be between 13 and 14 volts when charging properly so I still probably have a problem. Perhaps I’ll try to take an AC voltage reading at high RPMs at the input to the regulator with my digital voltmeter to see if I can figure out if it’s a problem with the alternator or the regulator. To try to make the CHTs and EGTs lower I used some aluminum and high-temp RTV to close up all the gaps I could in the baffle. When I went flying, the CHTs stayed in the green for the entire flight and the right side of the engine seemed to be about 30 degrees cooler than before, while the left side was only slightly cooler. I’m not sure how much of this is due to the changes I made or the way I flew. I adjusted the ‘dial-a-trim’ and it seems to work better now.So I was able to fix about half the problems. The last thing I did before I went flying was to install two hooks, riveted to the back of the square cross-member behind the seat. These two hooks are for the headsets when they are not being used.