July 6 2004 - This is it! I am finally done. The Phoenix has flown again. The paint looks great and just needs a little color sanding on the upper swing surface for aerodynamics. It is great to have it back again. I am having some puzzling problems with my new heating and ventilation. Where my vent hole in the past used to have air flowing back to the tail, now I get a draft coming toward me! I did remove some blocks I had to push the lower door frame out and make a good seal on the right door, and that is all I can figure is happening. I am getting air in from the wheel well again, from the tail and a small leaking from my new heater. It has to be going out somewhere and the best I can now figure is the door seal. I have sealed some areas in the front of the main gear strut and tomorrow I will flight test to see if that improved the warm air that now comes up through the slots in the center console. After that, I will play with closing off the lea in the right door seal. All in all, I am now back in business and looking forward to not working on it anymore - just mainly flying it. It is too much fun!!
July 30, 2004 - return to OSH. I had to do it with the new paint - another flight to OSH. The airplane performed flawlessly making it all the way in one day the first day. I did my first night flight with a takeoff in the dark at 4AM and a landing in Greeley, Colorado in the mid morning hours. Arrival at OSH was more exciting this time dealing with the semi morons flying in there and unable to follow simple directions. I parked at the Europa booth area, with a lot more airplanes and way less presence of Europa itself. The Europa corporate saga continues to unfold with unknown results. i did my best to support the economy by buying as many things as possible, including noise canceling headsets. I have a quick oil drain now, new instrument lights - way better than nu-lites – and several other things I can't think of right now. 3 days of OSH are enough to saturate the mind, so the departure was on Saturday with a 1 1/2 day flight back - including a stop for weather and a camping on the ramp experience in Wyoming. All in all it was a great trip!
August 6, 2004 - Well, it has happened. The airplane has itself demonstrated its capability for safety by having an engine failure - a slow motion failure. I was climbing out on the usual profile that provides an easy glide back to the departure airport, when I heard a sound change. It was enough to look over at the manifold pressure gauge to see 30 inches, when it is normally 36 inches in the cruise climb. I throttled back and then increased power to confirm the 30 inches was not a hallucination. I checked the fuel flow to see if there might be some sort of fuel leak - a hazardous condition to be sure. The fuel flow was normal, so I throttled back to idle and returned to the airport. I considered shutting down and feathering, but it was running OK at idle, so I didn't. The airplane arrived over the field at 3500 agl. A circle followed with full speed brakes, with a high downwind leg. On downwind, the engine started to vibrate in a quite pronounced manner, so with the field made, I shut it down , leaving it to windmill. The vibration stopped as soon as I turned off the ignition, throttle at idle.
The airplane lands the same way regardless of the power - engine at idle or shut down. The landing was normal and I just took the high speed exit, coasting to a stop. By that time, the airport people were out there with their trucks and flashing lights (un-invited). A brief look over the airplane showed nothing obvious and a peek in the engine cowl showed nothing obvious either. I tried to restart, but it would not start so it was towed to the hangar (by my Dad, who had just arrived in his airplane).
The problem turned out to be a very simple one - yet a show stopper. The engine has two carburetors which are held to the intake manifold via rubber flanges. It is really quite a Mickey mouse design that I will be doing something about in the future - a back-up to keep this from resulting in a non running - or rough running engine. The rubber flange on the left side of the engine cracked and split 180 degrees, causing the carburetor to separate enough from the intake to let in enough air to essentially kill the two cylinders on the port side of the engine. The fix would take about 10 minutes, if I had the $75 part that has already been ordered. The glider wings paid off making this thing a very easy and almost relaxing event. The only hiccup was a Cessna taking the runway when I was abeam the numbers on downwind announcing what was going on. Some people's kids???
August 13 2004 - The fix is in. The above picture shows the repair to the situation with the carb flanges. Rotax has a new design for the carb flange with the same shaped part, using Kevlar reinforced rubber instead of non reinforced rubber. In addition to that, I have fabricated two airbox supports that are bolted to the existing engine thrust structure right below the airbox. This makes it all one solid unit and should completely eliminate the possibility of this happening again. I have flown it about 5 hours so far and it is working very well. At this point, I am hoping to spend much less time working on the airplane and a whole lot more time flying it. The only remaining item I would like to complete is a PDA based GPS on the instrument panel. That could end up being Mountain Scope software running on HP's newest PDA about to be available.
November 18 2004 - I haven't made an entry here on this web page for a while - the airplane is doing that well! I have finally made the plunge into the PDA market and purchased the latest PDA from HP - the HX4700. It has a VGA display and is running with Mountainscope software; it makes a very impressive display (the panel shot is now the real thing with simulated GPS data). The main motivation for this is to get the GPS on the panel and get rid of all the wires running around the cockpit for the hand held Garmin 295. It also has terrain information, which is quite a nice feature. I am using a new Bluetooth GPS receiver, which is causing the software some fits, but they are furiously working on resolving the problem.
I am also trying to resolve a nagging problem of an exhaust leak in the area of the turbo charger. As best as I can tell right now, it seems that the flange on the muffler was warped allowing exhaust to escape the joint right at the exit of the turbo. I have it all apart and will shortly know if I have solved anything. In addition, Rotax has a mandatory service bulletin to replace the 50% water/glycol mixture with a new 100% non water coolant - NPG+. The cooling system has been drained and all this will be reassembled shortly to see if there are any improvements. It is very hard to put the airplane down, since it is so much fun to fly!
July 16, 2005 - The picture above is the reason for no updates to this page in a long time. I have been repainting a twin comanche with the PPG concept that worked so well with the Europa. I am just about done with that. The other reason is that the Europa is truly operational now and performing very reliably. Issues now are the cooling with the new waterless fluid. The temps have gone up, but I have also calibrated the CHT and found my engine monitor reads about 20 degrees F at the mid 200 range. Real max CHTs on these hot days is about 240F. The mountainscope terrain display is great, but hard to read and because of that I have now also purchased and am testing Anywheremap. That seems to handle my visibility issues. Another issue is carb balancing. That was solved by using a mercury carb balancer bought at a motorcycle shop for about $40. It has been running very well ever since. It is still amazing how little it costs to operate this airplane for the performance you see. The price of gas now is really not a factor!
