Date:    2-19-2011
Number of Hours:    0.00
Brief Description:    19th flight
19th flight

Today my goal was to have a test flight at full load; unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to secure all 5-50 pound bags of salt, so I ended up only flying with an extra 200 pounds (4-50 pound bags). With my 192 pounds, 250 pounds of salt, and a half tank of gas puts the weight and balance right up to my maximum of 1150 pounds (actually 1162 pounds). Even with just the 200 pounds extra (for a total weight of 1112 pounds), the EGTs and CHTs were quite a bit higher. With the extra weight, my CHTs averaged about 40 degrees hotter than without the 200 pounds. I can normally not worry about the CHTs at all when the outside air is cool, but with the extra 200 pounds they started to get hot and I had to reduce power. So it’s probably a good thing I didn’t fly at full load, things would have gotten even hotter.

The take off took a bit longer than normal which was expected; it normally takes around 7 to 8 seconds to go from 30 MPH (where the Enigma starts recording data) to lift off with just me in the cabin. With an additional 200 pounds it took an extra 4 seconds, so I figure it took an extra 270 feet or so. I’ve never tried to figure out long my take off distances are (I haven’t done any short field take offs), but I would guess my normal take off length is somewhere around 1000’.

The landings didn’t seem all that much different from normal weight, I just made sure to keep my speed up on descent. Take offs, on the other hand, were noticeably different and will take some getting used to. I kept trying to get her to fly before she was ready; perhaps I should have monitored the speed better.

One last thing I noticed; when the outside air temp is 35 or so, the heater works great - when the outside air is 15, not so much.

Flight time: 2.2 Total time: 26.1 hours
Number of landings: 6 total landings 70.